Hi, it’s not unusual for an amp upgrade to bring an increase in bass level and bass extension. If this is excessive, I don’t think using cables a tone controls is the solution, but you might try moving your speakers further out into the room, to see if that improves things.
Having said that, I do think it’s worth trying NACA5, as I think it’s a good cable - you may be able to borrow some from a Naim dealer, or buy some used cable that you can sell on if you don’t want to keep it. Then, you will at least hear the amp perform as Naim intended, so you have some sort of a baseline against which to compare any alternatives.
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Recommend Tellurium Q black II speaker cable
+1
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The bass boom your hearing is almost definetly due to speaker placement but another factor could be you getting used to the different sound signature of the Naim amp.
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Is witch hat N2 speaker cable twisted?
Chord odyssey has less than half the inductance of NACA5. So according to naim would need to be twice as long for them to be happy.
0.6uh as opposed to 1uh per metre
Exactly, well nearly so. 0.6uH is not ‘less than half’ of 1uH. Whatever that aside, to get the recommended minimum inductance load it would need to be twice as long, I have 5.5m of Odyssey on my Supernait, not because of the load, but because I need that length to reach one speaker.
But the Naim integrated amps such as Supernait are not that fussy about speaker cable, my Supernait has had all sorts on it & nothing has phased it.
The other thing is all the bundled pair Chord cables, the Mogami’s & many others all have the same middle of the road inductance & capacitance. To a Naim integrated, the new platform units & to many owners of Classic power amps, they are not a problem.
Sorry mike I meant just over half…
The guy on the naim helpline said it my supernait 2 does need the correct inductance and not to use speaker cable below 3.5 metres.
Confused is an understatement.
OK I can understand that, corporate line etc. & that is correct.
Yes its best to have the right/minimum inductance load of 3.5uH, but what speaker cable are you thinking of using & do they publish the cable inductance spec. Chord don’t, I only know my Odyssey is 0.6uH/m because I measured it, & unlike capacitance, measuring inductance is not that easy.
Just an update. Have about 10 hours on a 2x5m pair of Witch Hat N2s connected to SN2 and SF Cremona Auditor Ms. No revolutionary change and wasn’t expecting one. Question is: what is the electrical purpose of approaching Naim’s recommended values, notably for inductance? Is it exclusively to provide compensation for the lack of inductor coil or does it also allow the amplifier to express itself more comfortably in terms of musicality? Thanks for your thoughts.
Brgds.
Solid state amplifier output stages become unstable due to capacitive reactance. The effects can be audible distortion caused by low level ringing up to the output devises overheating and in some cases destroyed.
To counter this all solid state power amplifiers have a Zobel network across the output stage to damp this oscillation; the conventional Zobel circuit consists of a series capacitor and resistor with values around 100nF and 10 Ohm. The capacitor begins to conduct as frequency rises and the 10 ohm resistor becomes the damping element shunting the circuit Q. With the variable capacitive reactance of the speaker load coupled to a length of speaker cable the Zobel circuit alone may not be enough. This is commonly solved by placing an inductor in series with the amplifier output downstream from the Zobel shunt circuit. The inductor value is set low enough to avoid high frequency roll-off in the audio range but high enough to provide the required damping at frequencies above that.
Amplifiers with a series inductor can use any type of speaker cable, however with a high inductance or excessive length of cable added to the amplifiers internal inductor it risks some roll-off at high frequencies.
Some manufacturers such as Naim do not have an internal inductor and choose instead to use only the speaker cable to provide inductance.
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So basically we are running a risk of destroying or damaging our amplifier if we use the wrong inductance (make and length) and if we can’t find out the inductance of the speaker cable we definitely shouldn’t use it?
That guy on the helpline should read the manual, which says that you can use a wide variety of speaker cable without risk of damage to the amp. This is very different from the advice with separate power amps.
Excellent answer Mike, thank you.
Errr I don’t think it will destroy anything, maybe sound bad if you use an extreamly high capacitance cable. Normal alternative cables will be perfectly OK, they might sound slightly better or worse, but thats all
I have the original Supernait & it seems to accept any old cable. To give an example, I had a 6m length of Russ Andrews (Kimber) that I used on Audiolab amps. This cable is very high capacitance & low inductance, I measured it at 296pF/m & 18uH/m,
As it was laying around I first tried in on my little Nait-2 & it sounded rough, after about 30 minutes running I could feel some heat build up - prior to that it never ever hinted at any heat.
When I got the Supernait it was connected to Linn K20 (very similar to Naim NACA4) & it was more than happy. As an experiment I tried hooking up the 6m of RA (Kimber) & it did nothing different that I could hear & it did not do anything w.r.t.amp case heat.
I’ve had Chord Odyssey for a number of years, & happy to keep it.
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I had the same conversation with the helpful gent on Naim’s support line. He did recommend the Naim values without alarming me too much about using other cables. I also think that Mike’s response above makes perfect electrical engineering sense, given the Naim design which excludes traditional on-board inductance. Having said that, I’m wondering if I’m not hearing a bit of improvement in the sound with the Witch Hats…but that is either a placebo effect, wishful thinking, totally inaccurate or my pea-brain convincing me that I made a worthwhile investment. Time will tell…
Thanks Chris
Put me at ease after reading through above.
Getting back to your initial post regarding over exaggerated bass.
As suggested I would try and move the speakers away from the wall temporarily with official approval from the other half 
. If that reduces the bass, than rear port and speaker position would logically be the main issue.
If this is the case, I would email SF and ask for their help with managing bass. For example, does SF supply any port tuning plugs (e.g. foam plugs) for their speakers? I assume they don’t, but some manufacturers do. SF might recommend against this, I would ask them.
Simply plugging the port of a ported loudspeaker is generally a bad idea. A woofer that is designed for a ported enclosure will act differently when port is plugged. However, the advantages to plugging a port can outweigh the disadvantages if the speaker is going to be positioned so that the port is close to a wall.
Some official speaker manufacturers supply or offer as accessory foam cylinders which even have removable centres to allow adjustment/tuning. I have heard of people proving the theory by plugging the port with t-shirts/socks before ordering foam plugs etc. This may have an impact on overall sound, but I heard and reed lots of people having success with reducing bass without negative impact on sound using this approach.
Just another consideration and approach that’s worth researching further.
All the best
Hello timbre,
Thanks for the message. I’ve stuffed these speakers with every possible material possible, stopping short of dead rodents. The SF Cremona Auditors in my view have major design flaws and are typically very challenging for owners to tame the bass and mid-bass response which are systematically overblown and bloated. Combine that with room modes and placement constraints and you have a disaster. MiniDSP works somewhat well at the cost of amputing half the signal and adding extra circuitry in the path. What works also is the DSP functionality in Roon…if you find the right settings. I can conclude that my room doesn’t do rear ported speakers under any circumstances and now the quest is to identify and home-demo a pair that will work with the SN2 and be happy in the room.
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Try ATC SCM 11 - these speakers do not have a rear port. Loving mine for the price/performance equation. Also see the Hi-Fi Pig review for confirmation.
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I agree with the suggestion of SCM 11s and you might just manage with SCM19s. Alternatively, PMC’s use of advanced transmission line bass loading means no port at the rear (or sides or bottom come to that.) Twenty5 21 or 22 would be the obvious choice but I prefer the Fact series and have used Fact 3’s successfully with an SN1 in a smaller room than yours. They come with matching stands and you could probably pick up a second-hand pair for a good price (and a quick trip across la Manche.)
Roger
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