This cable was included with my recently purchased NAC 32-5 and NAP 250 setup.
Maybe this cable was created for a specific turntable/tonearm setup? I figured someone here would know.
Can I use this cable with female 3.5mm to male RCA adapters to connect my Naim CD5 XS?
And if this will not work, where should I look to purchase the proper Naim type cable online to connect a CD5 XS to my 32-5. I am located in the USA if that matters.
Looks to be a record in-out lead speacially made for connecting to a portable recorder of some sort to the NAC’s tape input.
One 3.5 will be audio in. The other audio out. Of course that’ll only work if used on the tape input of the NAC. Any other input will just act like a regular interconnect with one of the 3.5 jacks being effectively dead.
It’s a guess. I could also be wrong. There’s a couple oddities that make it unclear.
Those jacks are 3 pole stereo jacks. But there looks to be only 2 poles going in. So either those wires each contain hot and ground for left and right or those are the wrong 3.5 mm jacks used in a mono arrangement. But the cable then looks wrong for a phono level interconnect.
If you have a multimeter set to continyuity mode, you can actually figure out how it’s wired.
It looks like one of those old generic RCA - DIN tape patch leads where someone has cut off the plastic bonded RCA phono sockets and soldered on a pair of stereo 3.5mm jacks. This would have been done to connect a portable recorder such as a Walkman Pro or perhaps a small portable digital recorder.
I got one in the US years ago from Nordost, via my dealer. Mine is a first class cable at the professional fab level. They called it a Blue Heaven iKable. It is a 3.5mm into a Naim DIN. I still use it with a Meridian Explorer DAC. You can probably get something comparable from Chord in the UK.
Chord offered the iChord - a 3.5mm stereo jack to DIN5 interconnect. It’s a good cable, and far better than some of the others you can get for cheap off eBay. However, my favourite is the Naim lavender grey 3.5mm - DIN5 i/c;
And am I correct that if I wanted a Naim Interconnect to go from this NAC 32-5 to a CD5 XS, that I want a “Naim SNAIC DIN5 to DIN5 180 Degree” Interconnect?
Still learning the Naim world and really appreciate your expertise.
You are correct, except that it’s a standard DIN5 interconnect, not a SNAIC, which is able to carry DC power as well as the audio signal, and connects to the preamp output, not the input.
The sheath colour can vary slightly - especially once photographed and manipulated. It’s definitely later cable - usually referred to as lavender/grey in order to distinguish it from the slightly more graphite grey (and marginally thinner) cable used earlier on.