I bought this RCA-DIN cable a few weeks ago from Amazon.
(paid around € 18,-/15 UKP, incl: p&p) Sounds fine to me! (although I have no comparison, but for this kinda money I think you can’t go wrong)
To my knowledge Naim doesn’t make cables but cut and terminate only.
When I bought one of my NAITs from a local fellow he threw in some cables, one of which was a Flashback one with a 3.5mm stereo jack at one end for connecting a portable device. I decided to try it out against my Naim Lavender/grey 3.5mm - DIN5 interconnect and found I much preferred the Naim. It wasn’t even close, which I actually found fairly surprising, with the Naim cable offering so much more “oomph” and power to the sound, that I did wonder whether the portable unit I was using (Ponoplayer) found one cable much easier to drive over the other.
I accumulated a collection of Flashback cables over the years, which was very convenient as it meant I generally had a spare to cover pretty much any combination of Naim and non-Naim setups.
I invariably replaced them with higher quality (usually Naim) cables even when using RCAs and these always sounded better. Still, it was nice to support a small (one man band) company who was helpful, knowledgeable and based in the UK. Better than buying cheap no-name cables off ebay or Amazon.
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Hopefully my Flashback cable will arrive tomorrow. As the DIN inputs on my Nait 1 haven’t been used for 10 years I’m hoping it will be good enough at least for diagnostic purposes. Having said that I’m 70 years old and have been diagnosed with moderate hearing loss so perhaps my ears won’t be as discerning as others. If a better Nait or Chord cable ever shows up in the market I’ll have to make a value judgement as to whether I can justify it given my hearing loss.
I found that there was no improvement in using expensive Chord or Naim cables.
There was a difference in sound, but A) was it better and, B) was it better for £XXX more.
Not for me, sold off my expensive cables, which I initially got on eBay and sold for virtually the same price, so a bit of fun trying them, but in the end, no real improvement for the significant increase in cost.
DG…
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My Flashback cable has arrived. One of the 2 pairs of phono connectors is distinguished by extra yellow banding. It’s a long time since I had a tape player so I can’t remember the colour coding. Which of these is an input to the Nait 1 and which is an output?
Try it with one of each.
The chord one just has 4 different colours; possibly when new the packaging tells you but otherwise you have to work it out.
I’m pretty sure the yellow marks are on the input (recording) leads and the unmarked leads are for regular playback from the tape player, but nothing will explode if you get it wrong.
Yellow bands connect to inputs. Very good cables for the money, I used these with my Nakamichi for several years. Replaced with Chord when I changed my sources.
Thanks to everyone for their help. I didn’t really want to do trial and error but is was reassuring to learn that I probably wouldn’t damage anything if I got it wrong. Anyway, I connected the yellow banded connectors as an input to my X-Cans Headphone valve amp and it sounded great when playing my turntable. I then tried the other connectors as an output from my Moode Audio streamer to the amp and that sounded good too. I can’t really compare it with any other cable as I don’t have one but I will keep an eye out for Naimor and Chord cables.
Having established that tape input and output are functional I now have a minor issue to overcome. As I said earlier I will be connecting the RCA connectors to 2 different devices. The tape output will be connected to a headphone amp while the tape input will be from a streamer.
The cable is obviously designed for a tape deck in which the inputs and outputs are fairly adjacent but in my setup they will probably be a foot or more apart.
So! Does anyone know if it would be practical for me to remove the outer sleeving of the cable so I can get greater distance between the RCA inputs and outputs?
I’m not 100% sure that each inner sheath you can see continues under the single outer sheath, so while it would be possible to cut away the outer, you may be faced with either exposed cable or another inner layer of insulation. It’s a shame Flashback are no longer around as they used to offer RCA cables with a longer split as an option.
On the equivalent Naim cable the insulation does not continue under the outer layer, so you would end up with a bit of a mess if were to dissect one of those.
Thank you both for your advice! I thought that it might not be guaranteed that the inner sheath would continue much further along the cable. I guess I could remove the outer insulation inch by inch to see what I find but I don’t want to risk damaging the cable.
I had already contemplated robert_h’s suggestion of an extension cable but I’m not sure how much of a trade off in audio quality that would bring? I guess if I went for a fairly ‘high end’ one it might be OK?
Look at the din end; I suspect it’s 4 separate insulated cables with a single outer wrap or jacket.
Good idea! Will do. Thanks!
If you do try splitting the cable and find that the insulation doesn’t continue under the outer layer you could probably just cover it with heatshrink tubing to protect the exposed inner parts.
Adapters would be a simple alternative, but I’ve used a couple in the past and the results were not good, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
I started stripping away the outer sleeve at the RCA end of the cable and the insulation terminated after about 1 inch - so I replaced the part I had removed with insulation tape. I could try ChrisSU’s suggestion of heat shrink tubing to protect the inner cables but I’m not confident I have the skills/equipment to do that and I don’t want to run the risk of ruining a good cable.
So I’m probably going to go for robert_h’s suggestion of a RCA Male to Female extension cable if I can find a decent quality one.
Alternatively, find a local cable assembly or electronics company and get them to tidy up and re-terminate for you.
DG…