Hi, sorry if this has been done to death already but after well over a decade of lusting after a Nain Amp I finally bought a Nait 5Si.
Well to tell the truth its a used Amp and its on the way next week so I dont actually have it yet.
My question after reading the manual is around the speaker cables and banana plugs.
As far as I can tell my purchase does not seem to have the Naim nickel plated tandem banana plugs, they were neither photographed in the advert or mentioned.
So do I need to bite the bullet and spend another £35 on those, plus all the soldering kit like an Iron, solder and whatever else I would need to do that job. Or is there any alternatives like the daltron plugs ( i noticed these are not nickel plated, i think they are usually silver or gold plated )
Is there are option that does not involve soldering, the nearest Naim dealer to me is a 2 1/2 hour drive away sadly.
I have van damme blue speaker cables in 2.5mm and 4mm, plus the chord company carnival silver screen cables, I assume those would be ok to use with Amp.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
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The Naim SA8 Plugs are the best fit but realistically any 4mm banana plugs will do. 
I have SA8 plugs on the amp end and Deltron plugs on the speaker end.
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Naim supply the plugs with the amp when new, but they often go missing or are retained by the seller. They are good plugs in most situations, but Deltron also make good nickel plated plugs that would work well. (I have a strong suspicion that Naim plugs are made by Deltron; they look suspiciously similar apart from the right angled solder arrangement.)
The Naim plugs are very good, but I find that the right angled arrangement is only suitable if there is free space behind the amp for the cables to hang vertically down. Shelves often protrude behind the amp, so that the cables sits better if regular plugs like Deltrons are used.
Some Naim dealers are very good at soldering speaker cables. Others, unfortunately, are not. One option is to buy a set of factory terminated Naim cables - they often crop up on eBay. Either that or find someone who knows how to do it properly: soldering really is the best option.
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I’ve used Nakamichi connectors on the Nait 5i, Uniti, and Supernait. They’ve always worked great on every device. They feature double-screw clamping directly onto the bare cable.
Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on the excellent purchase.
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Thanks for the advice, I did indeed find a pair of used speaker cables that have the Naim SA8 tandem plugs soldered on there already.
The cables are Linn k20 but from what I read they are suitable for Naim Amps.
Yes, they are similar to the previous NACA4.
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I did not think it was worth making a completely new thread topic for, but the 5Si arrived today.
The first time I have ever hear any Naim products by the way.
The set up was, a Cyrus cd7q, Dali lektor 1 on stands, van damme 4mm speaker cables and a chord clearway X RCA to a DIN 5 pin into the Amp.
At first I thought it was a lemon, I could hear it was punchy and dynamic but it sounded cold, harsh and generally bad.
And after half an hour ( the time it took my old Amp to warm up ) it still sounded bad and I thought I would end up selling the Amp.
2 hours to 2 1/2 hours in and holy smoke it started to sound fantastic.
It seems to have a very long warm up time of at least 2 hours + before it wakes up properly.
My fault for judging it too quickly.
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2+ hours feels too long and a surprisingly big sonic change. Assuming it does not need servicing (10+ years old) then it should all settle down and sound better sooner over time. A lot of Naim users don’t switch their kit off so it is optimal ASAP.
I did have the volume at what most would call low I guess, about 8 o`'clock on the dial so that might explain a sluggish warm up period.
It is 12 years old, I contacted Naim to check its history and they said it had never been back to them for any repair or service.
Once it got going it sounded fantastic but if I keep it instead of getting the upgrade itch then servicing will be on the cards at some point.
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Glad you like it. My recent service of a Flatcap XS power supply (puchased from eBay - 15 years old so key capacitors replaced) was £249 plus courier, via Naim dealer, taking about 3 weeks.
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My dealer, recently retired after selling Naim for several decades, used to insist on leaving the larger Naim power amps powered up overnight when setting up a demo system.
Yeah I can well believe that. I seem to be able to hear the difference between cold and warm amps quite cleary, its hard to explain in words but I first really noticed it with Cyrus power amps. They took a good 30 minutes to start sounding good to me. It was the same with this 5Si but it just seemed to need extra time. Maybe there is a certain temperature where optimum performance is achieved.
