Real use case on speaker cable damaging naim amp?

Thanks, I guess I’ll give it a try.
The thing is, the cable I’m about to ask don’t publish their spec, it’s actually a 2.5 meter each - ultra silver Tellurium Q speaker cable that I’ve prepared for my NAP500 DR supposedly to come next January.
I’ve read (mostly in this forum) about how rigid the NACA cable is, and Super Lumina is not sold here where I live (not even by the Naim dealer I’m buying my 500s from, instead they sold me the TQ cable).

There have been loads of TQ users on the forum and none ever had an issue. It’s a multistranded parallel design. I’d not even bother asking and just use it. That’s not a configuration that is likely to lead to high capacitance or low inductance.

If you do ask though, fire off a question about specs to TQ first. Naim support aren’t research assistants. They won’t go look up specs for you.

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I guess they aren’t :woozy_face:

But thanks, what you said was quite comforting. I guess I’ll give it a chance, I’ve had it anyway and so far works fine on my Star.

If one look at the SL specs they seem to have 0.74uh /m inductance. In their minimum recommended length of 2x3m that translates to 2.22uh compared to naca5 with about 3.5uh. My oephi cables have around 0.5uh/m so 3m is around 1.5uh. So my assumption (that might be wrong) is that there is a span which is comfortable to use and it’s less than the 3.5uh of naca5 for inductance. If 2.22 is recommended then I guess the amp would not implode if one have 1.5uh either. It must be tough even measuring such low values without tolerance fluctuations.

I also found these specs on Tellurium Q Blue. Pretty high inductance compared to naca5, SL and my Oephi. What surprises me is that SL has rather high capacitance compared to many others when they claim high capacitance is a big no no. Maybe high as in dangerous is really really high then.

  • Inductance/Metre: 20uH
  • Capacitance/Metre: 26pF
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The same pair? 30 years old? might want to check for oxidation

Oxidation? At the exposed ends maybe, but along the length it will be as clean as new.

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You do not appear to understand the wide range of acceptable capacitance & inductance with this, the numbers you have in this post are next to the same in Naim amp terms, as are the other numbers you’ve quoted.

Inductance is ideally in a range of 3.5uH to 20uH, but it won’t blow up with less & with more than 20uH it will only start rolling off the high frequencies.
Capacitance ideally should be low, lower the better. But what is too high, thats hard/impossible to say, it depends on the speaker load, cable length, the audio range (HF roll off characteristics) of the amp, amongst others.
Best just go with the advice to avoid Litz & the multi stranded woven types.

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The clue is in the statement you quoted:
&/or very low inductance cables

&/or means it doesn’t matter what the capacitance is, avoid very low inductance…

Having read this thread it seems the original question has been answered, at least by inference: damage to an amp through use of incorrect cables is probably very rare, if at all - because the amps have protection circuitry that should shut it down before damage occurs. However also clear in this thread is that at least with some amps and some cables that protection has been triggered, and in other cases audible sound degradation has been heard.

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I’m going to have to disagree with you @anon39880737 I’ve seen 15 year old cables internally oxidized. And here we’re talking about 30 year old basically fat lamp cord. I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t any oxidation.

I rewired a marine trailer last weekend, and was amazed to find the copper wires, in bog standard figure eight cabling, pristine clean despite being emersed in salt water goodness knows how many times since it was built in 1988.

Guess it varies but in my experience, after renovating all sorts of very old things including 1900s house wiring and very old industrial electric motors, copper within very standard plastic sheathing has always been very clean.

My experience is also that the vast majority of wire have been shiny copper beyond at most the first centimetre or two of insulation, though of course it depends on how tight the insulation is, and whether it has deteriorated - PVC, for example, generally lasts a long time. However it is easy enough to find out if the ends are corroded, and if so it is easy to check a bit further and only the ends are corroded and a couple of inches can be lost then it is easy and cost free to fix if someone is competent at soldering, or if not the cost is likely to be negligible having their dealer do that.

It really depends on multiple factors. In damp coastal areas you can find that exposed copper is green and crumbly in as little as 5 years. If all the cars in the area are new but rusty, you generally know what to expect.

In a dryer region, you may find that after 20 years there is just a brown tarnish but a look under the sheath reveals fairly bright fresh copper.

Don’t bother setting a time frame for replacement. Just inspect regularly and reterminate/replace as often as needed. Which may vary considerably.

Bought myself a pair of used 2x7m of naca5 with naim plugs one end and deltron gold on the other. Much longer than I need but I trust those saying longer runs sounds better so lets optimise. Had an itch to scratch with those talked about cables and haven’t used them since Supernait 1 many years back and now I’m on 552, NDX2, 300DR. Let’s see how they cope against higher end cables and then I at least have my own reference levels. Always good to have a spare set anyway when swapping out cables.

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If secondhand then do check carefully the soldering quality on the plugs and also whether any of the strands have broken; the strands on NACA5 are thicker than most and so if you have some broken ones then it can have quite a dramatic impact.

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I can vouch for this as a victim of it myself. Broken strands on one channel, broken solder on the other. Dramatic improvement when fixed. I do notice that many dealers are clamping connectors on these days where the plugs allow.

Will get me a 100W iron and do a new installation with never used naim plugs and new gold plated deltron. I have good solder skills and will put the pins in a wooden jig and pre heat the pins before applying led and cable :+1: Thanks!

I will also have TQ Ultra Black II on home demo shortly.

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I think you will find the NacA5 very musical, some revert back to NacA5 from Superlumina. Very good length.

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Didn’t work out for me at least :slight_smile:

We can only suggest our own Naim cables however, we also suggest 3.5 metres per channel as a minimum.

Naim prefers the solution of allowing the speaker cable to provide the correct inductance and capacitance. To do so, a minimum of 3.5 metres per channel of NACA4 or NACA5 cable is required – although the optimum length is around 5-10 metres with a maximum recommended length of 20 metres

And how does your music sound now?

:frowning_face: