I will ! They do get more and more smooth, and I already have no complaints about the smoothness. Stellar detail and treble sophistication to my ears… The only gripe is the frequency balance, as I do feel NACA5 seem to be a little bit on the brighter side, I mostly miss the mids to be slightly more forward, a tiny bit as I do get a slight V shape feeling with that cable on Kanta’s. Chord Clearway X seem to be pushing mids more to the fore and at a cost of realism a bit and dynamics, they do seem to fix my pains a bit. I need to admit though that it does feel that NACA5 is more dynamic, louder and more effortless cable, probably a better one. But I will not make any decision until full two weeks burn-in
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Sounds good! Let us know how it goes.
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I will agree that the Nova with NAC A5s running to Kanta No. 2s feels pretty bright. I would love to try something to smooth out the rough highs just a bit. The setup is incredibly revealing, also. It takes no prisoners with crappy recordings. Also, I agree that this setup takes at least 200 hours of moderate volume running in. There is a huge change from the initial impression!
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Really there is!
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Roger that! I am almost fine with highs, I just miss the mids. It does feel V-shape a bit.
Chord Clearway X is smoothig the top a bit, brings the mid-tones forward putting higs a tiny bit back. For blasphemy of watching film on Kanta 2 - almost a must have. I cannot watch film on NACA5 as I can’t hear a male voices, with Chord it’s great!
Again I miss the dynamics and separation/ stage of NACA5 but frequency response is off for me. I need to keep searching- next target Rocket 22.
In general I love Kanta’s so far. It’s just not that easy for me to use a reference set and go.
I’d be interested to hear your comparison of the NACA5 to Rocket 22. I have the latter on my Atom, tried them on the Nova + Kanta but in comparison to the (admittedly far more expensive) Tchernov they were flatter, less dynamic, not as warm or clear.
Not a very good setup. Why is everything kind of shoved in that corner? It would sound way way better if you moved the system onto the shorter wall to the right and the moved the sofa in front of the system
That’s an excellent setup!
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I would recommend Witch Hat Audio Phantom - if you’re living in Bangkok, I can loan you a set to compare with the NACA5.
Hi @Bandit i don’t have the NACA5 and haven’t heard it. Just the two I do have (Rocket 22 and Tchernov). Thanks for the offer of borrowing the Witchhat. Perhaps Richard could connect us…
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You’re most welcome.
I totally agree and yet it’s how we live. We had a different arrangement and a bigger living room but had to add one more room for my son. It’s a really poor setup room-wise but in the left we have kitchen, and I cannot move sofa as it would block the passage to the new room. I do hear the corner, a lot. I hope I will be able to treat that acoustically somehow until we move to a new house.
I ordered a Phantom cable as from the user reviews it’s upgrading in exactly the painful (for me personally) areas of NACA5. It’s 30days check and it’s having amazing user feedback.
Thank you so much!
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With Phantom cable the system sound sublime! Amazing!! For everyone who owns Naim and feel NACA5 is a bit uneven, harsh, lacks body and stage, Phantom is a huge update.
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That certainly doesn’t sound right to me, maybe it wasn’t terminated that great, but if you have swapped cables over and you’re happy with the new results, then that’s all that matters.
Are the Witch Hat cables improving your system, for me they sounded immediately better than my existing cable i.e a well worn in cable was beaten by a cable out oof the box
I had fresh new naim original A5 cables, with proper termination and used them for over a month. They did sound great, but treble was harsh, forward on my Focal Kanta 2, Bass was boomy Mids felt recessed a tiny bit. The Difference is massive to me, scene is slightly larger, treble feels less harsh and forward, bass is more precise and linear reaching lower. And its a feeling of a fresh new cable. I am super pleasantly surprised even after reading all the notes.
I swapped some old chord cable on Nova/Neat alpha’s with Nac a5 and an immediate and obvious improvement was there to be heard.
Gary
To my ears chord clear way x is a polite cable with narrow stage and limited dynamics, Naca 5 is very dynamic with nice stage but sounds slightly harsh in the treble, boomy base and recessed mid tones, making Kanta 2 a bit shouty and harsh. Phantom is like naca5 but with warmer more forward mids, more detailed linear base, smoother and more analog sounding treble and bigger stage. To me that alignment shows the progress too and Phantom made my system sound coherent and stellar to my ears.
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Naim and Focal combo better with 3rd party cable - interesting.
WHPs seem forum favourite now.
Will Naim/Focal engineers look at developing a new cable?
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