Currently using original 20 year old Naim speaker cable Bi-wired from Uniti 2 to Proac Signature Reference 8 speakers on floor stands.
Thinking of replacing/updating cable.
Suggestions and/or comments welcome.
Biwiring changes the electrical properties of the load the amplifier sees and this may affect the sound particularly with classic power amps. You could try single wiring with one of your your NACA5 (?) cables and use the other to make jumpers at the speaker end.
Just a thought.
Roger
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What Peakman wrote. If you search the forum for ābi-wireā, you will find more threads than you want 
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Has Naim ever built a loudspeaker with double binding posts (and a crossover inside)?
Quite a few:
N-Sat
Arriva
Intro & Credo MK1
Intro 2
Ovators
The question was whether Naim had ever built a speaker with double binding posts ie two pairs, coupled with an internal crossover. Unless the very early speakers, the NAS and NA602 had them, the answer is no.
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Itās what I meant, yes. I missed the Intros but have had the others. Mine was a bit rhetorical way to say that Naim doesnāt seem to favor bi-wiring.
I second PeakMan suggestion.
Have a good day Nigel.
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Spend the same money on a better quality single wire cableā¦
If it were me, iād buy some brand new lengths of NAC A5 cables, have them terminated by a well seasoned dealer, swap the speakers for a single-wired model.
How are you bi-wiring with naca cables ?
If it was me Iād get a nice new set of Witch Hat Phantomās and a set of Witch hat jumpers. Bi-wire for the most part isnāt all that good
KJM,
if it can help you make a decision - just my opinion and experience:
Lately I have been reading some āobjectiveā papers on speaker cables - meaning that the approach was scientific (electrical properties of various gauges and designs in function of length and resistance), not āmusicalā. The results were predictably ideal for rising arguments among audio lovers. According to theory, if the cross-section of a wire is adequate to its length, it is enough to guarantee good, lossless delivery of current to the speaker terminals. Even real āissuesā like the effect of inductance and capacitance on the linearity of the signal are much overrated, according to technicians, when lengths are as modest as those in domestic use. In practice, though, there is us. We are subject to all sort of aural synesthesia: glass sounds harsh, wood smoothens the sound; silver cables are brighter, copper is slowerā¦ Our perception of the world is 90% based on sight and we tend to adapt aural perception to what we see - or so I believe.
I have two pairs of binding posts on my loudspeakers and if I had had a chance to pay some tenths of ā¬ more to have just one, Iād have paid. But then, the two inches or so of even thinly gold-plated metal cannot have a significant influence on sound, and gold is surely as much a good conductor as copper: I decided to leave the stock jumpers in place and forget them. It worked. Even audio manufacturers (not cable manufacturersā¦) agree that bi-wiring is not necessarily beneficial to the sound - while most agree that bi-amping probably is.
So, my idea is that you have a few sensible, cheap options: use the two jumper that came with the ProAcs and just one pair of NAC A5 lengths, re-terminated; use just one pair of NAC A5 lengths, re-terminated and cut two short pieces of the remaining cable to make jumpers. A third hypothesis is to use one pair of cables and have the speaker ends soldered to four plugs. You should find a picture somewhere here showing how the thing is done. But I bet that if you put the stock jumpers back in place and forget about them, youāll be happy enough. Or you may buy a 2nd hand NAP200, add it to the Uniti and bi-amp the ProAcs. It may cost less than fancy speaker cablesā¦
BTW, NAC A5 is - from an electrical standpoint - a well designed speaker wire, with a good compromise of three parameters - Resistance, Inductance, Capacitance - which in the phenomenal world manage to be reciprocally adverse; I think that one could simply use it knowing it is an electrically proper design and try liking it for what it is - a sensible, no-frills complement to the amp. That said, the temptation to experiment with cables is always there; I did it at a friendās fine audio store: to discover that a pair of 4mm2, ā¬6/mt. Van Damme cables held their own very very well against a sober, 2.5 mt. pair of Nordost wagnerian-named flat wonders costing only ā¬ 12,000, terminated.
Best,
Max
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The solution is this:
Thatās what I meant, thanks.
You didnāt solder the wires did you?
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The problem being here of course - the more solder joins, pins, different metal platings, jumpers in the chain, the more of the above will be effected.
Provided the effects are actually audible, this is why I began:
I have two pairs of binding posts on my loudspeakers and if I had had a chance to pay some tenths of ā¬ more to have just one, Iād have paid.
But Iād say that changing speakers because of double binding posts is a little extreme.
I recently tried doing just this, with NAC A5 and banana plugs from the standard Naim SA8 double plugs supplied with most Naim amplifiers. It almost worked.
Soldering pins to the ends of the wire was fine. But soldering pins to a section of wire from which the insulation had been carefully removed proved too difficult. Even with a 100W soldering iron, I couldnāt heat it sufficiently for the solder to flow properly. It seems that having the copper wire either side of the join (compared with only one side when terminating a cable) gives it too much of a heat sink. So youād need a pretty powerful soldering iron to do this.
I gave up, and instead terminated the ends. Then made little jumpers using bits of NAC A5. Soldered at each end to keep the wires intact, but leaving the copper exposed to make the actual connection. (I am not sure if this is naughty, I suppose the copper will oxidise over time. Perhaps it would be better to terminate the jumpers with banana plugs at one end and spades the other. But I figured Iāll just make new jumpers from time to time with spare NAC A5.)
