I don’t remember where I heard or read this. It might have been on this forum.
Some suggest to unplug and replug the DIN cables on gear every 6 months. This is supposed to clean the connectors I believe.
Does anyone here actually do this? How can the connectors get dirty if the DIN cables are plugged in? Any benefits to doing this?
Surely, this one is so easy and costless to check… Why would there (no doubt) diverse opinion of others be needed?
Because I am lazy!
I am also genuinely curious if others do this, and the rationale behind it.
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I dissassemble and reassemble my two Fraim racks about every six months. Part of that is disconnecting and reconnecting all cables in the system.
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I don’t.
The desirability might depend on tightness of plugs etc., and on local room atmospheric conditions, particularly humidity, in the position of tge kit.
You mean disassemble I think. Dissemble is something else entirely. When I had a big system I’d strip it down and put it back together twice a year and it made a very worthwhile improvement, though it was a right pain with two stacks of Fraim.
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Corrected.
I mostly do it just to clean everything. For two Fraim racks with eight boxes and a 60 lb turntable sitting on top it’s a PITA and takes about two hours, but is worth it. I’m not so sure it makes anything sound better, and not so sure it doesn’t.
I don’t exactly put it on the calendar so I could not say every 6 months. More like things get disconnected and reconnected annually. But as for a full system and rack strip down? Sod that. I regularly check racks and speakers are level and adjust as necessary (in a timber frame house that is still settling, shifts are quite large).
While I don’t use actual contact cleaner, for really tarnished stuff I use 99% pure IPA, cotton balls and buds. But that won’t get inside a DIN or HDMI plug. For those, you just have to do something like in in-out 20 times cycle once in a blue moon.
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If you go for a full strip, does anyone get all the cables back in the right place first time?
I know that i dont !
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That’s not an issue for me. I have color dots on my Burndies at the top of the terminator, so I know which PSU they belong to and how to orient them. Everything else is straightforward for me: turntable phono cables, one DIN 4-5, one DIN 5-5, two DIN-XLR, two NACA5 speaker cables.
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I’ve never unplugged and replugged cables in over 30 years of Naim ownership - far too much of a faff.
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I cycle my cables every now and then… I center, then pull DIN connectors back 1mm after reinserting. I never use the locking rings. XLR and Banana plugs also get the 1mm pull back. This method was taught to me by Naim USA folks (back when our importer provided world class customer service).
There’s an audible difference.
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Every so often (12-18 months?), I’ll strip down my system and reassemble, including:
- Hoover the black boxes and wipe them down with anti-static cleaner
- Ditto cables
- A bit of furniture polish on the wooden bits of the Fraim
- Clean the 4mm sockets on amp and speakers with cotton buds (first with DeOxit, then with isopropyl)
- Hoover generally and reassemble
- Warm system up with whichever test CD takes my fancy (yes, I’m sorry-not-sorry to report that I have more than one)
To quote one of our previous posters:
Mark
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I’d love a poll that correlates how many people strip down their system and rack every 12 months or less against how many people are retired or have no young kids at home.
I can barely keep up with the washing and the dishes and school runs let alone mucking about with the system.
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Wow, that’s truly dedication. 
I strip down and rebuild both racks every 2 to 3 years or whenever I change a box, whichever comes first. A full rebuild (including cleaning, checking of levels, careful cable dressing, etc.) takes a minimum of 6 hours and is exhausting, so the intervals get wider as I get older. Very worthwhile in terms of sound quality, though. In between, I’ll do less radical checks, such as checking and adjusting the dressing of all the cables I can get to without removing boxes.
Someone recently posted about how much crud they cleaned out of their power amp’s speaker sockets with isopropyl and cotton buds. I haven’t done that in at least 20 years - I rely on 5 or 6 unplug / replugs to wipe the contact area clean - so I’m tempted to add that to my hi-fi housekeeping list.
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That’s an antistatic fluid you shall use only on the cable itself meaning the plastics. Not on the metal connections as far as I know.
The slow build up of static charges is an insidious problem that undermines the performance of all audio and AV systems, flattening perspectives, dulling colors and inhibiting dynamics. Like a lot of problems that are out of sight, for most audio and videophiles, static is also out of mind. We all know it’s there but we either ignore its impact or simply give up on dealing with it as “too difficult.”
Nordost has been aware of this problem for many years, primarily in terms of the surface affects of static build up on cable performance. To combat this, we developed Eco 3X anti static treatment, a fluid that can be wiped on the surface of cables to disperse existing static charge as well as inhibit future accumulation. The effects are easily heard, with a dramatic increase in the sense of life and presence, greater transparency, wider dynamics and richer colors.
However, the benefits of static dispersal aren’t limited to cable performance. Plastics in general (laminate surf aces on shelves, acrylics, plastic cones on drive units) all benefit from the application of Eco 3X. TV and computer screens deliver sharper definition, better color saturation and increased depth. But our favorite application is on optical media; CD, SACD, DVD and BluRay discs are all significantly improved by the application of Eco 3X. This is one of the easiest and also one of the most effective demonstrations we have found, one that really shows just how indispensable Eco 3X is in any high performance audio or AV system.
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