Which Speakers Cable?

Well done for taking the leap of faith!
You maybe benefitting from synergy due to your Kudos Super 20s, nice speakers! :+1:

KS-1 is a very odd cable, tends to challenge everything we believe a speaker cable should and shouldn’t be; chunky and expensive good, cheap thin bell wire bad.

But KS-1 certainly isn’t cheap bell wire, and we can confirm it ain’t chunky either! :thinking:
There are cables out there that better it, but they’re in a completely different league of expenditure. :grinning:

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I use Chord Signature Reference cables. I have these between my SuperNait 3 and PMC Fact 8s very pleased with them.

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Welcome Colin, but I thought your post was by @robert_h!, I wonder why? :blush:

Synchronicity!

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Hi Robert

I hope you are well, though it seems you have been cloned!

The Bristol Hi-Fi Show in February when we met, seems like a lifetime ago now - at least I was able to visit the factory just before lockdown. I’ll probably need to provide a full Body Scan Certificate before they will let me in again!

Best Regards
Geoff

I have just treated myself to some Phantoms from Witch Hat and I have to say I’m mightily impressed from the off. They replaced black Naca 5. The difference is noticeable and I am enjoying them a great deal.

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Chord Music speakers cables

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I am finding the same. So much so that I have taken a day off work to enjoy them after the amps have settled down. Significantly better than NACA5 and great value for money. More detail, refinement and better dynamics.

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Agreed 10 weeks today, seems longer. I’m also missing my daily Salisbury commute.

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An up-vote for Kudos KS-1. Nice balance of detail, bass, clarity, range, and a better match for my system than the QED Supremus that are now relegated.

Considering having jump links made up too…

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I also have the Supremus although on a non Naim system… I think their strongest point is having wide soundstage and refined treble extension… How do you think the Kudos compare ? any part that is lacking compared to Supremus ?

@Tolomeo I found the Supremus was an improvement on my trail of cable trials at the time, had more bass, clarity etc, and are a good cable. Reading this forum got me curious about its capacitance/inductance match for Naim amps, hence the KS-1 test. I don’t know its’ specs but it is a step up in quality all round in my system over the Supremus. I’m sure Supremus with other amps is up there.

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I use Audience AU24 SX. It’s also of the thin and flexible school. It’s also unfortunately rather pricey, but once heard it’s hard to go back.

All of you have recommended several cables instead of the NAC A5 which is too rigid a cable and thank you very much. But the problem is that my NAP 250 is N. 1400 as standard and could fail with different cables.

Take the recommendations you’d consider, and look at their specs. You need low capacitance, NAC A5 is 16pF/m, so at 3.5 meter that will be 56pF. A visual clue is generally that the two conductors are spaced out.

Thank you very much

Apart from low capacitance, it’s more important to get the right inductance. Thats the reason for the 3.5m cable length, the Naim amp output stage needs a minimum load of 3.5uH, (better to have more) & NACA5 has 1uH per meter, so 3.5uH means 3.5 metres.
But finding cable spec is not always easy, the cables with parallel conductor spacing give a clue to being most suitable, but twisted pair cable types won’t damage the amp. The cable types to avoid & have the potential to cause the amp to shut down are the woven, plaited & litz types, these all have exceptionally high capacitance.

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Thanks for clarifying!

Regarding manufacturers not providing specs, simply avoid those would be my advice. Would you buy an amp without a rated power? It’s the most basic of info about any cable, I can’t even think of why they would want to hide those numbers.

To the OP:
If inductance is missing (often only capacitance and resistance are provided), you can calcuate it here: https://www.eeweb.com/tools/parallel-wire-inductance

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Can you give me a practical example with the cables that are on the market which are to be avoided and which are not?

3.5 meters is the minimum as 5 meters seem to be recommended to optimise NACA5.

And is the recommendation to have NACA5 at 5 meters also valid for SL ?