I have decided that it is time to move slowly from an Old Classic system to a New Classic one.
The first step of that journey is to replace my NDX plus XPS2 with a NSS333 plus NPS300.
I have a HiLine that has fallen apart so I thought to replace this with something from Chord. My dealer asked Chord for their idea of the best cable from NSS333 to NAC282 and they have suggested a nXLR to DIN. I would have expected DIN to DIN.
Has anyone any thoughts or experience about this?
I know the hi line can be frustrating but Naim will rebuild it for you. Others are better placed to answer the XLR aspect.
@Bananahead I’m using a DIN cable from my 332 to 333. Chord SarumT.
I have a similar situation where I am connecting a fully balanced Boulder phono-stage to a 252.
I decided to get a set of Siltech balanced cables, and use pigtail adapters (female XLR - male RCA) into the RCA AUX2 input on the 252. That works great and has future-proofed me on an expensive cable whenever I change to a balanced preamp.
Boulder is making me a set of nice adapters, but in the meantime I got a cheap set from Amazon.
As a warning all the adapters out there short Pin 3 to Pin 1. That’s more for pro equipment that need to unbalance connections but for hifi gear you almost always want Pin 3 open. It’s not a big deal to open the XLR connectors and snip the short to open it.
These are about 6” long, and solve the problem for XLR barrel adapters that the 282/252 RCA inputs are too close together.
I believe that Naim still recommend DIN cables when connecting NSS333 to NAC332. It follows that this would also be their recommendation when connecting NSS333 to OC preamps.
I’d start off with a 332/333 pairing rather than an NPX. My experience connecting the former is that a cheap balanced XLR (Mogami) was very very good. It took a Super Lumina din-din to knock the latter off its perch.
G
I would go for DIN to DIN, it will also sound good if you later on swap the 282 for 332. You will get a lavender Naim DIN to DIN cable with either the NDX2 or NSS333. It will keep you going until the hiline is repaired.
I second the opinion: Get the rebuild!
Yes if I lived in the UK it would be obvious.
Thanks everyone.
This was asked on the original NC200 thread. On that thread Steve Sells expressed that they firmly believed unbalanced DIN to still be superior for source to preamp connections and this was unchanged as true on NC as it was on OC and Statement.
Remember, unbalanced is a simpler more direct circuit than balanced.
Just bear in mind there is no universal source of truth. There are products out there with poor balanced implementations and products be excellent ones or even unbalanced treated like a second class connection where even short 50cm balanced connections will be better. So the preference for unbalanced DIN between source and preamp is, in this case, specific to Naim. If your deal will lend you both cables, you could test and determine whether you agree with Naim (not all forum members did).
