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New Naim Forum

Hello everyone I recently changed out of a 5 seperate system and decided I wanted a small good integrated amplifier and a new CD player. I sold of all of my gear and started down the Naim rabbit hole. Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad I made the change. I’m now listening to music almost daily again where as my old system would going unplugged for weeks. There was just no emotion. It was overly warm and slow in the uptake. I honestly believe the 13 year old Mark Levinson no.334 amp needed a refresh to keep up with the new Totem Forest Signatures.

So I kept my Oppo Universal Disc Player as it is virtually new and the Totems 3 years old. I was wanting smaller kit with a good integrated amp and a matching CD player. Less cabling to figure out, just simplify my setup.

Enter the Naim Supernait 3. Wow what a beast. I bought the Supernait 3 and had planned on the CD5si CD player. After reading to the Naim forum discussing it with my fantastic dealer I decided against it the Cd5si. I was informed Supernait 3 would out perform the cd5si as the player was a entry level and offered no digital output or power supply upgrades. What to do? I found a nice Naim NDAC.

I’m running the Naim nDAC fully refreshed with new firmware. Man!!.does it sound good. It has 4 optical inputs, 2 RCA and 2 BNC I puts as well as 2 USB ports. Lossless playback and it charges your phone. It’s a digital hub. It has the ability to except an additional outboard power doubling the performance. (See Below)

I use my Oppo as the Transport playing CD’S through the RCA digital out via a Chord Company Signature Super ARAY Digital Coax RCA > BNC to the nDAC.

The nDac also plays a 2 Terabyte External Hard Drive full of FLAC, WAV and lossless files 192 files. It is connected via HDMI from the > Oppo to a HDMI TV Monitor and I have literally thousands of tunes at my fingertips. The Oppo remote populates the files on screen alphabetically, simply point and shoot.

From the nDAC I’m using Naim Super Lumina DIN5-5 cable to the Supernait 3 CD/DIN input. (Is anyone running the Chord Sarum T between their Naim source and preamp?)

Speaker cables are NACA5 / for now but I’m looking for suggestions from this new post for replacements. Any ideas?

The NACA5 hooked to the Totem Forest Signature Speakers. 12 feet!

For now, all power Cables for now are Naim TibiaPlus12 Deep-Cryo power cables except a Voo Doo Cable low noise 10 awg Digital Power on the nDAC. I’m using a Naim Wiremold power strip except the Supernait 3 is plugged directly into the AC.

Next week I’m expecting a Teddy Pardo XPS power supply for the nDac with included Teddy Burndy and a power cable. We’ll see how that shakes things up.

I have my Totems 6 feet center toe to toe and 10 feet to the listening position.

I would really lime some feedback whether your running Naim or not. I’m looking for alternatives that can propell my Naim system.

Thanks -

N

nutty
nutty OP
2,659 posts
 

Hello larryi - Thanks for writing and welcome! The CD 555 is still an amazing CD playback system. Combined with Naim’s superb power supplies, though I’ve never heard the combination I can imagine the results. I like to imagine I have a small taste of the chain with the nDAC in my system however without their top power supplies I’m confident I’m missing tons of musical satisfaction.

You’ve assembled a Very capable system and I do believe that when I change out the Oppo as my transport I’ll be considering The CORE as well. It has all of the features I’m interested in.

"...As far as solid state amps go, I find the Naim gear suffers a bit less from the lifeless quality of most solid state amps when playing at lower volume levels..."

I agree with your statement. I enjoy my system much better at lower listening levels. It easily manages the music. The momentum and Low frequency drive remains evident. The music is simply more enjoyable though the system is quite capable of more than satisfactory higher db levels.

Last weekend I upgraded from a 2 Terabyte Western Digital external hard drive to a 5 Terabyte Seagate. We transferred over 77,000 files. We're adding more files next week. 

Thanks for posting -

N

nutty OP
2,659 posts
 

Wednesday I received new Naim 4 and 5 pin SNAIC’s for the Teddy Pardo TeddyCap SE to compare their performance against the Pardo cables. I'm not disappointed in the Pardo cables but the deal I got on the Naim cables was a steal. I want to keep my system as inclusive to Naim as possible so I bought the cables. I bought the Pardo power supplies simply due to economic reasons. I currently have 45 hours on the cables and I can say without a doubt the two brands sound different. I’m not going to go into detail just yet as my dealer said to give the SNAIC’s 100 hours minimum and better at 150. I’ll update with my conclusions.

nutty OP
2,659 posts
 

I've been listening to great Live Unplugged CD by The Pretenders.

The Isle of View - It's produced very well. Give it a spin. Here's a sample. "I Hurt You"

 

 

Post removed 
nutty OP
2,659 posts
 

The Naim 4 and 5 pin SNAIC’s have well over 120 hours on them and they do have a distinctly different sound than their Teddy Pardo counterparts. I can’t pick a winner just yet as both sets of cables have their positive attributes. I need to play more media through the Naim’s before making any final decisions.

When the XPS and TeddyCap SE originally arrived I only received one Teddy Pardo power cable. Yair stated that they were prototypes and they were simply out of stock and they would send me an additional cable when they went into production for resale. The original cable that came with the XPS had a Hubble 5266C male plug and a C-029 female end. Yair emailed me on Sunday the 23rd asking for my shipping address. I received an upgraded cable on Wednesday the 27th - shipped from Israel. The new cable has been upgraded with Furutech’s FI-50 Stainless steel and carbon fiber male and female plugs. The cable is very substantially made with a nice black mesh covering. The best part is the cable and shipping were both free. The cable is burning in currently and I will do comparisons within my system between existing cables.

 

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