Naim's new power lead - addressing the controversy

[Mike Reed]

Apropos your comment on a/v cables, MARCO, although I don't have an a/v set-up as such (TV through the stereo system), the ENORMOUS difference I recently experienced when I substituted a 'normal' scart with a Monster Video 3 from digibox to TV was hard to believe.

There is no doubt in my doubter's mind now that digital pictures, at least through Sony freeview, are vastly superior to terrestial analogue.

OF COURSE cables make a difference: ALL types of cables. AND audio will surely always be a bit of a black art.

Nice little joke, CHRIS. Heard it before, but none the worse for the re-telling!

[Chris Frost]

All is relative, obviously it is a lot of money for a cable, but if you have kit in the same range, then it may be justifiable...

I still don't get it. I thought we were listening to music through a system, not a collection of disparate boxes.

Someone else posted that the difference was as big as going from passive to active but at a fraction of the cost. Now that sounds like a really big improvement for very little money! Should we really care if it's a cable that makes this difference? In the context of a system it really shouldn't matter, right?

It doesn't make sense to me that some folk consider it OK to spend £4000* going active because you get a big pile of boxes, but it's not OK to get the same sonic benefit by spending £400 because "it's just a cable". That's just trophy'ism.

* I don't know Naim prices so £4K is just a random figure

[Marco]

Mike,

Apropos your comment on a/v cables, MARCO, although I don't have an a/v set-up as such (TV through the stereo system), the ENORMOUS difference I recently experienced when I substituted a 'normal' scart with a Monster Video 3 from digibox to TV was hard to believe.

There is no doubt in my doubter's mind now that digital pictures, at least through Sony freeview, are vastly superior to terrestial analogue.

OF COURSE cables make a difference: ALL types of cables. AND audio will surely always be a bit of a black art.

Nice little joke, CHRIS. Heard it before, but none the worse for the re-telling!

I agree. I enjoyed Chris' little tale and it is certainly pertinent to the discussion.

I think Steve's observation is also very valid:

Scepticism is certainly reasonable when a particular cable may cost thousands, but not when it 'only' costs £400 and compares very well in terms of magnitude of improvement in resolution with the going-active option in terms of amplification, that does actually cost thousands - an extra NAP 300 and an active X-over box.

This is the point I've been making, and it's something perhaps Rob has missed or not quite grasped in our discussion earlier - YES, £400 for a mains lead *is* a lot of money, there is no question about that, but if it makes a similar (or better) improvement in a system to that of a box, or series of boxes, costing many times more, then surely it is by that definition not expensive and indeed in comparison could be considered a 'bargain'?

Of course by "bargain" I mean the level of sonic upgrade achieved in terms of sound-per-pound value, not that a £400 mains lead could ever be considered a 'bargain' in the true sense of the word

In terms of Naim users the point I was making was that to my ears (and Steve's) the improvement the Powerline (yes that's what it is called) made to the demo system was (almost) as significant as that obtained by spending thousands of pounds on another NAP300 and a SNAXO. *That* is what people criticising Naim's introduction of a £400 mains lead have to get their heads around.

I've always maintained (and experience confirms this) that the only way to obtain a truly musical and sonically rewarding hi-fi system is to start from the ground up and provide a well-sorted 'foundation' from which the system operates, so in terms of order of priority it is therefore thus:

MAINS > CABLES > STANDS > EQUIPMENT.

No other method in my experience gives satisfactory results. If you ignore the system's 'foundation' and spend all your money on boxes the full potential of the equipment will never be realised, nor likely therefore long term musical satisfaction achieved. It's no coincidence that people who attend effectively to the 'foundation' of their systems change equipment less often and probably buy and enjoy more music in the process. It doesn't take a genius to work out why...

Marco.

[Mr Ed]

Larry, pretending to be Ed

Congratulations on maintaining a reasoned, and reasonable debate on a forum!

Larry

[Steve Toy]

Congratulations on maintaining a reasoned, and reasonable debate on a forum!

I hope there is and will be more than one such reasoned and reasonable debate on this forum.

Thanks.

[Marco]

It doesn't make sense to me that some folk consider it OK to spend £4000* going active because you get a big pile of boxes, but it's not OK to get the same sonic benefit by spending £400 because "it's just a cable". That's just trophy'ism.

Spot on, Chris. But then you're dealing with 'audiophiles' who in many cases cherish the possession of a shiny new box more than the ultimate enjoyment of music

You can't 'show off' a new mains lead to your non-hi-fi loving friends and colleagues, well at least not without getting some very strange looks!

And for many, unfortunately, therein lays the crux of the matter.

Marco.

[Chris Frost]

A simple test would be to hook up an AV system with 'bog standard' mains cables supplied with the equipment and play a section of a movie with the system set-up that way, observing the picture quality by judging the relevant parameters,

It's funny you say that. I did a little experiment with some HDMI cables over at the AW last week.

For those who don't know, HDMI is a digital interconnect, so the theory is that it's 0's and 1's and hence cable can't make a difference. To test this I brought a 1080p LCD in to the shop (Plannar 37", nice set) and a cheap 5m HDMI cable (about £40). We hooked up a Loewe Bluray player and had a look at video.

Our test was a cheap 5m HDMI vs a 2m mid-market HDMI (£60) vs a 2m high-end HDMI by MIT (Approx £200- Ed at AW can confirm exact pricing).

Everyone viewing agreed with the results. The cheap and mid-market cables looked reasonably similar with bright daylight scenes; colours slightly better defined on the mid cable. Dark scenes show a slightly bigger difference. A fraction less noise on the mid-m cable. Conclusion so far - better but not significantly so. Now on the the MIT.

This was a night and day difference. The MIT help bright scenes to look cleaner, clearer, with better colour fidelity and improved detail; but it was the dark scenes where the biggest differences were apparent.

The noise floor fell dramatically. Shadowy scenes that exhibited blue speckley video noise with the two previous cables looked so much cleaner. Edge definition improved as did colour fidelity and shadow detail. Conclusion - the MIT appeared to be allowing the 0's and 1's to get through better - Impossible I know, but no-one told bees they can't fly either.

From my limited knowledge of digital audio recording I understand that that medium works best when handling a signal recorded at the maximum signal level. Low level signals exhibit worse distortion - the exact opposite of analogue. The same appear to be happening with digital video.

Bright scenes are like loud music passages. Dark scenes are like quite ones.

Perhaps using a better HDMI cable means that the decoding circuitry at the display end is having an easier time. Certainly the results from the MIT cable would seem to support that.

[Mr Ed]

Larry again

Chris, I do think analogue signals are affected in the same way. If there is a fixed noise level on a cable (induced by surroundings, cable integrity etc) a low level analogue signal will be swamped. One of the first things to emerge as 'detail' when a better analogue cable is inserted is ambient information - ie the acoustic environment in which a recording was made. This is just the same low level detail emerging out of noise as you saw in your A/V test.

Just for the record, no, ambient information is not an important part of the musical performance, but just as much genuine musical information is lost in the noise.

[Chris Frost]

Hi Larry,

I haven't really described it that well, but there's some property of digital recording that its resolution improves as the dynamic range of the signal increases. It's like the THD falls to zero at the signal saturation level for digital, whereas the THD increase in an analogue recording. This is different to S/N.

It's all a bit vague I know. I should really try to find some sort of article on this, but it's perhaps a little OT for this thread.

Regards

[Steve Toy]

but it's perhaps a little OT for this thread.

Not at all.