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Naim anomalies!?

OK, so I am a Brit living here in Saint Louis and I love the better English Hi Fi stuff, but I do find some of the things that some of my compatriots do a little bit queer. I just purchased a Naim Uniti 2b all in one component from here on Audiogon. It's a lovely bit of kit, but has some very strange quirks. I wonder what what are other users experiences with Naim have been like and here are my issues which all centre around the speaker outputs. Firstly, they put in large letters on the back of the unit, WARNING: Do not replace supplied loud speaker plugs with individual 4mm plugs. The speaker plugs supplied, are a pretty fiddly tandem affair, that have to have the speaker cables soldered into them. I took them to (an established for 40 years) Hi Fi repair shop and none of their 4 technicians had ever seen anything like them. Furthermore they were reluctant to solder them, without me agreeing that they wouldn't be liable if the plastic cases melted during soldering. I called the Naim H.O. in England and they said that I could use any decent 4mm plugs but to be sure that they never touched (Doh!) I then asked why them why Naim put their right speaker outlets on the left side of the unit and the left side outlets on the right of the unit? Obviously, they are reverse of that when looking at the back, but not from the front. I told them that this seemed illogical because the speaker cables had to cross each other at the back of the unit. Nobody there that I spoke to, could explain why they'd done this. All a bit queer indeed! However, what a fabulous sounding unit it is. 
willsie
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,826 posts
 

OP we are Naim dealers and you can use any good speaker cable with banana plugs you certainly don't need to use Naim's cheapie banana plug adapters.

The reason Naim wants you to use their Cables is that the Naim amplifiers are looking for a certain amount of inductance.

We sell adapters made by Wireworld which plug into the bananna jacks of the Naim amplifier and then you plug your cables into these adapters and now you can upgrade the sound dramatically by using higher quality Wireworld speaker cables.

The Naim gear on better speaker cables will shock you how much better the sound quality can be, also in many instances you won't need these adapters at all.

Dave and Troy

Audio Doctor Naim dealers

cd318
2,636 posts
 
Some of us can still remember the days when Naim (along with Linn) used to proclaim that imagery and tonality didn't really matter and that punch and timing was the thing. I guess that was their USP back in the day.

Most of their amp connectors were irregular - from the Snaic pre/power lead, the DIN/BNC connectors to the horrendously unwieldy NAC A4 speaker cable.

They also used to have an infamous aversion to RCAs, not sure if that still holds. Was a real pain to get turntable arm cable fitted with BNCs for what ultimately proved to be no good reason.

It was a peculiar approach, but it worked for them as it now works for Apple.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Let's just say, there's a reason "Genuine British Crapsmanship" is a thing.

But, the wires don't have to cross in back. What you do to avoid this, simply reverse L/R on all your inputs. Naim would have thought of this, except being British and all..... as Churchill would say, keep buggering on! Cheerio!

(I learned this trick from Definitive, where the Mark Levinson amps they sold, between the thickness of the posts and the thickness of the cables and the oppositeness of the sides were just about impossible to wire correctly. So they wired em opposite. Don't suppose Levinson was a Brit do you?)


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