New Toys AND Possibly 1st Proof of IC Effect!

I recently purchased the Omnimic V2 speaker response calibrated mic system from PartsExpress ($300 on sale with free tripod...and free shipping...). Also bought their neat little DATS system "black box" speaker impedance/measurement/plotter thingy plus software ($100). Both these are great new toys! Been using the Omnimic system to measure my AOS (spherical) speakers.

I was curious if the fact that I was using 8 meter "lesser quality" (due to high cost of "better quality" 8 meter) interconnects was causing some of the LF "hump" and apparent lesser HF response of the AOS's vs the EPI 1000's (that are in my family room right next to the preamp/source and thus use "better quality" 1 meter AudioQuest Black Mamba IC's). So I dragged one the AOS speakers into the family room and hooked it up there). The results were yes, at least part of the LF "hump" and ALL of the HF lesser response was due to the 8 meter IC's! (see enclosed bottom plot pink vs blue or yellow lines). I'm using the EPI 1000's response as a sort of "baseline".... The AOS's using the same system wires are a lot closer to this "baseline" then when they use the longer, lesser quality 8 meter IC's.

The effect of "more fill" on the AOS's response was nil.....see top plot (yellow vs dark blue line). Note that both AOS-I (and II..) and AOS-III have the LF "hump" and crappy extreme HF response...so this cannot be driver related since one uses 6.5" and 1" EPI and the other uses 8" and 1" PRO drivers. But when I use the better quality 1 meter Black Mamba's on AOS, these effects go away (mostly for the LF "hump" and totally for the extreme HF response).

This being the case, I will most likely spring for the 8 meter Black Mamba's as the "feed line" IC's to the AOS speakers in the living room system.... These plots seem to be very strong evidence that IC's DO make a difference...AFAIK, this is the 1st time I've seen this kind of actual "proof" posted on this forum!

AOS_Compares (Medium).jpg (84.52 KiB) Viewed 162 times

add: Also, it could be coincidence, but the LF "hump" from when using the 8 meter IC's is almost exactly at 60 Hz.....since they go thru the wall between my FR and LR, they COULD be running close to an AC romex power cable and "picking up" some 60 Hz effect from THAT??

Well Ed, I have not ever been a measurement type of guy as I rely on my ears. If you have followed my journey of IC's, you will see that what I have written about over the years only confirms what you have in the graph you posted....and vice-versa. AFAIK, you are correct in the no posts have been made with proof of any IC being proven by measurements to have made a difference but I do know of a couple of links that have been posted that did have the same proof you have provided for us here today.

I applaud your efforts, Ed.

Tom

26.4 feet is a helluva long run for interconnects. Personally, I'd try to find a way to reduce that...by a lot!.

add: Also, it could be coincidence, but the LF "hump" from when using the 8 meter IC's is almost exactly at 60 Hz.....since they go thru the wall between my FR and LR, they COULD be running close to an AC romex power cable and "picking up" some 60 Hz effect from THAT??

I don't believe that's a coincidence.

"26.4 feet is a helluva long run for interconnects."

That's the price I'm paying (re my living room system/music) for the convenience of having a single common source for all my (house) music. 300 CD/DAC/Preamp is in my family room; from that I feed both the TFM-42 (via 1 meter Audioquest King Cobra's) there and the 300x2 in the living room via these long IC's (which say Audioquest on the connectors but say "Audio Advisor" on the tags along with "hand made by randy" - they are Black Mamba II's, I believe. Don't remember what I paid for these, but it was a lot less than what the 8 meter King Cobra's go for..). If I upgrade them and this issue still persists, I'll probably just live with it mainly because I do most of my "critical" listening from the family room system anyway.

Gary: don't see in the measured response plots that "treble hump" (at x hz?) you claimed to have heard in the EPI 1000's....the whole HF range is a couple of db above the LF range, but that kind of variation is not really discernable (i.e., try A-B equalizing down the treble in your system by 1-2 db and see if you can tell...).

Thanks for any/all the feedback...will definitly look into the 60 Hz thing! - Ed

edit: just for the record (no other) and since I'm doing a comparison and plotting results, the above 1st post is wrongly labeled as to which Audioquest IC's I'm comparing (1M vs 8M). I THOUGHT my 1M's were "Black Mamba"; they are in fact "King Cobra". I thought the 8M were Audioquest "no names" or "Audio Advisor"; they are in fact "Black Mamba II's" (from Audio Advisor). But same logic applies: the 1M King Cobra's are the "better quality" vs the "lesser quality" 8M Black Mamba II's. Which brings me to this request (to TM): Is it possible to please INCREASE the character count of our signatures a bit? I had all these system details in it at one time but when I went to add some stuff to it, I had to delete a bunch of "details" so everything would fit in the character limit. Maybe increase it ~50%. It's important to have a record of our systems so when we do "tweaks" and such like we all do that we can accurately report what components are involved.... No biggie, but a few extra storage bytes should not break the bank... Thanks!