Interconnect advice needed

@simna Lots of good posts here that should point you in the right direction.

I’d like to comment briefly on your statement:

"I’ve just bought Klipsch Heresy IV and I don’t want the cable to emphase the midrange bump in these speakers even more."

The Heresys will measure ruler flat in an anechoic chamber. No midrange bump "engineered" in. The response is measured using an industry standard 1 watt @ 1 meter reference. Place these in a listening space with real amplification and results may vary. The midrange "push" or emphasis can be caused by many factors, including the room. The Heresys are quite revealing and unforgiving of "warts" present elsewhere in the signal path. So, yes, interconnects matter.

The Heresys like all speakers are imperfect and have errors of both commission and ommission. They make sounds they shouldn’t and filter out information that would be nice to hear. To be specific related to acts of commission, Klipsch horn bodies have a tendency to set up symphathetic resonances with other vibrating objects in the speakers. So they, themselves, become "involuntary" transducers making sounds that are not part of the original signal. The midrange horn body shares a cabinet space with the woofer thus mimicing the lower midrange signals. The body is also directly coupled to the midrange driver and "sings along" thru a portion of the midrange & upper midrange as well. Same is true for the tweeter although woofer vibrations are below the resonant frequencies of the horn body. This added energy generates in-phase out-of-phase signals in concert with the drivers, thus emphasizing or sucking out certain frequencies. The louder the signal the more pronouced this phenominon. These "rogue" signals get bounced around the room like "ordinary" signals making matters worse, so room acoustics come further into play. Focus, detail and spacial information also suffer.

I’d highly recommend that you apply some quality dampening material to the back side of the horn bodies. For an investment of less than $20, it will offer the best bang for the buck you can do to calm down the midrange and smooth out the highs. The Heresys willl probably never sound like polite British monitors, but you can have high efficiency AND linear response -- with a little work.

@simna

Toeing out the speakers seems like good advice.

Dynamat makes some good material that you can purchase in sheets. Just slice out what you need with a carton knife, remove the backing and stick them on. Literally takes 10 minutes per driver.

The Klipsch drivers are held in with machine screws. So, they can be removed and retightened with zero risk of damaging the cabinet or the fasteners. The midrange horn is pretty bulky, so I’d have a friend near by to support them. IF you feel the need to remove the assembly from the cabinet, there will likely be push in connectors for the speaker wires. No tools (or, special skill) required.

Your amp setup may be the perfect companion to your Heresys. Well played.

Best of luck to you. Looks like you’ve made some good choices. Enjoy.

@simna 

Sorry the speaker toe in/out did not work well for you.  I believe it was someone else who made this suggestion.

" I read on another forum a post from a guy having the same problem. He got the advice to experiment with toe out."

I thought was a reasonable solution to try in that it was a) cheap (free), b) not difficult to impliment, c) low risk of breaking something, and d) you can easily revert to prior state if not happy with the result.

I'm still sticking with my original suggestion to dampen the horn bodies.  

I would also suggest that if you can borrow or rent cables, try something above your comfort level as a reference.  You may find they are not worth the extra investment -- and return them. Or, you may discover they're the best thing to ever happen to your system, fork over the cash/credit card, or put them on your list of future upgrades.

Just remember that Heresys will definitely will let you how they feel about any changes you make -- good or bad.

Best of luck with this.

John