20 amp dedicated lines

Are the amps new? If so, I would either try another amplifier or let the JC's warm up for a few days and see if there's a difference. The JC's takes a while to settle in. If it's not the amps, it may range from something trivial like out of phase wiring to a bad tube. You also can't rule out improper application of acoustic treatments.

But I think Kal is closest - room response from speaker placement vis-a-vis listening position. Try a Radio Shack SPL meter with something like the Stereophile Test CD on your setup. Take one reading from the listening position and one reading a foot away from each speaker. If there's a marked difference, it would point to room response.

Dedicated circuits are not going to cure what you describe. Long cables may become a problem if the amp has a too low damping factor (which the JC don't). A call to Vanderstein wouldn't be a bad idea, either, if all else fails.

I'm no expert but I'd be shocked if the problem you describe would in any way be ameliorated by 20 amp feeds. Vandys are not lean in nature and Cardas is the antithesis of lean/thin sounding. Is there any chance your subs are hooked up out of phase causing some weird frequency anomalies?

I use a braided six foot run of the Anti Cable and have used 8 feet of Monster Sigma 2 and 10 foot of Monster M1. I wound say up to eight feet but remember do your homework because some cables travel better than others. I wish I could tell you one length is better than another but I used three different speaker cables.

I'll weigh in on the side of eliminating your long speaker runs. It was actually Richard Vandersteen who convinced me to switch to longer interconnects, and shorter speaker cables. He said, "we're talking over a long interconnect now, aren't we?" This was the phone line, of course. The problem is the long speaker cables. No amp can keep a handle on damping over a 35 ft run...

David

Ultra short speaker cables are only a benefit when the speaker cables themselves are of a poor design / implimentation and / or the run is simply WAY too long. Since most all speaker cables are of a poor design / implimentation, those factors are only compounded as line length is increased.

This is why most people notice a big improvement by going to shorter speaker cables, as they've reduced the amount of influence that the shoddy speaker cables have on what they are hearing. This could be avoided by simply using properly designed speaker cables of reasonable length.

There's more series resistance / signal loss in the crossover circuit of ANY passive speaker than there is most any "reasonable" audiophile grade speaker cable. This does not include esoteric small gauge speaker cables since they are inadequately designed to start with.

Having said that, 35 foot is too long for any type of signal to travel with good fidelity, be it line level or amplifier level. Running gear and cabling in "balanced" mode can reduce some of these drawbacks, but even then, you're subject to the degradation and sonic signature of that specific long run of cable.

I would start looking at speaker placement / crossover settings. I'm assuming that you are running Zobel's since you are using the Goertz speaker cables. Even with the Zobel's, using this length of those specific speaker cables may be playing havoc with the amp. This is a high negative feedback design and the low impedance / wide bandwidth of the Goertz cabling may be playing with it. Substituting some higher inductance cabling may resolve the tonal balance problem of this installation, but doing so may introduce another fly into the ointment.

Since Vandersteen's are only difficult to drive in the treble region, hence their notoriety for sounding "soft", i sincerely doubt that a low loss ultra-wide bandwidth speaker cable is introducing the "lean" characteristic that is being encountered.

As to the effects that the AQ Cheetah has on your system, it sounds like the effects that Nordost speaker cabling has in most systems. Very quick, sharp and open sounding, but it doesn't resemble music to me at all. It is "audiophile" in a "hi-fi" sort of way, not in a "music lover" sort of way. More "flash" than actual "substance". Do you want "hi-fi effects" or "music" from your system? Sean
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PS... Longer speaker cables actually improve the "damping" that the amp sees, as it increases the difference in output impedance vs the load impedance. A longer run of speaker cabling can actually increase fidelity / system performance if the amp is not up to the task of dealing with a highly reactive speaker load. Besides the higher series resistance and increase in impedance, you've also got higher line loss. This helps to damp the reflected EMF that the reactive speaker generates once excited.

Damping and Damping Factor are very mis-used and misunderstood terms to say the least.