Can I Extend My Room Correction Microphone Cable
You’ve got yourself a pretty cool setup. Your equipment (AV receiver, disc players, game systems, and other devices) are all tucked away out of sight. Perhaps they are even in another room. Regardless, you’ve got that “clean” room everyone is always going on about. Lucky you! Unfortunately, you’ve run into a bit of a snag. You want to run your room correction but the included microphone has a cable that is way too short. That’s a problem. Moving the AV receiver isn’t really an option. Can you extend the microphone cable so that you can run your room correction program? Let’s discuss!
Short Answer
The short answer is Yes! Most (if not all) room correction measurement microphones use a 3.5mm connection. You can get an extension cable with a female connection at one end and a male at the other. You are looking for a MONO cable as the mic is not sending stereo information. That said, people have reported using stereo extenders and having success.
Long Answer
Many of the main room correction program staff have not explicitly stated that you can use an extension cable with their calibration microphones. Audyssey is the only one we could find that gave some advice (here). Their response indicates that increasing the length of the cable with an extender attenuates the high-frequency measurements. Basically, up near the top end of human hearing (20kHz), the mic will measure lower than the speaker is actually playing. This can affect your room correction output.
Their recommendation is that you use an extension cable that will increase the TOTAL length of your room correction microphone cable to no more than 50 feet. As the Audyssey mic is already 25 feet, this allows for up to an additional 25 feet of extension. At least for Audyssey, we know how much you can extend the cable. It is probably safe to assume that you can do the same with the other room correction programs.
But, I Read…
It will take you meer moments to find reports of people using much longer microphone extension cables with their room correction programs with success. When they claim that “it worked just fine” remember that what they mean is that the room correction did not fail to complete the process. That is not the same as the room correction program running accurately.
The longer the extension you use, the more frequencies that will be attenuated and the more they will be affected. At a total of 50 feet, Audyssey has ascertained that any measurement errors will be small enough not to affect the overall performance of their program. Beyond that, your room correction program will start to boost the higher frequencies enough that they deem it unacceptable.
Audyssey recommends moving your AV receiver closer so that you can run the program with the included mic or with an extension of the appropriate length. If that is not possible, of course you can use a longer extension cable, but you risk overly boosted high frequencies.
