Are 'Monster' Cables Worth It?

Digitarius asks: "Are "Monster" cables really better, or are they just more expensive? I'm setting up my HDTV, and I can get Component video cables made by Belkin for half the price of the Monster cable equivalents. Are there any actual stats or studies to back up Monster's claims of superiority? So far most people tell me to get the Monster cables, 'just to be sure,' but what's the real truth?"

Comments

use any old thing

[Mr.Coffee]

unless you're looking at a significant length cable run (25 feet or more), i highly doubt you'll notice any difference at all, even between regular patch cords and a "component video" set of cables (which are three patch cords bound together). i have used monster cable speaker cables and signal cables, and you'll not notice a large difference using plain lamp cord and regular cables. as far as component video is concerned, you'll want to make sure the three cables are as similar as possible, and i recommend true coax, with the proper resistance bnc terminated ends (52 ohm i believe). for rca component video, 75 ohm coax terminated in rca plugs works very well, a friend of mine pointed out that for analog audio, this setup works well. for both situations, the components being connected seem to appreciate the higher resistance cable. it helps to curb noise.

either way, unless you're looking at a long run of cables, pretty much anything will do well. and for digital audio, it dosen't matter what the cable is, if it'll pass the signal, it'll work, (there's no signal loss with digital connecitons)

all that being said, monster cables sure are purty... i like purty cables...

Re:use any old thing

[linzeal]

I have had good luck with Trip-Lite cables, including a beyond the norm 20 foot s-video cable made up of two 10' and a male to male connector.

When I worked at Fry's electronics an old AV guy told me the best way to tell which is the better cable is to setup a simple graph with price on y axis and the weight per same length on the x axis. He carried one around and usually monster was only 20-30% heavier than the best deals but was at least 100% more expensive.

Electrons no different

[jgardn]

As a physicist, I can tell you there are two important qualities for the wires, both of which won't affect the sound quality. Those two factors is how well the wires connect to the posts, and how well the wires transmit the signal.

If there were some frequency dependencies, then you would see a degradation of sound. But there isn't. If there were some variability of resistance based on current, then there would be a degradation of sound. But there isn't.

The only benefit your get from monster cables is a perhaps slightly lower resistance. That is all. The higher resistance of standard wires can easily be overcome by "turning up the volume".

So, Monster Cables are not worth it, strictly speaking. The only reason people get Monster Cables is the same reason people get gold-plated pens. Other than a status symbol, it is meaningless.

And besides, people who sport jewelry or expensive toys tend to be poorer than those who are more modest. (Case in point: It seems these spinners people buy for their cars are bought by the lower class in my town. Where they get the money for this, yet can't pay for their children's college education, is a question I don't think they'd want to answer.)

Re:Electrons no different

[ctr2sprt]

As someone who does a fair bit of plugging together home electronics equipment, it's also important to get quality connectors and shielding.

The former is important because you will need to unplug those bastards occasionally, and I have some Radio Shack cables that I have to disconnect with a wrench and significant amounts of muscle. I'm concerned about literally breaking the connector from the amount of force I have to apply. From the other direction, if they come off too easily you will have to tape them to the TV or something, which doesn't impair signal quality but is annoying.

The latter is important not because of interference or anything, but because stuff will happen to the cables. You'll vacuum it, your pets will chew on it, you'll get crap on it, etc. It's a pain in the ass to get behind your TV to replace frayed or broken cables, so you should try to minimize it.

Note that neither of these considerations imply that you should buy Monster cables, just that you should avoid the extremely inexpensive (read: cheap) ones. So instead of buying the $30 Monster cables or the $5 generic cables, buy the $15 name-brand-but-not-Monster cables. Belkin seems like a pretty good target for that, and you could in fact do better if you find a place that lets you return cables. (You obviously have to open up the package to try them out, and some places don't want to take them back after you do that.)

I do always laugh when I see the rusted-out '85 Honda Civic with the brand new shiny 20" rims and chrome exhaust tips. "You just spent $2500 on mods, and a Civic is the best you can do?"

Re:Electrons no different

[Bastian]

It is worth pointing out that some of the physcal phenomena that Monster babbles about when talking up their cables do exist. For example, the skin effect can affect the quality of analog signals being transmitted across a stereo cable. . . in the megahertz range.

But I think the two big things you really need to know about Monster Cable in order to make an informed decision about whether it is worth it have nothing to do with physics. The two things you need to know are:
1. Recording and video studios don't tend to use Monster Cable.
2. The wire you find inside your speakers look a whole lot more like cheap $3 a spool bargain bin wire than they do Monster Cable.

Re:Electrons no different

[James McTavish]

I noticed another electrical engineer responded to this as well, and already explained that the skin effect kicking in at 100KHz is dead wrong. I did my masters in RF engineering, and I had access to very expensive cable testing equipment (It was actually a system designed to test just about anything including amplifiers, but you could use it to test cable). Another grad student was wiring his house, and was pondering the same question, so we put the cables on the machine.

The Monstster cables did much better, but above 100MHz, way above anything you could ever hear. We tested 16 gauge lamp cord (YES LAMP CORD). It's spectrum was perfectly flat to within 0.1dB out to in excess of 10MHz. This FAR exceeds the 0.02MHz the human ear can hear. For audio purposes, it will work just FINE. As for shelding, the frequencies that you will pick up from that stretch of cable won't be audible. And if you're paranoid, stick an RF choke coil on your cord (you can get them at Radio Shack. You just wrap the cord through it). Those don't kick in until about 50+KHz anyway.

Video is a different ball of wax though since it deals with much higher frequencies. But after testing several cables, the mid-range stuff was not much different than the high end stuff in the area that counts (below 100MHz). The cheap stuff did start to have some attenuation issues above 10Mhz, but even then it wasn't that severe (1dB or less upto 50+Mhz). However in the higher frequencies, you have to worry about sheilding a little more as the frequencies that it will pick up via radiation could be visible. But any properly grounded coaxial cable will eliminate that.

As for ecording engineers, they are obsessive, but they aren't stupid enough to use straight cable. They use the same priciple as ethernet and twisted pair communications. They transmit the signal and the inverse of the signal and run them side by side. If one side picks up interference, the other side will too. But when you take the difference between the cables, it will remain exactly the same.

Tests between brands with pictures

[rask22]

Firingsquad did a test between different brands and different types (rca vs svideo). The results where pretty interesting:

http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/ps2picture/

Monster Cables and other Audiophile rubbish

[Schezar]

Monster Cables are a giant scam designed to relieve gullible people of their money. Double-blind testing has shown time and time again that you can not physically perceive the difference.

There is a huge industry around selling useless crap to people. Monster cables will give you about the same results as rocks. (Yes, people buy those rocks and yes, they think they make their stereos sound better.)

I highly recommend that you check out the James Randi Educational Foundation, and do a site search for "audiophile" or the like.

Frankly, I don't know what scares me more: the fact that someone will honestly claim that a magic rock will make music sound better, or the fact that people will pay good money for one...

On this subject...

[PhyrePhox]

I was recently shopping for a DVI cable for my HDTV, and was blown away by the US$80 AND UP prices I was finding around town. 80 bucks for a bloody 1 meter cable!?!? Thankfully, someone pointed me to http://www.pacificcable.com/ and I found a 1 meter DVI-I Dual Link for $22. (I am not affiliated, just a satisfied customer)
The Monster-type cables are the profit center for the A/V stores. They have to compete for pricing on the actual gear, where they may get less than 10% markup from their cost. On cables and accessories, they can get up to 40% or more. There is no way that one cable is better than the other, provided the connectors make good contact at the jack. Don't waste your money.

Signal quality is not all that matters....

[Welshalian]

.... solidity and good build quality matter just as well. Especially for musicians - as a guitar player, I've lost count of how many times I've tripped on a cheap cable, only to find out I'd ripped one end off or something. Good build quality is something I've paid for in the past and got my money's worth for.

Good read on Skin Effect

[bill_mcgonigle]

For the physics inclined, have a read here about skin effect in audio cables.

The basic idea is that electrons ride the outside of a conductor, not equally through its cross-section. The depth of the 'skin' depends on frequency. You might think that stranded cable would do better then, since there's more surface area, but because the strands aren't insulated they act as a single conductor, providing no skin-effect benefit. There is an exception, cables of 'Litz' construction, where each conductor is individually insulated, creating a virtual cable of effective diameter without skin effect.

My take-away from the linked article is that skin effect does have a slight effect on sound quality that can be measured and possibly perceived. Swinging back to the topic, Monster does make a Litz speaker cable, but it runs you $1500 per 3-foot cable - this isn't Best-Buy level Monster cable. A Google search on Litz at monstercable.com only provides two hits, both 3rd-party write-ups.

So to achieve top theoretical sound quality, assuming good connections, etc., you can buy thousands of dollars worth of top-quality Monster cables or cheap cables with fat conductors. If gauge and weight are far more important than cost, say on a Space Shuttle or similar, then dropping $10K on speaker cable might be worthwhile.

This all has me wondering of anybody here has used 10-gauge Romex as speaker cable.

Re:NO

[alienw]

Let's clear up a few myths. First, there is no such thing as a digital signal. It's an analog signal which encodes digital information. Wrong impedances can cause bad things to happen (such as some of the bits getting corrupted). Depending on the protocol used, this can be very significant.

SPDIF is a horrible protocol that is sensitive to cables and almost anything else. Though it's nominally a digital signal, it's multiplexed with the system clock (which is as analog as it gets). If your cable distorts the signal (it almost certainly does), the system clock will be jittery and this will cause distortion. On a decent system, this can be audible.

Analog signals are a whole different ballgame. If you don't think cables can make a difference, pick up an electromagnetics book. Anything from Wal-mart is probably suboptimal -- even if it looks well-made, it probably isn't.