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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?"
it doesn't matter if WE can hear a difference, if you cannot then it is not worth the money for you, even if money is not an issue as you claim.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
When I got into audio I thought all of these things mattered, but I slowly realized that I couldn't tell the difference. Much like I can't tell the difference between a diamond with E color and F color. 12 years ago back a company introduced a cable that somehow carried different frequencies at different rates or some other similar magic - I really can't remember. A friend of mine swore he could tell a difference, I couldn't. He dropped hundreds on the cables, I didn't.
Visit one of your friends who is recommending monster cable, listen to his system. Swap the cables with lower-end ones, and see if you can tell the difference. That hour of time may put your mind at ease.
" To be honest, I haven't seen other cables perform as well."
In what context? Did you engage in double-blind testing? Was there a control? What do you mean by "perform?"
"We are ordered by Corporate to not use the demo on ANY other brand of protector besides 'Monster'"
The reason for that rule is simple. Any other protector will give the exact same results as the Monster one. Monster is not a cable company, it is a marketing company. They take components that are no better than standard ones (often manufactured in the same factories and then branded) and market them at a higher price-point.
Insecure and gullible people assume that the high price is justified, when in fact their products provide zero benefit.
Not to sound cruel or flamebait-ish, but you are either very naive, or else a Radio Shack/Monster shill.
GeekNights!
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Just to be a tool, I'm gonna offer an opposing viewpoint from the others here.
/. unless you want to be told that a bit is a bit and how it gets from point A to point B doesn't matter.
First off, don't ask audiophile questions on
Second, look at your audio rack. How much did you spend there? For my $250 Pioneer and $20 VCR, the cables don't matter. What's the point.
But if you spend thousands on components, why skimp on a $10 cable vice a $50 one? The price difference is negligable. It's like complaining about a WinXP license on a $20k server. Just buy big and never worry.
Now, some annecdotal evidince. I recently replaced all the cables from my $250 receiver to my $300 surround speakers. The stock cable was 20 guage aluminum. The new stuff is 12 guage copper. My system now sounds better.
One poster advised you to "just turn up the volume". That's no good when you start driving the internal components to near their peak output. Turning it up just causes more noise.
As for the interconnects, I've used everything from RCA solder-type connectors on 26 guage wire to monster cable with no real difference.
But, if you spend thousands anyway, why skimp on Radio Shack cables?
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
If you think there is an audio cable that is WORTH 3000 Euro a foot, I seriously suggest you reprioritize, but hey it is your money.
Insert pithy comment here.
I noticed that I had much better colour (indicating that before I was suffering from signal degradation), and the lines displayed by my TV were sharper.
My empirical observations have proven your physics theory to be false;
Do you have those plots handy? What device were you using to measure colour and sharpness? Without hard numbers, it's really difficult to show that you weren't actually just really excited about the really expensive cables you just bought and tricked yourself into thinking that they were better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the cables might not have a better picture.
There is also capacitance and inductance to take into account. Video sits around 4MHz (off the top of my head). At frequencies like that you can definitely have cable effects too, which essentially results in a low-pass filter. This would attenuate the more subtle details (edge sharpness for example).
Spoken like an audiophile. Fact is that the better cables matter much much much much less than the technology used, such as svideo vs. coax vs. component, etc. As long as the cables are sheilded where needed, and they aren't completely broken, they'll work just fine.
Was your X-Box move from coax to svideo or did you really go from svideo to svideo, because the "Monster" brand is just there to suck money out of people. I bet the stock xbox cables are just those standard RF adapters, which suck in all kinds of interference.
Does Monster use some sort of super-metal (more metal than metal!) that, when grounded at each end, does a better job of blocking EM fields than other types of metal? It could be that your other set of cables had a real defect (wear and tear, broken shielding, etc.) that, independently of brand, caused your problems.
Monster == Marketing == You Been Duped
The discussion may not always directly answer the question, but it does provide valuable background, and offers insights into different aspects the poster may not have thought about.
Those insights help make the discussion interesting. What do you want Yes / No answers? Ask Slashdot is more about the discussion than about actually getting answers, since most of the time a quick google seach will provide a better answer more quickly.
-MS2k
> My empirical observations have proven your physics theory to be false
Must be a new kind of science. MONSTER SCIENCE.
Any decent shielded cable will do
> can tell you that there definitely is a significant improvement in signal quality (except for digital signals of course; digital is digital)
Well no, you're wrong there. Cheap ethernet cables can knock you down to 10 megabit when you can't push a fast or gig ethernet signal through a crummy wire. Yet oddly, you don't see people buying Monster ethernet cables, probably because when it comes to network cables, most people actually do know that there's a cutoff threshold beyond which it's nothing but price.
your pets will chew on it, you'll get crap on it
If your pet is chewing and crapping on your cables, I think its time for a one way visit to the vet.
> As someone who has little knowledge in this area, what is "too much", "too little", and "decent?"
... even though I probably could have charged consulting or speaking fees if I just added more verbosity to it.
With radar: anything you can measure.
With audio: anything you can hear.
If you're recording, you might want to go gonzo, get balanced line drivers and so forth (face it, the cable ain't gonna do much). If you're just listening to music, the only thing that matters is what you can hear. I suffered some pretty bad mid-to-high-range hearing loss in my 20's (untreated ear infection), so I can generally cheap out on audio. If you think of yourself as having a golden ear the envy of mortal men, go pamper yourself with magic cables if you care to. If you have normal hearing, then get normal cables.
This advice was free
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
And, really, that's all that goes on. The back of an entertainment center is full of EMI. Shielded cables will stop EMI, and make the signal look better.
And which cable you use is important, at least which kind of cable. Buy the 'highest' you can to connect any two devices, starting at component (YCrCb), then s-video, then RCA, then coax if that's all you've got. For audio, forget all that...go digital. (You can go digital with video, too, but not reasonably.)
And buy shielded. And make sure you go gold to gold and silver to silver. (I find it easiest to stay in silver.)
But you don't need to buy into Monster's technobabble. You can get shielded cables for a lot cheaper.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
...which has exactly zero to do with how those bits got to the DAC in the first place. Since the OP mentioned hard drives, I'll assume he was referring to playing audio from a computer. Here's how this would work:
Note how there's no direct connection between "transport" and "DAC" in the diagram above; as long as the CPU gets the rights bits in the right order, the end result will be the same.
By the way, here's a sample of the source he was quoting:
Oh, just to make sure we know where he stands:
Yeah. "Sparkle", "immediacy" (WTF?), "wetter", and "width" are effected by the label on the batch-produced CDR. Here's to hoping that he posts a followup article on which brand of DVD gives a higher Doom 3 framerate.
People who say stuff like that are freaks and should be ignore or ridiculed.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I used to do some work with video equipment. Shielded cable usually has a percentage of covering specified. If you cut apart a piece of cheap coax cable, you will find very thin braid and a lot of open space. Expensive coax looks like a solid layer. So I think your eyes are correct. There is a difference both in signal loss and in pickup of video noise.
At audio frequencies, the difference is going to be a lot less. I've always used untwisted pair (Radio Shack speaker cable) and never noticed any problem even on long runs.
If you're going to use twistlocks at least put some fuses in there. If enough people start using mains type connectors for speakers, eventually somebody, somewhere, will be drunk enough at a party to connect a speaker up to the dryer outlet and possibly start a fire.
A more audiophile angle is that connectors are undesirable in the first place. They typically have more resistance than a little extra cable would plus they tend to corrode or dislodge faster. Just run the cable (of whatever type) straight from the amp to the speakers.
wha? Had your coffee yet?
:-)
This is *optical* cable, remember
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
For me the most important thing to know about Monster is their recent spate of lawsuits against anyone who has 'monster' in their name. Check out this google search for more info. This is absolutely insane and has caused me to personally boycott Monster even though I used to like their cables.