Are 'Monster' Cables Worth It? 415
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?"
Go digital (Score:2, Interesting)
Regarding Cable Types (Score:5, Interesting)
I would personally go to a store, and keep the receipt and just try it out, and see if you notice a difference.
Rule of thumbs (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:use any old thing (Score:5, Interesting)
monster cables might be a bit better than the cheapest of cheap.. but the situations where you would benefit from that are very uncommon(AND EVEN THEN THEY'RE NOT WORTH THE MONEY! what you're paying with monstercables is the brand).
How well do you hear? (Score:4, Interesting)
What you --- and everyone else --- does do is react to suggestion. When the audio guy comes in and puts you in the fancy listening room, he gives all sorts of suggestion cues to let you know that the more expensive system "sounds better". And sure enough it does.
Of course if you're contemplating buying monster cables, you've also probably gotten a multiple thousand dollar system, which means the guy in the audio room already got to you.
Re:Electrons no different (Score:2, Interesting)
try blue jean cables - high quality, lower price (Score:3, Interesting)
As most other posters here seem to be reinforcing, Monster and the like are short on specs and long on "voodoo" - though they look nice. The fact is, using high quality materials, tools, and techniques isn't rocket science.
Re:Electrons no different (Score:5, Interesting)
Recording and video studios don't tend to use Monster cable because they also don't tend to use RCA cables to patch things together. Too easy for noise to get into the signal path. They tend to use balanced lines so that any noise can be self-cancelling (if you're interested, google "balanced line driver"...that ought to give a few hints).
The wire you find inside your speakers is specifically designed to maintain it's form, take high heat, and/or lie flat (for the wire wrapped around the former), or to be flexible enough not to come apart (for the wires going from the terminals to the cone/voicecoil). They're typically made much differently from speaker cable.
If you want to talk to people that know more than a little about pricey cabling (rca cables, at least) talk to a reputable car stereo shop. Home theater environments have only a tiny fraction of the shielding, grounding, impedance-matching, and noise problems that automotive applications do.
Most of the expensive home theater cables are shortened or rebranded versions of ones that were developed for automotive use. Noise rejection characteristics, signal path length (both parts of the path being equal), shielding type, and overall cable quality (fit, insulation, solder joint quality, etc) are all part of what makes expensive cables cost as much as they do.
If you're hooking up a TV and a DVD player with connectors 3 feet apart, most of the design features of the expensive cables will be unnecessary simply because there won't be that much chance for noise to enter into the picture. If you have preamps, amps, multiple sources, multiple grounds, noise sources, long cables, etc. the expensive stuff just might make everything work better.
Re:Electrons no different (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. Skin effect applies to any non-DC signal. It will cause a significant roll-off at frequencies as low as 100KHz. It doesn't matter much for signals in the audio band, though.
Recording and video studios don't tend to use Monster Cable.
From what I've heard, many recording engineers are more obsessive about cable quality than the most rabid audiophile. Studios don't use Monster cable because it's not good enough for their needs. When you have miles of cable carrying sensitive signals, it better be the best damn cable you can get your paws on. You can bet your ass they don't use anything cheap.
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.
Maybe if you have bargain bin speakers. Besides, wire parameters are strongly dependent on length. The 6 inches of wire inside the speaker are not going to make much of a difference compared to the 15 feet of wire connecting it to the amplifier.
Re:it doesnt really matter what we say (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd also like to mention an ethical reason why not to buy Monster. Monster Cables have been methodically sueing every business in the US that uses the word "Monster". Since Monster Cables are large, and most businesses are mom-and-pop operations, the small guys get screwed over bcos they can't fight back.
They'll try it with anyone as well - they actually tried to get money off Disney for making the film "Monsters Inc"! Disney told them where to shove it though, and they had the clout to make it stick. But most people can't afford to.
For more info, search Google for "monster cable lawsuit". I originally heard about it in the Denver Post, but it's all over the place now.
Grab.
Re:use any old thing (Score:1, Interesting)
Spoken like someone who doesn't really understand cables.
With component video, there is a *significant* picture difference between good quality cables and regular (non-coax) patch cables, even in short (< 6') runs.
Regular (non-coax) RCA phono cables typically provide around 200 to 300 Ohm impedance - this is a *huge* mismatch between the required 75Ohm impedance that the TV gear requres. When you get an impedance mismatch, the signal will either get filtered (some of it will be lost) or reflected (it will 'echo' between the two pieces of equipment.) Either way, the result is a poor picture.
It's pretty much impossible to get a true 75Ohm impedance out of an RCA connector, but good quality cables will bring it pretty close. Whether "Monster" cables are quality I don't know.
Re:from my own experience... (Score:2, Interesting)
LK
use any old thing-CoatHanger. (Score:1, Interesting)
How about for people who live near the sea? Do you really want your connectors to fuse together?
Siltech is most expensive cable (Score:4, Interesting)
The manufacturer of both of those most expensive cables is Siltech [northamptonaudio.com]. Other notable "high-end" audio cable manufacturers are Kimber Kable [kimber.com], MIT Cables [mitcables.com], Nordost [nordost.com], and AudioQuest [audioquest.com]. Monster Cable isn't even considered "high-end" by most audiophiles. The fact that Monster is synomous with high-end cables is proof of their effective marketing.
And to answer the question, just buy Radio Shack cables.
Ho-hum (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just 75-ohm coaxial cable. It's a hand-me-down from the broadcast and defense industries.
If you were a broadcaster, you'd care about flexibility and long-term durability, and buy good professional-grade stranded-conductor RG-59 from someone like Canare [canare.com], like just about all of the other broadcasters do for their temporary video interconnects. You'd then solder or (preferably) crimp your own connectors on, because then the resultant cables would both the proper length for whatever you're doing and you'd know that they were assembled correctly. Or, you'd have a company like Markertek [marketrek.com] assemble them for you.
But you're not a broadcaster. Nobody is throwing your wires across the room. Nobody is walking or driving on them. Nobody is using them to rig lights or props with.
You don't give a whit whether it's stranded or not, because it will be relocated (at most) several times a year - instead of, perhaps, several times per hour in a production studio. You do, however, care if they're assembled correctly.
And you care about having the proper length - extra cable length is hard to deal with in the typical home theater, and always reduces signal quality.
You also care about bandwidth, perhaps even more than the broadcasters do. But that's not a huge problem, as NTSC video only goes up to a few MHz.
RG-59 [1] is typically used at hundreds of MHz (think: cable TV), and is thus way more than sufficient.
So here's what you do. Buy some good, solid copper RG-59 from Lowe's, Home Depot, your local electrical contractor shop, or wherever. Look for cable that is shielded with foil and a braid, with a foam dielectric. And also buy a crimper [partsexpress.com]. And some connectors [partsexpress.com]. And a rotary stripper [partsexpress.com].
It's fairly self-explanatory from then on out:
Measure, cut, strip, mash, crimp. Boneheaded cable installers can do this stuff all day - any Slashdotter can tackle it without episode. Plan on wasting an end or two if you're unsure of yourself, but it really is bloody simple.
Just try to keep the three component video cables all at the same length, to keep things in sync with eachother. This isn't hyper-critical, given the real-world propagation delay of RG-59, but it's easy to keep things within an inch or so of sameness and so one might as well try.
You'll spend less on the kit than for a single set of most "Monster" cables, and likely be able to make hundreds of feet worth of custom, high-quality video interconnects with it instead of having just one set of gaudy purple wires that are all the wrong length.
And since RG-59 is so good that nobody outside of a marketing department has bothered to replace it after numerous decades, you should be good for a long, long time.
Enjoy.
[1]: Yep, I said RG-59. There's no cause to use RG-6 with baseband video signals, as there's simply insufficient bandwidth utilization and attenuation to justify the expense and added unmanagibility of RG-6. And it's easy to find reasonably decent copper RG-59, while the RG-6 typically available at retail uses a cheap copper-clad steel center conductor, which operates poorly at these frequencies (but works fine and saves money for satellite installations). And as far as anyone knew, RG-59 was sufficient for all residential video purposes until the advent of DSS, two-way cablevision, and 125-channel tuners. RG-59 is, in fact, overkill for this application. I don't care which one is bigger: RG-6 is just pissing away cash, unless you've already got some on-hand.
Re:too bad everyone uses UNBALANCED i/o (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:use any old thing (Score:3, Interesting)
An other thing that people forget is that gold, silver and copper are all soft metals, where they touch, there is going to be diffusion bonding between the two conductors creating a gas tight seal against further corrosion.
The old wire-wrap technics used the effect when connecting the wire to the post. The square posts were made out of a hard metal and gold plated, the wire was copper that was silver plated copper. When the wire was tightly wrapped arround the post, it edges of the post cut into the wire. After the wire and post were in contact for a while, the diffusion of the metals sealed the bond because the gold and the silver alloyed. After a couple weeks, if you took the connection appart, you could feel that it was noticable tighter than a new connection would be.
If your still worried about a silver connector corrosion affecting signal quality, I'd say just Wipe a little WD-40 on them because if your that anal about the connectors, you'd probably enjoy fidgeting with them every week or so anyways.
If it's more expensive, it must be better. (Score:2, Interesting)