mrSHEiK124
Lifer
- Mar 6, 2004
- 11,488
- 2
- 0
All I could understand is 10 kW. That must be one fucking awesome Rick Roll. I came buckets.
BTW SlickSnake and gorcorps, I like how you both ignored the point I made about Monster HDMI cables. Here, I'll make it again in case you missed it:
Amazon charges $79.28 for an ultra-high speed 2 meter HDMI Monster cable.This is well below MSRP of $129.95
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...&qid=1204658254&sr=8-1
Monoprice charges $12.52 for a 6 foot HDMI 1.3a cable. You'd have to need to replace the Monoprice cable more than 6 times in order for it to pay for the Monster cable, which wouldn't be necessary to begin with since they have a lifetime warranty too. Anyone paying for Monster cable is paying for a brand name, just like Bose.
Personally, I don't have any experience with high end cables, so I can't say what my own thoughts on it are. I very much would like to just to see how it turns out. Beyond that, you really cannot discard the psychological impact. So what if your ears can't actually hear the difference? If your mind thinks it sounds better then great, as the more time/money you spend in the audio world, the less you are likely to find those moments where you are happy with improving your setup. So if you can spend $250 on a cable instead of $1000 on changing a source (especially if you've gotten used to how you use that source) and get the same boost mentally, then hey good for you, spend the money you "saved" on a ton of new music to listen to it on. Of course in most cases, I would say the money would be better spent on better the basic parts (source, amp, speakers). Then there's also the fact that you ideally want to keep cable runs as short as possible and as few of them as you can as well, both things which should help lower the cost of the cables needed. I've never fully understood people who drop $100 on an iPod, then $150 on an amp, and then $100 on a lineout dock that is all of 5" long (check out ALO Audio) when they have $100 headphones. While the iPod's sound quality through the lineout is probably as good as just about any MP3 player (so spending more on that aspect for something with similar features won't necessarily improve quality), the money could definitely be better spent on the amp or even better, the headphones. Now I can see dropping some money if you've already got a high end setup (as in $10,000+), as at that point you're reaching less absolute increases in quality and are getting very much into preference in sound.
QueBert
Lifer
- Jan 6, 2002
- 22,921
- 1,117
- 126
I read an article on sugar pills and how they tricked people into thinking the generics were top $$$ versions of the pill and gave them to people. And most of them claimed they felt better after taking what they thought was the $2.50 one but was actual a 10 cent generic.
Stupid or not, a mind can be tricked into believing something that's not true. And if a person really thinks their 2g speakers sound better with $200 monster cables how is that a bad deal for them? the psychological effect of buying expensive brands tends to make people feel like they have something better, even if the quality is worse than a generic brand.
Stupid or not, a mind can be tricked into believing something that's not true. And if a person really thinks their 2g speakers sound better with $200 monster cables how is that a bad deal for them? the psychological effect of buying expensive brands tends to make people feel like they have something better, even if the quality is worse than a generic brand.
As someone who obviously can "hear and figure out the advanced physics of electrical conductivity", can you please explain this to me. You say that changing out the speaker cable caused a 15-20% increase in the volume of your speakers. A 20% increase in loudness is roughly 3db. In order to get a 3db increase in loudness, you need a doubling of power. So how did changing your speaker cables double the power output of your receiver?
Here's a good review that actually does use physics to measure and rate the performance of various speaker cables. They include a bunch of home made stuff. Link The best measurements were obtained by various iterations of braided CAT5 cable. Monster cable was beaten by a power cord purchased at Home Depot.
Wow, you are dense. That test got the playing field as level as possible, so nobody could cite other factors like the room or speaker placement as a reason they heard a difference.
They did this at setup, then started swapping cables. All the cables had the same chance to power the speakers....and nobody could tell a difference.
They basically took everything else out of the equation.
Again, read Roger Russell's site....he knows FAR more about this subject, and has developed FAR better speaker systems than you've ever listened to.
All the so-called "experts" continually refuse offers to take double-blind tests of speaker wire.....because they know there is no difference.
The only way anyone has ever heard a difference is either A) they had wire that was too small to begin with, or B) something was wrong with the wire they replaced.
Otherwise, it is impossible that speaker wire, even the 5000 dollar stuff, makes a difference in the sound.
All this talk about "imaging" "soundstage" "color", etc, is utter B.S.
Oyeve
Lifer
- Oct 18, 1999
- 22,047
- 876
- 126
I just get the thickest cheapest cable I can find for speakers. Monster has and will always be a ripoff. Especially with optical. I bought a $3 dollar toslink from some 99c store and works just as well as my old monster cable that cost 100 bucks for 3ft ten years ago. Its optical. Its either on or off. For short runs cheap is fine. Digital coax? A joke. Radio shack $2 RCA cables work just as well. Its digital, its either on or off.
SlickSnake
Diamond Member
- May 29, 2007
- 5,235
- 2
- 0
BTW, the speaker cables running to my surrounds were 16 gauge and about 30 years old, and they were originally clear jackets. The copper in the jackets was mostly green from age, and in many places the wire was completely green and corroded to the point you almost couldn't see the wire at all. It was like little blobs of green crap inside the jackets. In some spots this wire I had looked fine, but slightly green colored. In other spots, you could see the corrosion completely destroying the wire inside the clear plastic jackets. The effect was irregular with no obvious pattern to the corrosion.
And when you buy cheap, crap wire, especially when it's a solid color plastic jacket and you can't see the wire in the jackets, you can't be sure what the wire might actually look like inside 5 or 10 years down the road. The effect to volume after using a new Z1 speaker cable was more than a little noticeable. Just as I stated.
The wires were originally bought at Radio Shack as speaker cable - not lamp wire.
And when they do these comparison tests they usually fail to use the highest quality of Monster speaker cable they can get. They usually go and get the cheap 16 gauge stuff you can get in a roll of 100 feet at most retail stores for $50 retail. That is hardly a representative test of Monster speaker wire, like the Z series and up. The MCX-1s they used have a lower retail price per foot than even the Z1s which I use at $2.50 per foot versus $1.50 per foot for the MCX-1s. Both use the magnetic flux tube construction.
And the Original Monster cable in that comparison isn't even identified, lol. And yet the Navajo is a cheap Monster brand using the same magnetic flux tube design as the Z1 and M series uses, yet it rated better than the M series? Their questionable findings seem to be somewhat in doubt there. Was this a terminator or length difference?
Another thing to point out about these "tests" is he also used different cable lengths, as long as 26 feet! This was not an accurate test based on this fact alone. Another major factor in this test is the connectors used. You would have to use the same connector for every set of cables to ensure the connector was not a limiting factor in the final readings, which he did not do.
That is a good reference link, though. Too bad it was not available when I bought my Z1s 6 years ago, but that's life, isn't it?
SlickSnake
Diamond Member
- May 29, 2007
- 5,235
- 2
- 0
Were you drunk, stoned or both when you posted this? It would explain a lot.
They were comparing SPEAKERS, not CABLES. Unless the poster about this article, Siddhartha, was entirely WRONG. If you were comparing CABLES you would use the exact same setup and just swap out CABLES to see if there was a difference, not swap out SPEAKERS and recalibrate well, EVERYTHING. So my statement and observation stands and yours is utter BS.
Unless you are simply confusing this with a different test. But you can't both be right here, it makes no sense. Thanks for really trying to discredit my opinion, though.
SlickSnake
Diamond Member
- May 29, 2007
- 5,235
- 2
- 0
I didn't miss this important post in the first place. I didn't repond because we are talking about SPEAKER CABLES in this topic not the 100s of other cables Monster and Monoprice make. If you want to argue HDMI cable prices, there are at least 100 other topics you can do that in.
This alone accounts for any difference you heard. You can't fairly compare wires that are falling apart with a new one, and then claim that the difference is purely on the superior quality of the new cables compared to other new cables. Especially when replacing 16AWG with something thicker, although we don't know what gauge your new wire is since Monster doesn't list it... although it does have 'magnetic flux tubes' and 'time correct windings'
And when you buy cheap, crap wire, especially when it's a solid color plastic jacket and you can't see the wire in the jackets, you can't be sure what the wire might actually look like inside 5 or 10 years down the road. The effect to volume after using a new Z1 speaker cable was more than a little noticeable. Just as I stated.
The wires were originally bought at Radio Shack as speaker cable - not lamp wire.
The Original Monster is your standard roll of 12 gauge zip cord.
Another thing to point out about these "tests" is he also used different cable lengths, as long as 26 feet! This was not an accurate test based on this fact alone. Another major factor in this test is the connectors used. You would have to use the same connector for every set of cables to ensure the connector was not a limiting factor in the final readings, which he did not do.
That is a good reference link, though. Too bad it was not available when I bought my Z1s 6 years ago, but that's life, isn't it?
They state in their testing methodology that they normalized their test results to a per foot measurement. They also say that they used the same banana plug unless otherwise stated (ie, the Monster cable was terminated with a pin connector, so they had to spend another $25 for the Monster bananas).
SlickSnake
Diamond Member
- May 29, 2007
- 5,235
- 2
- 0
Originally posted by: wetech
This alone accounts for any difference you heard. You can't fairly compare wires that are falling apart with a new one, and then claim that the difference is purely on the superior quality of the new cables compared to other new cables. Especially when replacing 16AWG with something thicker, although we don't know what gauge your new wire is since Monster doesn't list it... although it does have 'magnetic flux tubes' and 'time correct windings'
And when you buy cheap, crap wire, especially when it's a solid color plastic jacket and you can't see the wire in the jackets, you can't be sure what the wire might actually look like inside 5 or 10 years down the road. The effect to volume after using a new Z1 speaker cable was more than a little noticeable. Just as I stated.
The wires were originally bought at Radio Shack as speaker cable - not lamp wire.
The Original Monster is your standard roll of 12 gauge zip cord.
Another thing to point out about these "tests" is he also used different cable lengths, as long as 26 feet! This was not an accurate test based on this fact alone. Another major factor in this test is the connectors used. You would have to use the same connector for every set of cables to ensure the connector was not a limiting factor in the final readings, which he did not do.
That is a good reference link, though. Too bad it was not available when I bought my Z1s 6 years ago, but that's life, isn't it?
They state in their testing methodology that they normalized their test results to a per foot measurement. They also say that they used the same banana plug unless otherwise stated (ie, the Monster cable was terminated with a pin connector, so they had to spend another $25 for the Monster bananas).
BTW, if you link an article in the future, try to link the first page of the article. I had to go back and look at the article linked again to find the washed out light blue links to the original Face off articles posted in 2003 or there abouts (since Face off 2 was in 2004).
You can't just pull a factor out of thin air, like weight, for trying to compare various types of wire, instead of lengths. I do not buy wire based on weight. You take the same lengths of wire and do a direct comparision of the results. The more they muck up a direct comparison, like rewinding/unwinding/seperating wires the more they mess with the test result outcomes. And then on top of that trying to calculate a stranded wire weight ratio into the formula, the more they mess up the true side by side test results.
The most interesting part of the various faceoffs was the part where they noted the corrosion on some of the wires due to reactions with the jacket and the possible effect on the abilty of the wire to perform properly. I can personally verify this negative effect.
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