only if they are less expensive than everyone else and their products are of comparable quality. I had some monster RCA cables which were complete crap because the grips were so huge that the R and L interfered with each other going into my preamp.
I got some component cables off ebay like last week, like $10 with free shipping, they arrived like 2 days shipping from like 2 states away, the ends are gold (or fake gold) plated and the cords are thick as HELL. So NO I would not pay extra for them, these have great quality or w/e. Cables are only significant if it's like a power cord with frayed wires or something lol. The brand was Dynex or something and I'd buy that brand again.
boomhower
Diamond Member
- Sep 13, 2007
- 7,228
- 19
- 81
I will never use Monster products just on principle because of how they operate. Beyond the shady advertising and demos is the suing of mom and pop business's that happen to have monster in the name and absolutely nothing to do with audio/video. I mean common a putt putt golf course?
CallMeJoe
Diamond Member
- Jul 30, 2004
- 6,938
- 5
- 81
Monster M1000 on eBay. Buy-it-Now, free shipping.
It might even be real Monster cable, but you know the eBay drill: you pays yer money, you takes yer chances.
edit: cleaned up Blurry's quoting...
Here's a working link. And yes, they're REAL Monster cables. :roll: Just don't buy from someone in China.
LOL, gotcha - I never thought about checking out Ebay for cables....or pretty much anything (due to bad experiences with a trader a long, long time ago)
I might actually have to look into this....Monster cables are a rip at the prices you see at retail stores, but at ~$30 dollars..hmmm it is well made and *shiny*.
Once you've invested thousands in a high end media setup, it feels kinda awkward to be using cheap monoprice cables - I know it doesn't matter, but it's just a thought.
I might actually have to look into this....Monster cables are a rip at the prices you see at retail stores, but at ~$30 dollars..hmmm it is well made and *shiny*.
Once you've invested thousands in a high end media setup, it feels kinda awkward to be using cheap monoprice cables - I know it doesn't matter, but it's just a thought.
Heh... I'm suprised no one commented on that yet. Bi-wiring is another one of those hotly debated topics. It's something that audiophiles do but science says makes no difference. Are you just bi-wiring or actually bi-amping? Bi-amping could make a difference depending on your set-up (though even that is often debated). Bi-wiring though? Save your money, IMO.
I'll probably try both to see which I like best. Why am I doing it? Because the speakers I'm looking into can. We'll see.
monster cables are definitely higher quality than generic cables from monoprice or meritline. they are thicker, bend easier, and feel sturdier. no i am not some noob that praises it just because of price. as opposed to bose, which i feel is all marketting and NOT of good quality sound or construction.
i would definitely pay a little bit more for higher quality cables from Monster, but keep in mind the dminishing returns to cable quality, all we need is for it to be "good enough" and maybe a little more.
i would definitely pay a little bit more for higher quality cables from Monster, but keep in mind the dminishing returns to cable quality, all we need is for it to be "good enough" and maybe a little more.
JSt0rm
Lifer
- Sep 5, 2000
- 27,399
- 3,948
- 126
I work in audio post production and we have no monstercable in the house. You want the best? Blackbox.com turn that hdmi signal into Ethernet. Why in the world would you need that at home? i don't know. I think monstercable is scared shitless because like any tech company a new technology can wipe them out. They are trying to fold the costs of all the normal cables into this 1 hdmi because there is no need for multiple cables.
JSt0rm
Lifer
- Sep 5, 2000
- 27,399
- 3,948
- 126
cable quality is actually gauge. Thicker the cable bigger the highway that's it. You want nice audio cable? mogami aes/ebu 2552 with silver solder and switchcraft xlr connectors. Roll your own. Otherwise you are just paying for marketing. Believe me, your hand build audio cables will be far more impressive then a monster cable.
I would buy monster cables if they were free as I've spent years watching people get scammed out of their money buying them. $60 for a braided good looking HDMI cable is good but $300 for the same looking cable as most other cables just because it's made by Monster is insane.
At these speeds it's a terrible idea to terminate the cable yourself without proper training and testing tools.
JSt0rm
Lifer
- Sep 5, 2000
- 27,399
- 3,948
- 126
No. Electricity is still electricity, and that is what you are passing through speaker cables.
You can refine the wires all you want, but the facts of the matter haven't changed. The more power you are trying to push through a wire, the bigger a wire you need. Not "more expensive", just bigger. If you have the most expensive audio system in the world, you can run Home Depot wire to the speakers, and as long as the wire is the correct gauge to carry the current, it will sound no different than that crap that costs 5000 bucks a foot. It won't look as good, but the sound will be the same.
That's why nobody, not even these uppity audio snobs, and nobody from these high-dollar wire manufacturers, will put their money where their mouths (or ears) are and take the Million Dollar Challenge. If there is such a difference.....why wouldn't you take the challenge and win a million bucks?
If you read the Roger Russell article, the only reason they stopped using cheap speaker cables in their McIntosh Sound Lab demo setups was, people had started hearing about "better" cable, and were questioning them using the cheap stuff. So, to eliminate those questions, they simply switched to the more expensive cables. This got people's minds off whether the wires were affecting the sound of the components and let them focus only on the sound itself. Which was no different than using lamp cord.
Plus, he hasn't worked for McIntosh in years, has no financial stake in them at all, and still says the same thing. Guy is a genius, and he is right. Not like he's alone out there saying this, either.
And the earth is still flat!
Regarding the Million Dollar Challenge, article said Michel Fremer and that man couldn't come to terms on details of the test, not that he wasn't willing to take challenge.
Chain of components would, for results to be valid, have to have sufficient genuine transparency and resolution to delineate subtle differences between speaker wires, if they exist. Using some mass market mid-fi speakers as test speakers doesn't necessarily prove anything because they may be so opaque that, as long as you feed them a decent, intact signal and use an amp that can drive the speakers appropriately, they will always sound the same.
I've heard Wilson speakers at audio shows, but never owned them, so I don't know their characteristics intimately. I have read that Dave Wilson believes that speakers are most important part of chain (vs. Ivor Tifenbrun of Linn turntables, who believes source is most important), and I think he voices his speaker line that way. He even demonstrated at some audio show using an iPod as source for an otherwise rather expensive chain of components. I would guess that as long as he was producing clean signal path, and amp had sufficient power / current, etc. to drive Wilson speakers, predominant characteristic you would always hear is Wilson house sound.
That lady did hear a difference, though she may not been able to verbalize, in audiophile terminology, exactly what difference she perceived. Her comment about more spaciousness could refer to picking up more low level detail in terms of ambience cues ("air") of original recording space as encoded in recording, or, something a home theater fan with good chain of components and a really accurate sub that go really low may experience, spaciousness is recreating better sense of the space and scale of original recording (e. g. large church), where those very low frequencies, now being sent to speaker more cleanly, allow you, in your mind's eye, to "see" / sense / flesh out a more realistic scale of original recording space, to sense walls of church, to hear rumble of extraneous subway running underground at very low spl, etc. Speakers themselves obviously would have to be able to dig down into those very low bass frequencies accurately and without excess bloat, and speaker wires would have to be able to resolve such low level detail, if they were in original recording (the ridiculous price tag a cable manufacturer puts on his cables, including absurd prices of Shunyata products linked below, would be a totally different issue vs. whether or not all speaker wire sounds the same).
edit: As for electricity just being electricity, there are a lot of professional musicians and recording engineers who disagree, and have spent uber-bucks on snake oil interconnects, speaker wires, and yes, power cords and power line conditioning equipment:
Regarding the Million Dollar Challenge, article said Michel Fremer and that man couldn't come to terms on details of the test, not that he wasn't willing to take challenge.
Chain of components would, for results to be valid, have to have sufficient genuine transparency and resolution to delineate subtle differences between speaker wires, if they exist. Using some mass market mid-fi speakers as test speakers doesn't necessarily prove anything because they may be so opaque that, as long as you feed them a decent, intact signal and use an amp that can drive the speakers appropriately, they will always sound the same.
I've heard Wilson speakers at audio shows, but never owned them, so I don't know their characteristics intimately. I have read that Dave Wilson believes that speakers are most important part of chain (vs. Ivor Tifenbrun of Linn turntables, who believes source is most important), and I think he voices his speaker line that way. He even demonstrated at some audio show using an iPod as source for an otherwise rather expensive chain of components. I would guess that as long as he was producing clean signal path, and amp had sufficient power / current, etc. to drive Wilson speakers, predominant characteristic you would always hear is Wilson house sound.
That lady did hear a difference, though she may not been able to verbalize, in audiophile terminology, exactly what difference she perceived. Her comment about more spaciousness could refer to picking up more low level detail in terms of ambience cues ("air") of original recording space as encoded in recording, or, something a home theater fan with good chain of components and a really accurate sub that go really low may experience, spaciousness is recreating better sense of the space and scale of original recording (e. g. large church), where those very low frequencies, now being sent to speaker more cleanly, allow you, in your mind's eye, to "see" / sense / flesh out a more realistic scale of original recording space, to sense walls of church, to hear rumble of extraneous subway running underground at very low spl, etc. Speakers themselves obviously would have to be able to dig down into those very low bass frequencies accurately and without excess bloat, and speaker wires would have to be able to resolve such low level detail, if they were in original recording (the ridiculous price tag a cable manufacturer puts on his cables, including absurd prices of Shunyata products linked below, would be a totally different issue vs. whether or not all speaker wire sounds the same).
edit: As for electricity just being electricity, there are a lot of professional musicians and recording engineers who disagree, and have spent uber-bucks on snake oil interconnects, speaker wires, and yes, power cords and power line conditioning equipment:
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