The great cable debate.....

[Rescue1]

Hello everyone,I hope the holidays were great.I have a question regarding home video and audio cables.Now I know there are cheap ones,and then there are the expensive good ones,but then theres the outrageous overly priced cables that I am questioning.Lets take the monster line of cables for instance because they are readily available.The component cables come in a variety of styles the first being the "THX" certified standard cables.The cable(wire) itself looks of good quality,thick and has plenty of shielding making it a suitable cable for hdtv.Then theres the Monster cable 2,3,and 4 series which will go into the $90 dollar price range for a 1 meter cable.Are these cables really worth it??Are the extra quality of these cables only seen on a bench test and not on a tv or digital decoder??Like I said I am interested in real life picture tests,not some bench test that show a few millivolts more.Any opinions or suggestions would be helpful.By the way I am hooking up my home theatre with an HDTV bigscreen and 6.1 surround.Everything will be component except for the digital satellite which will be through a HDMI cable...Thanks for the help....

 

[Phasor]

Monster cables are one of the many great cable scams out there. They're no better than any $2 cable from a discount store.

Try googling various combinations of (monster, cable, scam, snake oil). All their claims are a crock.

Besides, what they are currently doing with regards to regards to trying to sue the pants off anyone who uses the word "monster", is extremely unethical, and I (as one of many) will never ever touch one of their products. A couple of the very many links to this topic:
http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6650&page=1&pp=10
http://www.stopthemonster.com/media.html

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Yes, these stupidly expensive cables are just a scam - they also have a reputation of not being very well made. Just go for normal cheap leads, but try and pick one that looks as if it has decent quality construction.

Many of the larger UK stores rip their customers off for SCART leads - they sell a DVD player for £30, then charge £60 for a SCART lead to use with it!.

 

[zevon8]

I have a HUGE problem with a company that charges $39.99 for 4 banana plugs with threaded ends for bare wire. It is unbelieveable what customers let them get away with charging.

One option for people who are unable to make their own cables ( skills, time, tools, etc ) is to check with a local musician supply store. Often they have a section of premade in-house cables, often of very high quality for reasonable cost. Sometimes they will make a cable set for you, for a reasonable fee also. For less than the money that Monster cable charges, you could get a profesional quality cable made with profesional grade components, or atleast buy the parts to make your own.

 

[audioguru]

I have cutoff the RCA plugs on RadioShack or far-east shielded cables to use a short piece without buying a whole roll of the good stuff.
I was shocked to see that the "shield" is just a few spaced strands, not really a shield. The good stuff uses many strands that are braided along the length of the cable. Unbraiding it is lots of fun when I have time to do it right.

I don't use cables that have rippoff prices. "Ordinary" cables work fine.

 

[tansis]

Let's not forget the gold plated connectors :lol:

 

[Rescue1]

Thank you for everyones response,this forum has come in handy for everything from pic programming to stuff like this.Audioguru,what is on your ripoff cable list,and what would you suggest that is of good quality and is a fair price.I feel Monster is a ripoff like everyone is saying.I just found the acoustic research cables and feel they are fair in price,and look to have lots of shielding.They look better in my opinion than the monsters for less than half the price.I am just trying to make an informed cable purchase,getting good quality and not getting ripped off.....

P.S.-Yes,those gold plated connectors connected to regular metal mounts...... :roll:

 

[Dean Huster]

The ones who will argue that those expensive cables are indeed better are known as "golden-eared audiophiles", folks who will make the claim that they can hear the difference between zip cord speaker wires, house wiring speaker wires, RG-59/U speaker wires and the exotic wires that can cost hundreds of dollars, sometimes getting into the low thousands of dollars, believe it or not. They can also hear the difference between tin-plated RCA connectors and gold-plated RCA connectors. If their hearing is so danged refined, why don't they use "N" connectors or better yet, GR-574 connectors for their audio?

You shut these folks up by asking them to subject themselves to a blind test of different cables to see if they can really tell them apart. Either they won't open themselves up to that scenario or they'll come up with some sort of reason why they couldn't perform as stated if they do.

Dean

 

[pebe]

I have cutoff the RCA plugs on RadioShack or far-east shielded cables to use a short piece without buying a whole roll of the good stuff.
I was shocked to see that the "shield" is just a few spaced strands, not really a shield. The good stuff uses many strands that are braided along the length of the cable. Unbraiding it is lots of fun when I have time to do it right.

I don't use cables that have rippoff prices. "Ordinary" cables work fine.

The 'few spaced strands' may not be so bad as it seems. I have come across audio cables that use a conductive outer skin on the cable dielectric to do the screening, and the braid is nothing more than a low resistance earth path.

 

[TheOne]

Computer flat-ribbon cable for bus connections makes very good audio speaker cables if the 1st, 3rd .. are tied together for the "hot" and 2nd, 4th.. together as GND. It was shown that the inductance and phase shift at higher frequencies could be reduced by up to a factor of 10 compared to the other so called "super" audio cables.

 

[Rescue1]

Interesting on the ribbon cable.It almost sounds like a twisted pair setup if you look at the spacing.I guess the only problem with that is finding ribbon cable of approiate gauge.....

 

[audioguru]

Ribbon cable is usually a fairly small guage but its current handling is increased by paralleling its even and odd wires.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Ribbon cable is usually a fairly small guage but its current handling is increased by paralleling its even and odd wires.

But are all the cores oxygen free? :lol:

But more seriously, I don't think the number of cores in ribbon cables would add up to a very think conductor - certainly for high powers, and good damping factor, thick cables (not monster ones!) are advisable.

 

[tansis]

Speaker cables have become one of the least quantified and objectively analyzed audio products in the audio marketplace. Many cable vendors and forum cult hobbyists insist on the abandonment of measurements and engineering truths in favor of subjective listening tests in hopes that the listener will think they hear a difference, even if none exists, to justify their unproven claims and sometimes extravagant prices. Let's refer to these people as "cable soothsayers" since they seem pre-dispositioned against applicable engineering truths and proven sciences despite reliance at times on the names of these truths (IE. Skin effect, diode rectification, etc) as a mechanism for the alleged problem(s) and their corresponding solution(s). The belief set forth by these "cable soothsayers" that "you can't measure it" leaves open the avenue of convincing prospective buyers of the differences in product by pseudo-science, clever marketing ploys, and sometimes just blind faith.

PS: "Monster Cables" is a registered trade mark...go figure :lol:

 

[Juglenaut]

Even I will buy Rat shack quality RCA before going to monster cables.

 

[Dean Huster]

It isn't just cables. It's tubes. And tube amps. But my favorite are "MusiCaps" by Hovland. They offer their capacitors in the Antique Electronic Supply catalog (https://www.tubesandmore.com)

Here's a bit of their prose:

"MusiCaps enable sensitive audio circuits to achieve their ultimate level of performance ... individually machine-tolled and the leads are carefully hand-soldered using lead-free silver-bearing solder .... the leads are stranded, teflon insulated, silver-plated copper ... "

A 0.1µF, 400v cap costs $7.79

The description of the MusiCaps have changed and now, down the page, the "Auricap" has verbage that was similar to what MusiCap only recently used to use:

" ... how much better and more natural audio gear sounds ... highs are smooth and clear without tizziness or hash or dulling roll off ... the mids are meaty and full of emotions ... bass is tight and well connected, chesty and textured with power and authority .... [the highs, mids and lows] sound good as separate elements but they sound so 'together' and 'as one whole' when music plays through them [the capacitors] ... no loss of rhythm, pacing or emotion ..."

How can you ever take seriously folks that write and talk like that? But there's a lot of them out there. They all use the same kind of words that are used by interior designers, fashion designers and gourmet chefs ... but none that engineers and technicians would use.

Now, we just need their definitions for all those words. Tizziness?!!??


Dean

 

[Phasor]

Now, we just need their definitions for all those words. Tizziness?!!??

www.dictionary.com:

2 entries found for tizzy.
tiz·zy Audio pronunciation of "tizzy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tz)
n. Slang pl. tiz·zies

A state of nervous excitement or confusion; a dither.


[Origin unknown.]

 

[Juglenaut]

I guess if the core was solid gold the dB losses would be lower and kept really cold, having a plated gold connector is just for corrosion protection as the mill thickness is well very thin and having a whole long cable made out of copper with silver plate will not change it's impedance characteristics much since this is audio, most cables have about the same losses I do not care how huge the thing is, or how much shielding it has, one ply is good enough for me.

I am sure there are cables out there that have lower losses, but why amps ussualy are made to compensate for these losses and difference in impedances.

So why pay more for cables when you could buy a better amp.

Basically cables are series inductors (core), and parallel capacitors, (ground reference shield), and are impedance set by the distance from the core to the reference, this impedance is the same through out the cable, however losses increase with legnth.

 

[BTRJA]

The "monster cable" scam is true. I've worked at a fair many of electronic stores and at all of them tell you to try to up sell the most expensive accessories. If you want to tel the difference between the cabels read the back and compare. Most likely you will find that the so called lesser cables are really of the same if not a better quality than that of the higher priced "better" ones. Also compsre the prices on different stores and that of their websites. Some stores will price things higher at their stores than their webstite.

 

[tansis]

If you want to tel the difference between the cabels read the back and compare.

Always worth a try , sadly most of the time what
little information that is gleaned from this endevour is...

" Also available in different colours "


Speaking of colours, anyone recall the brief episode of
audiophiles painting the inside of CD players green?