Good, Affordable Cables/Connections for new HT... (1 Viewer)

I am looking for some quality cables that are not too expensive. I looked at the prices of the monster cables and was shocked. This of course being that I am going to need several sets of cables to inlcude coaxial digital, optical digital, component video, DVI-D video, and RCA type audio connections. Can anybody recommend a company that can meet all of these needs (with maybe the exception being the DVI-D which I can handle the cost on understandably) and keep my wallet from shrinking to nothing? Thanks!

AR Cables - probably at Best Buy or partsexpress.com www.bettercables.com www.diycable.com www.bluejeanscable.com www.cobaltcable.com www.boldercables.com etc.

Rhinocables.net, Avcable.com Signalcables.com elementcables.com etc...

How fat's that wallet John?

Nice quote Mark...recall this one from Faust? "Mann soll zum hoechsten dasein streben"

Hope my german's not too rusty with the spelling

Guys, guys.... i was asking for CHEAPER cables than Monster Cable Offerings. The first level MC's were $40-ish, and some of the links that were provided were talking more like $100-200-ish. I'm looking for good quality cabling but without the huge price. I know that may be a little contridictory, but I'm sure there is something out there. Anyone???

Chu should be able to provide some good sources of affordable (cheap) cables.

Chu,
Only wish I spoke German. Then I could hear what my wives family really thinks of me

John, I gave you AR as one choice. You need to look at the varios choices before indicating they are out of your price range. They don't get much cheaper than that for decent quality cable - http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...D=119713&DID=7

If you go to Parts Express you can search by brand name and find all levels of quality from AR cables.

Believe it or not Mark, I think you're an ok guy but I won't tell you that in german! The translation is "Man should strive for the highest form of existence".

I'll post something a bit later...if you're still reading this Mr. Doh, come up with a # of each and I'll rustle up some 'thrifty' cables that won't compromise the performance of your system a bit.

Phil,

Yea the AR cables looked to be more my speed. They are the front runners so far unless someone can recommend others, thanks!

Did you look at the Dayton branded cables on PartsExpress? I think they're more than those AR's but cheaper than Monster. Anyone have any input on their (Dayton's) quality?

Why don't you pop over to www.trianglecable.com and check out their offerings? The component cables vastly exceed the requirements of your equipment by several orders of magnitude. For a sub cable you can use anything that's got a copper center conductor and shielded. Some have simply bought cable with F connectors and slapped on some F to RCA adapters and this works well. Digital cables can also be any copper center conductor that's shielded.
For speaker wire, you can simply get some 12 gauge at Home Depot or Lowes, otherwise SoundKing isn't badly priced over at partsexpress.
I believe that pacific cable carries DVI but I don't know if one can buy similar for less.

I've got nothing against AR. You see, once you exceed the requirements that are needed for your equipment, best becomes a rather subjective matter with no verifiable means of establishing superiority in certain areas like video quality. One defines the requirements (ex. I need a video cable that'll pass a 35 MHz signal into my TV.) OK, then what kind of a cable does this? Engineering guidlines suggest a bandwidth 3x this amount or approximately 100 MHz to avoid noticeable signal degradation. OK, so now we've got cables that run about $10 or so with a bandwidth of 10x even that...1 GHz (and that's for 100 feet...it's even greater at say 2 meters). So what's a 3 GHz cable going to give you in the way of improved picture quality? You tell me.

I decided to go with the cables from BlueJeansCable. It would up being about only $5 - 10 more per cable than the AR Pro series 1 cables from AccessoriesforLess.com. Im sure that they are worth at least that and more since the Belden cables are about the best you can get at an affordable price. Just my 2.

With BlueJeans, just make sure you get the more flexible cable if you've got a short run. Some of their cables can be very stiff and I got caught out there by not heeding their warnings on the stiffer cable. Their customer service is so great it didn't cause major problems, but was just a pain the arse. 90% of my cables are BlueJeans.

I have the Dayton cables and think they're great. The price was definitely right, and they are built well. In my opinion they should be on your short list.

I hope so because I just ordered a bunch of optical cables of theirs. 7.5 for a 2m cable was almost half of what I was seeing at other retailers, BM and online. Can't beat that price with a stick.

I wound up going with a cable assembler on eBay who uses Canare connectors and cable. Before shipping a 3' component set cost me 26.50. Longer sets cost an additional 2.40 per foot. Shipping was only 8.40 for three 3' sets and one 12' set. All told it cost me 136.00 for the sets. I believe they would be equivalent to BlueJeans - same parts and materials - but ultimately about 40.00 less. Again, be warned about the stiffness of the cable - essentially it's coax and anything shorter than three feet is a bear to manipulate in tight quarters.

I bought my 6' DVI-D cable from Pacific Cable and that ran about $30.00. Optical cablesI just bought from Radio Shack.

I built my own using Canare cable and tools. I had a number of AR cables prior to making my own. AR may have changed their cable cover material but I sure hated the gray vinyl like covering on mine. While it looks good the covering is very resistant to snaking or pulling through the mass of cables that reside behind a home theater setup.

LINDY has some very good DVI cables. These are of exceptional quality yet a reasonable price.

You can visit them @: can't post url for 14 more posts.]

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