Is Monster Cable much better than Acoustic Research ? (1 Viewer)

[anthony_b]

I'm looking into upgrading my old recoton digital coaxial cable that was a gift about 3 years ago with my first DVD player. Now I'm looking into Monster or AR.......Monster digital coax is about $40 for 3ft and Acoustic Research is about $20.....Is it worth the extra money ?

 

[John Morris]

IMO, certainly NOT on a digital coax cable. Get the AR.
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[Bill Buklis]

There are more factors than merely signal quality for which is better. Things to look for are good construction and ease of use. I tend to like Monster cables because they are easy to take on and off and are extremely more flexible than cheap cables, i.e. makes them easier to route around things. For non-digital cables, there can be a notable difference in signal quality. However, in comparison to another reasonably good quality cable it may not matter much. I'm not overly familiar with Acoustic Research cables. But, if they're similar in construction and feel to the Monster cable version, then I'd say yeah definitely save the money and buy the AR cable.
Now if you were to ask are Monster cables better than say Radio Shack gold cables, I'd give an emphatic YES.
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[jeff lam]

Forget $20, I'm using the $12 AR video cable to run my Coax. On the back of the package it states "This cable is ideal for digital coax applications". It has worked great for me so far.

 

[Bob-N]

Probably not IMO. I've got the AR Pro Series (HT-1xx) running my digital audio, video and my sub cables and they're great. I just got my DVD player yesterday (Panny RV31k) and watched the first 10 mins. of Shrek before going off to bed. Definately better than your $2 patch cords. Save the extra dough and go with AR. The connectors are really nice and the cables are very flexible.

 

[Mark Rich]

The cheaper AR cables are exactly the same as the Radio Shack gold series. They are sold in Radio Shack (Canada). Same packaging, same connectors etc... Just the name change. Not that they are a bad cable.
I started with Radio shack gold then switched to Monster 3. There was a small improvement. Then I upgraded to my current cable and I noticed a large improvement. Belden 1506a based cable. I found the digital cable made more of an improvement in my system than the analog audio cables did.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Comparing Monster and AR optical cables, they do both look pretty much the same. There is one Monster cable, though that is HUGE in comparison to the other optical cables. The jacket of the cable itself is more than twice the diameter of the basic Monster line. I don't remember which it is right off, but I think it's the Datalink 200. A one-meter cable runs about $70 here.
I have used basic Sony and Monster optical cables and could not tell a difference between the two. I am using Monster Datalink 100 cables for dts from my LD player and digital audio output from my cd changer. I switched to a high-end Monster digital audio cable from my DVD player to receiver because it (in my opinion) offered better sound than optical without clipping at high volumes.
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My DVD Collection Casa del Clint
[Edited last by Clinton on November 08, 2001 at 01:05 PM]

 

[Keith Mickunas]

I've bought several of AR Pro cables recently, and I like them a lot. I have one of the $40 Monster optical cables, and compared the the

 

[MarkO]

I have a set of cheap AR interconects that sound great in my car's system, but sound horrible in my home system compared to the much more expensive DH Labs silver sonic cable that I tried to use. On the other hand The DH Labs sounds many times better that the AR interconects when used in my home system. The only way to see if the extra money is worth spending is to try the cable in youre particular system and listen (or look) for youreself.