Monster Cable or regular cable (1 Viewer)

[Jimmy W]

Does anyone know if monster cable is worth the money. The only difference I can see is that the wiring jacket/shielding is thicker than the regular brand wiring. The internal wiring looks about the same size.
Thanks for any input.

 

[Bruce Hedtke]

Jimmy,
This is an ugly can of worms to reopen. The cable debate is neverending. Personally, I think cables can make a difference, under specific circumstances. In general, I think you could get away with less expensive brands and not know the difference.
Also, run a search and I'm sure you'll find plenty of opinions on your question.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...monster+cables
Bruce

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Monster is good quality, but over-priced.
For a "Modest" system, the AR brand of video cables or even Radio Shack work fine.
By "Modest" I mean all of the following:
- Run length of 6 feet or less
- Display size of 50" or less
- Running ordinary (not progressive or HD) video
- Going to a ordinary TV (not a HD TV that up-converts)
When you violate any of the above, you are in the area where the cable could make a visible difference.
The best value for the money is to hit one of the cable web sites and have them make up a cable for you. They will use the same coax used by the Broadcast industry or production studios. You can get a $90 component video cable set that will rival the $280 Monster Video 3 cable set.
So hit www.bettercables.com Link Removed www.wickedcables.com and give them a try.
Is this the type of info you were looking for?

 

[Jeremy Little]

Essentially, without opening a can of worms myself, I would recommend steering clear of the "patch cords" that come with units themselves. You know the ones, very thin and with no physical difference between video and audio cables. They suck and should be avoided at all cost. You don't have to be an audio or videophile to see where they lack. Also, avoid buying cables that look just like these. I know that these are usually sold under the recoton name, but others make them as well.

 

[efren]

I'm with Jeremy here. I had to replace those "stock" cables that came with my JVC progressive scan DVD because the signal on the 5.1 output rears kept going out. I don't know why I even bothered using it in the first place. :frowning:

 

[Scott Page]

Jimmy,
Cable for what?
Speaker wire?
Interconnects?
Digital coax?
Fiber?
Component cables?
Subwoofer wire?
There is lots of products made by Monster so please be more specific with your posts in the future.
I can tell you that on MY TV, using MY DVD player, that Bettercables.com component cables were better than Monsters top of the line component cables. However, while I noticed an improvement, I doubt that anyone in my family would notice. The differences were very subtle. Component cables are the one cable that I wouldn't scrimp on, but that is just me. Digital wire used makes no difference so use the cheapest digital coax at Radio Shack.

 

[Ted Lee]

ultimately, you'll need to decide for yourself if the extra cost is worth the money.
what i recommend you do is purchase two additional grade cables. get something from rat-shack or acoustic research (which i use) then buy yourself some of the more expensive stuff. just make sure you can return it.
then do some testing. if possible get a friend to help switch cables so that you don't know which cable is being used at which time. my dvd player can do dual audio output...that was useful to help make A/B comparing a little easier.
play music you know really well and play the same passage over and over. try to keep everything equal...chaning ONLY the cables. definitely don't touch the volume control!
then let your ears be your guide. try to determine if one cables sound BETTER...not different.
in any case, my own results found that i could hear a difference between the crappy cables and rat-shack, but i couldn't hear any difference between the rat-shack and monster. since the rat-shack stuff is 1/3rd the price...it was a no-brainer for me.
remember the golden rule..."if you hear it, then it exists!"

 

[Jeremy Little]

Digital wire used makes no difference so use the cheapest digital coax at Radio Shack.

This is a very common argument and one I'd like some clarification on myself. The Bits is Bits argument and all that. Well, what about lost bits? Don't those count for anything? A printer, also binary 1's and 0's allows for no errors. If it encounters some, it asks the computer to resend the missing data. It gathers this in its memory and when complete it prints your document. This happens without even realizing it. This is not possible with either coax nor optical as they are both one way cables. What do you do with missing bits (if you say ALL information reaches the other end and there is NO loss, you are kidding yourself)? Are they just gone for good? What causes them to be lost or dropped if it wasn't the quality of the cable. Take a cheap fiber optic and better one and plug them into a DVD or other output device (I'm not partial to brands, so lets just say a $50 vs. a $12 optical). When you shine the other end onto a white piece of paper at equal distances, what causes the better one to appear more focused and brighter? What detrimental affects does this have on your audio if you choose to go with the cheaper one? Before I concede to any of the above digital audio cable comments, I'd like to hear some answers on the above questions. Factual info only, no blatant opinions as they will get nowhere.

 

[Scott Page]

Jeremy makes a good point about the digital wire.

When I said get the cheap radio shack coax, I was really indicating that spending a lot on the more expensive toslink cable is a waste in my opinion. The radio shack digital coax cables seem to be of very high quality to me and reasonable priced, so I don't see a need to spend more. I really meant to compare coax with toslink. People often ask which is better. Personally I don't think the more expensive toslink cables are better than the cheaper "good-quality" coax cables.

I'm not sure how lost bits are handled with CD's and DVD's? But I suspect that there is a software mechanism with a digital "key" to ensure/verify that the bits are received correctly. Anybody know about this?

 

[Jimmy W]

I want to thank everyone who replied for their great info.

THANKS.