General Kenobi

Are they worth the price??? Do you really get better sound??? Resolution???

joshd2012

On this forum, the Monster Cable discussion is a heated topic which can never be answered. Some people, like be, believe you get a difference with Monster, but others argue that you would get the same quality from the same cable that came in the box and that the changes you see are in your head. It is all personal preference really, you will never get a unanimous answer from this board.

Christo

This subject does come up all the time. But the thing is, it's not really a subjective thing, is it? I mean, if these are better cables there should be some numbers to backup the claim. It's not like signal strength, interference or impedence can't be quantified. And I would think MonsterCable would have study results on their website, but they don't. Not that I could find anyway.

So, frankly, I'm suspicious. They are pretty cool looking though It's subjective how much you're willing to pay for that.

If anyone does or already has come across a study, post it. Has Consumer Reports ever evaluated them?

joltaddict

I have a Monster S-Vid cable that I cant tell any appreciable difference with but my Monster subwoofer cable made a huge leap in quality.

joltaddict

The arguement isnt usually that there not of higher quality, its that how much of a difference does the bump in strength, interference or impedence have to be before the human ear can actually hear the difference.

Kman1011

You get what you pay for, the reason there are free cables in the box is obvious they are cheap and they cost nothing. If you have a good systyem it is foolish to use cheap cables. Would you put retread tires on a corvette?

Josh H

Monster cables are definitely much better than what comes in the box with stereos, DVD players etc. However, in my experience the much cheaper "Gold" cables from Radio Shack are just as good as the monster cables you can get in stores like Circuit City. Monster makes higher end cables that most retail stores don't carry, I haven't tried them as they are ridiculously expensive and my $10 radio shack cables are fine for me as I'm not an audio or videophile.

Outlaw

I've got monster xp navajo white cables that I got as a free in store promotion with my speakers. To tell you the truth I couldn't really hear that much of a difference in sound quality. I do believe they are better than standard cable, but you'll only hear the sound difference if you have some pretty hefty and expensive speakers like Energy or Klipsch. I probably wouldn't have gotten them if I had to pay money for them though as the difference (if any) is only marginal, but I couldn't tell the difference. Try posting in the hometheater forum, the people there are really knowledgable people and take HT pretty seriously (those who can afford it that is ).

duy37

Instead of using the cheesy RCA cable that Sony provides i bought a Monster S-Video PS2 cable and the difference is night and day.

Static Cling

I believe that difference is coming from the difference in the signal transmitted by RCA vs. S-Video cables. Have you compared your Monster S-Video PS2 cable to a non-Monster S-Video PS2 cable?

~~ PAL ~~

As people have said, everyone have different opinions regarding the "worthiness" of Monster Cables. Basically it's not a question about their quality, but whether the inflated price justifies the "quality improvement" over competitors' cables.

The only side-by-side comaprison I've done was between a Monster's toslink cable vs. a generic brand one on a PS2. I bought the Monster cable for my DVD player years ago when it was the only fiber optic cable that I could find in the stores. This year, when I'm setting up the digital audio for the PS2, I decided to try out some MUCH cheaper generic toslink cable. For kicks, I also swapped in the Monster cable for comparison. To me, I could NOT hear any difference between the two cables. But this is probably since it's a digital cable, so there should not be any signal degradations. But anyway, people that want to buy Monster's digital cables probably won't get much, if any, audio quality improvement over a generic counterpart.

PAL

Lethal Nemesis

I have a Monster S-Vid cable for my PS2, but any other "generic" PS2 S-Vid cable should be good enough. There probably isn't that much, if any, difference in quality as long as it's an S-Video cable. It's a huge leap over composite.

gcribbs

I used to think that there was a difference. Now i am not so sure.

I really have bought and interchanged cables before and noticed no difference.


I am not going to tell you that zip cord will work the same. I do however think that a good quality cable can be found for far less than what monster is charging.

SmackDaddy

I'm of the opinion that the use of Monster Cables or any other high end cables is generally a waste of money for most applications. I design cables for the seismic industry, where signal loss is even more important than in audio/video apps. So I have learned quite a bit about cable component quality and how it affects signal loss under different conditions.

I do agree, though, that most "in-box" cables are of a general low quality. The only time high end cables would really be of any practical use is when you are running a long length of wire(like over 100' of speaker wire for example) where the distance will add to the signal loss. Go to Ratshack and buy some of their gold-plated audio/video cables for half the price and you'll be just as happy.