::Chuckles:: Monster Cables vs. Metal Coat Hangers

WHAT! THEY USED A SWITCHBOX? THAT AUTOMATICALLY MAKES THE TEST INVALID BECAUSE ANY DIFFERENCES IN CABLES WILL BE NEGATED BY THE SWITCH AND WILL SOUND THE SAME!

That's what audiophile morons are going to claim. :D If two different cables sound different to them, adding a switch and length of cable that doesn't change, they somehow claim it cancels the differences in the wire that they claim sounds different. In mathematical terms, if we assign arbitrary numbers to two different cables with different sounds, say 4 and 7, and then we add some constant, say 3, 4+3=7+3 to them.
 
dandragonrage said:
WHAT! THEY USED A SWITCHBOX? THAT AUTOMATICALLY MAKES THE TEST INVALID BECAUSE ANY DIFFERENCES IN CABLES WILL BE NEGATED BY THE SWITCH AND WILL SOUND THE SAME!

That's what audiophile morons are going to claim. :D If two different cables sound different to them, adding a switch and length of cable that doesn't change, they somehow claim it cancels the differences in the wire that they claim sounds different. In mathematical terms, if we assign arbitrary numbers to two different cables with different sounds, say 4 and 7, and then we add some constant, say 3, 4+3=7+3 to them.
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Actually, there could be some truth to that statement. But not likely anything that woudl be audble.
 
I think most well-informed audiophiles already know cables don't have very much effect on sound quality. They just go ahead and upgrade the cables not because they think it's a major factor, but because they've already maxed out all of their other components.

Besides, real audiophiles know to never buy monster cable. It's a consumer brand marketed to general consumers that want to be audiophiles ;).
 
dandragonrage said:
If two different cables sound different to them, adding a switch and length of cable that doesn't change, they somehow claim it cancels the differences in the wire that they claim sounds different.
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I think the argument would be that it diminishes the 'advantage' of one cable over another, leading to unreliable trials (a potentially discernible difference is negated to an indiscernible difference due to the switch). Any switch is going to 'damage' the signal, hopefully equally -- it's just a question or how little or how much, though I'd guess even a pretty crudely-designed switch would have no audible impact whatsoever.

In the interest of objectivity, I'd like to see the exact configuration of the switch, but I'm not sure I really care.
 
Let me say first off that for short runs I consider some cheap thing with a sturdy connector more than sufficient. Shielding issues probably come into play too, but we are talking about a simple device that shouldn't cost us hundreds of dollars to get right.

The description of the test procedures seems dubious, even for a blind test. If the goal is to determine whether cables make a difference at all, then the participants should not be trying to guess which one is the Monster cable. They should simply be asked to compare A to X and B to X, as often as they like, and state which one is X, and then repeat the process a significant number of times. Perhaps that is what was done, but from the description posted, they could have just as easily been asked which one is the Monster, which one sounds better, etc.

Granted, if you reach a conclusion that people subjectively prefer a coat hanger wire to a Monster cable, that's pretty funny stuff. But we are talking about a very small sample of people on a single test system. Maybe if a different amp were used, or a different speaker, or a different group of 7 people, the Monster cable would be preferred. It would be more conclusive to show that the people could not differentiate between the Monster and coathanger whatsoever. After all, isn't that what most skeptics believe?

Simple arithmetic does not work in the audiophile world, either. You might think that the goal is to maintain maximum accuracy at each step in the chain, but in reality it is more like trying to get the pluses from one component and the minuses from another component to add up just right. There is a reason people prize tube amps that would objectively appear to be less accurate that a decent solid state amp.
 
OK guys, dont be to fooled here. I am in no means going to say monster cable is worth the money. The article does not give details, but if they used the coat hanger for the amplified output to the speaker, there should be ZERO difference between any peice of copper used in that short of distance. NOW....... if they swapped monster cable for coat hangers on an unamplified source such as CD pre outs, phono plugs, or anything that needs to be amplified, there is no way in hell anyone would want to use a coat hanger. Any little bit of noise would be amplified. Set that coat hanger next to a power supply or an AC outlet. All of a sudden, all your mp3 files will have a 60hz hum to it. This is a simple shielding principle. I am not saying monster is better than other shielded cheap-o RCA cables, but it is with out a doubt better than a coat hanger on sources that still need to run through the amp.
 
Well, not so much an outlet, but running parallel to a cable with a good amount of current running through it, perhaps. Current creates an electrical field, not voltage, and it depends on the angle they cross at.
 
There is some guy on headfi who claims he can hear the difference between the type of fuses used in his house fuse box. Haha. Any time I start seeing an audiophile start proclaiming how this or that sounds "chocolaty" smooth I run away.
 
WinMan_x2000 said:
OK guys, dont be to fooled here. I am in no means going to say monster cable is worth the money. The article does not give details, but if they used the coat hanger for the amplified output to the speaker, there should be ZERO difference between any peice of copper used in that short of distance. NOW....... if they swapped monster cable for coat hangers on an unamplified source such as CD pre outs, phono plugs, or anything that needs to be amplified, there is no way in hell anyone would want to use a coat hanger. Any little bit of noise would be amplified. Set that coat hanger next to a power supply or an AC outlet. All of a sudden, all your mp3 files will have a 60hz hum to it. This is a simple shielding principle. I am not saying monster is better than other shielded cheap-o RCA cables, but it is with out a doubt better than a coat hanger on sources that still need to run through the amp.
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Well, you can wrap the coat hanger wire with electrical tape to solve any interference issues and to make sure you don't get a short. 60hz hum (ground loop hum) is caused by two or more hardware devices not having common ground and not because the wire is not shielded.
 
milkweg said:
Well, you can wrap the coat hanger wire with electrical tape to solve any interference issues and to make sure you don't get a short. 60hz hum (ground loop hum) is caused by two or more hardware devices not having common ground and not because the wire is not shielded.
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Electrical tape does not sheild a conductor, and the hum in this case wouldn't be caused by a ground loop. If a mains conductor is laying parallel to an unsheilded speaker conductor it will induce a weak 60hz A/C signal into the speaker conductor that becomes audible when the speaker responds to it. Sheilding, which is a grounded secondary conductor that surrounds the primary conductor, would absorb this interference and shunt it to ground.
 
Mortagen said:
really?
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If you are in question to ryan statement about shielding he is correct.

When dealing with low power signal wires shielding is important, however with speaker wire this is a high power signal and any outside noise introduced would be far below the signal to not even matter. We talking several orders of magnitude difference.

Electrical tape is an insulator not a shield.
 
fss69 said:
I think most well-informed audiophiles already know cables don't have very much effect on sound quality. They just go ahead and upgrade the cables not because they think it's a major factor, but because they've already maxed out all of their other components.

Besides, real audiophiles know to never buy monster cable. It's a consumer brand marketed to general consumers that want to be audiophiles ;).
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LoL. At second glance, that's a surprisingly insightful way of looking at it.
 
fss69 said:
I think most well-informed audiophiles already know cables don't have very much effect on sound quality. They just go ahead and upgrade the cables not because they think it's a major factor, but because they've already maxed out all of their other components.
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If you spend some time at the Audiogon or Audio Asylum forums you might think otherwise. From what I've seen the majority of posters there would say that cables make a very large difference in sound quality. You see terms such as amazing, enormous, night and day, etc, thrown around there quite often.
 
It's relative.

Cables do make a small difference, but I don't think anyone thinks they will improve your system as much as a major upgrade.

But the connectors are the part that you can tweak and change without going bankrupt. Going from $300 speakers to $3000 speakers will have a bigger difference in terms of sound quality than merely improving your cables. But once you splash out on $3000 speakers, how often are you going to go and improve them? Sometimes it's better to save your cash and "only" spend a few hundred improving your cables than several thousand.

Also, connectors get a lot of attention on forums because it's the part that you can customize. It is more difficult to build audio equipment the same way that you can build your own customized computers. But you can buy all the different pieces and connect it up your way using your cables and say "that system's mine".

So cables get plenty of attention.
 
coat hangers are not very flexable, I'd have a hell of a time running them in my truck. But you could probbaly shield them with tin foil and electrical tape :)
 
ryan_975 said:
Sheilding, which is a grounded secondary conductor that surrounds the primary conductor, would absorb this interference and shunt it to ground.
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Some Monster cables have nothing more than a rubber jacket and no shielding at all. In comparison, my Rocketfish coax cable has both copper and aluminum shielding with a cloth jacket and cost half of what a Monster coax cable cost.
 
milkweg said:
No it isn't. Shielding is simply a material to isolate the cable from electrical interference. Some Monster cables have nothing more than a rubber jacket and no shielding at all. In comparison, my Rocketfish coax cable has both copper and aluminum shielding with a cloth jacket and cost half of what a Monster coax cable cost.
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Yes, it is. Sheilding absorbs EMI and shunts it to ground (or common, or sink, whatever) If it didn't then it would act as a second source of interference as it reacts with the primary source.


EDIT: haha, i caught your ninja edit. :p
 
Nicolaskl said:
If you spend some time at the Audiogon or Audio Asylum forums you might think otherwise. From what I've seen the majority of posters there would say that cables make a very large difference in sound quality. You see terms such as amazing, enormous, night and day, etc, thrown around there quite often.
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Yea, there is a true story I read about some moron that plays for the NYS and thinks he has golden ears just because he is a musician. He claims his $10,000.00 speaker cable makes a massive difference to audio quality. If anything, a musician will have worse hearing than the average person because they are subjected to loud music on a frequent basis.
 
ryan_975 said:
Yes, it is. Sheilding absorbs EMI and shunts it to ground (or common, or sink, whatever) If it didn't then it would act as a second source of interference as it reacts with the primary source.
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I had already edited my post before I read yours. If shielding is so important then why does Monster make digital coax with no shielding at all? I know they do, or did, because London Drugs tried to sell me one such Monster cable and when I saw all it had was a simple rubber jacket I went and bought the Rocketfish at Futrueshop for half the price which did have shielding. Monster doesn't seem to think shielding is all that important though and I think a couple of you are misleading us by trying to make it look like it is really important. The fact is the coat hanger wire sounds the same as Monster cable. That doesn't mean I am going to start using bare coat hanger wire as speaker cable. It does mean I buy my speaker wire from the dollar store at $9.99 for 100ft of 16g and will never give a penny to the likes of Monster etc.
 
I have a couple Monster cables. Got 'em on Ebay :D got a video cable for $.01 + s/h (reasonable s/h)
 
All I know is that I will no longer look to monster cables as my cable of choice. I will be purchasing the black no-named brand! Thanks!
 
milkweg said:
Well, you can wrap the coat hanger wire with electrical tape to solve any interference issues and to make sure you don't get a short. 60hz hum (ground loop hum) is caused by two or more hardware devices not having common ground and not because the wire is not shielded.
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I LOL'd at this. This could not be any further from the truth. Tell you what. Go take a powered sub, connect a standard coat hanger / monster cable / any cable you like to the low level input. Then turn the sub over 1/4 power. Then simply touch the part of the cable the signal travels on the other side. UH OH!? what do you know!? A 60hz hum! Last time I checked, I do not have a ground loop running through me. Your body is an antenna for all frequencies surrounding you. Since this is a low level input, the sub will amplify the signals. Now, take your coat hanger / monster cable / any cable you like that is connected to a speaker and touch those ends. Last time I checked, my body does not have enough power to make the speaker move.

Again, do not read into what I am saying. I am in no way telling people to run and buy monster cables. They are good cables, just not worth the price. My point was, the test shown in the article is bogus.
 
ryan_975 said:
I'm not saying buy monster cables, I would never recommend that.

At line levels, sheilding isn't important because the interference would be in the millivolts range vs several 10's to 100's of volts the actual of the actual signal. At pre-amp level, where at most the signal is less than 10 volts p-p, a few millivolts would definately cause some distortion.

Now, a digital signal is more robust than an analog one. Sound is produced based of a pattern of voltage changes rather then the level of the instantaneous voltages that analog reproductions use.
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Thanks for the technical reply. Being an electrical engineer, my wife always tells me that no one gives a shit about how things work and to explain things normal people can understand. I guess I should have replied in this technical manner. Great explination, and exactly what point I was making.
 
ryan_975 said:
At line levels, sheilding isn't important because the interference would be in the millivolts range vs several 10's to 100's of volts the actual of the actual signal. At pre-amp level, where at most the signal is less than 10 volts p-p, a few millivolts would definately cause some distortion..
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Well, not often an audio signal gets in the range of 100 volts, even 10 volts is pretty high. In terms of interconnects, like between soundcard and amp, the signal is 0.316V RMS for consumer gear. It is quite low voltage, and is an unbalanced signal, hence why it is normally done over shielded coaxial cable. Speakers are much higher voltage, but still probably not as high as you'd think. If you take an 8 ohm speaker, which is pretty normal, 3 volts will give you a current of 0.375 amps, which gives you a little over 1 watt, which is actually a pretty normal listening level (most people don't push their speakers near as hard as they think). To hit 100 volts on 8 ohm speakers you have to be pushing 1,250 watts per channel. Pretty rare to do that, or even to have an amp that can (that'd be a 2,500 watt amp minimum).

For speakers, since it is a low impedance balanced signal, shielding isn't of an issue, hence line cord works pretty well. However for interconnects shielding certainly can be an issue. However a good coax cable, like the kind used for video, will solve all but the most extreme interference problems nicely.
 
If I spent anything more than $10 for my speakers, I wouldn't mind dropping $2 on a couple feet of cat5.
 
WinMan_x2000 said:
OK guys, dont be to fooled here. I am in no means going to say monster cable is worth the money. The article does not give details, but if they used the coat hanger for the amplified output to the speaker, there should be ZERO difference between any peice of copper used in that short of distance. NOW....... if they swapped monster cable for coat hangers on an unamplified source such as CD pre outs, phono plugs, or anything that needs to be amplified, there is no way in hell anyone would want to use a coat hanger. Any little bit of noise would be amplified. Set that coat hanger next to a power supply or an AC outlet. All of a sudden, all your mp3 files will have a 60hz hum to it. This is a simple shielding principle. I am not saying monster is better than other shielded cheap-o RCA cables, but it is with out a doubt better than a coat hanger on sources that still need to run through the amp.
Click to expand...

exactly what i was going to say

ryan_975 said:
I'm not saying buy monster cables, I would never recommend that.

At line levels, sheilding isn't important because the interference would be in the millivolts range vs several 10's to 100's of volts the actual of the actual signal. At pre-amp level, where at most the signal is less than 10 volts p-p, a few millivolts would definately cause some distortion.

Now, a digital signal is more robust than an analog one. Sound is produced based of a pattern of voltage changes rather then the level of the instantaneous voltages that analog reproductions use.
Click to expand...

10-100v? are you on crack!? :eek:

there are three accepted "line levels"

+6 dBu 1.55 V
+4 dBu 1.228 V
−10 dBV 0.3162 V

most consumer stuff is -10dBV

and if you mean preamp as in phono levels those are measured in mV! (average phono preamp has to amplify 1000x... so noise should be measured in uV at that point... ideally)
 
FLECOM said:
exactly what i was going to say



10-100v? are you on crack!? :eek:

there are three accepted "line levels"

+6 dBu 1.55 V
+4 dBu 1.228 V
−10 dBV 0.3162 V

most consumer stuff is -10dBV

and if you mean preamp as in phono levels those are measured in mV! (average phono preamp has to amplify 1000x... so noise should be measured in uV at that point... ideally)
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Sorry, I was incredibly tired when I wrote that. I didn't realize I'd botched the explanation so badly.
 
WinMan_x2000 said:
Your voltages were off, but your concept was right.
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unless you have a very quiet (electrically) area and all your equipment is very well sheilded, not having a shield on your line level cables could most definately induce noise into your system (60hz hum, that AM station on the college down the street etc)
 
I'll buy monster cable.

at a heavily discounted price on ebay ($1.00 + $4.00 s/h)

I like the higher quality FEEL of their cables compared to no name brands that I can get for roughly a few dollars less on ebay.

does it make a difference in sound? not that I can hear. They just tend to look nicer/feel better in your hand IMO.

but yea, full price on monster cables is HORSESHIT. $120 hdmi? FUCK THAT.
 
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