Just thought I'd toss that up and see if i could start any fights.

Copper wire is copper wire. Monster laughs all the way to the bank every time you buy their ****.

i agree, but this is the wrong forum.

i have to disagree with part of your statement. monster cable is not useless, it is just no different than any other cheaper audio company out there. their products do perform well and are reliable, but so are other companies.

copper wire is just copper wire - agreed

Here is what monster cable offers that cheaper ones do not:
more flexible wire strands
sheilding

I dont think the sheilding does crap, but their wires are really flexible and durable, which is nice.

Oh crap wrong forum! move to car audio

True, better to be in Car Audio. But I will quickly say the Monster is the devil. Their products overall are inferior (they make more than just power wire) and way overpriced. But it is their business practices that are the worst. They will sue anyone using the term monster (eg Monster House got sued for using the word Monster).

offset

my ps2 s-video monster cable is a piece of crap. the end that connects to the ps2 has gold pins which bend too much and result in inconsistent signals. sometimes its black and white, sometimes no sound, sometimes it goes all blurry....gotta mess with it too much to fix it.

I <3 my Monster pro XLN's I got for cheap.

-- Dave

Monster cable USED TO be top of the line until many other wire manufacturers adopted their designs such as many finer strands of wire versus a few thicker strands, to have more surface area for better current flow. And twisted pair interconnects have been around for decades but they are not really suited to car audio since they can not cancel out every possible interfering signal. Depending on the twists per inch they may not even help, in addition to the fact that they add resistance which further complicates the problem. Plain coaxial cable will always do an excellent job as long as the outer shield is complete and as long as the shield goes from end to end. Many rca cables are shielded up to the end and then the two wires seperate inside a plastic unshielded rca connector. There's no point even shielding the cable unless the rca connectors are metal and connected to the outer shield. Audio gurus, have at it.

I'll agree with everything you said, except the part about twisted pair. Twisted pair has been used in Pro audio forever, at lengths of up to several hundred feet, and near all sorts of high power. It does the best job for being just copper wire at rejecting noise, especially when coupled with a balanced send. That's the key though. It has to be a balanced signal. (Positive side of the waveform on one wire, negative on the other wire, and connect the shield at both ends. Only lift the ground at one end if you encounter noise.)

All you ever need to know about wire. (http://www.westpenn-cdt.com/)

I will never buy monster cables simply for thier business practices.

They are a horrible business and pickon the big and small guys all the time

My experience with monster cable has been that while they do make a good product, it's way over-priced for what it is. They try to hype it up that people's $200 surround sound system will sound so much better with $500 worth of cable to connect all of their components. :rolleyes:

That being said, I've seen much worse... I work for a high end audio electronics manufacturer. In our demo room we have speaker cables that cost upwards of $1000/ft :eek: yes, you read that correctly. While some people claim to be able to "hear" the difference... to me as an engineer, it simply doesn't make much sense. Wire is wire.

While I agree that Monster is overpriced, I can't imagine that most people would suggest going with some $2 set of RCA's from Walmart (though I might be wrong).

So, what would you suggest? For speaker wire and/or RCA's?

uhh, copper wire is not just copper wire.
There is purification that goes into any metal working.
good audio grade copper wire should be OFC (or oxygen free copper).

Monster uses OFC copper of good quality.

That being said I don't buy there stuff either since I believe there are better nonbrand name stuff out there that costs less. :D You just have to know what to look for.

Anyone who tries to sell me a monster cable feels like an idiot when I'm through. I actually had a salesperson try to explain the shielding benefits of monster cable in FIBER OPTIC cabling. I watched him squirm when I asked him to explain how interference of any kind affects lightwave transmission. The funniest part is that he tried.

In a local electronics store (similar to Best Buy) there was this 'demo' kiosk unit setup to show the superior quality of Monster Video cables. In the setup they hooked up two LCD TVs to DVD players playing the same test patterns. The TV using the Monster cable used the 3-connector component video cable while the 'conventional' cable used was a single coax composite video cable connected to the second TV.

Of course, the test patterns looked worst on the 'conventional' cable setup. I wondered how many people were fooled by that setup, not realizing that the poor video quality is from combining the different video channels into the Composite signal, and not the cables. Pretty shady, IMO.

best buy does have a few tricks up their sleeves on displays, i used to work there lol....but some of monster cable stuff isnt bad, name brand cables are a good idea, especially if your looking for clarity, cleaner picture....but there are other brands not so pricey that are just as good or better......if you do your own personal in home tests, you can see the diff between a standard video cable, or an upgraded video cable w/ shielding and blah blah etc....

as far as cables go there is a diff. the problem is if you install crap no matter how good the cables still crap. as far as the guy with the 200 dollar stereo and 500 dollars in cable that is retarted. copper is not just copper the thinner the strands the more there is and better flexibility. also most companies use oxygen free copper which lasts alot longer. second has anyone seen copper wire turn green-that is called corrosion. it is like saying that a kia is the same thing as a subaru and subaru is laughing all the way to the bank. just because you dont see the need or understand the diff does not mean there is not one.