Buying new TV

[G. Morgan]

Careful. Most of their earnings come from suing people that type "Monster".

[The Daring Dufas]

You should try Monster Energy Drinks, talk about overpriced.

TDD

[Ron]

Never tried it, but they provide huge sponsorships in Supercross (motorcycle racing) and at lest one in NASCAR for a former SC rider Ricky Carmichael.

[trader4]

At least in the case of speaker wire there was some remote basis to argue that the characteristics of the cable could affect the sound quality because the signal is analog. Not saying that I believe their oxygen free story, just that the cable characteristics do have an affect on the analog signal. In the case of HDMI, all you need to determine at the ends of the cable are if the signal is high or low, ie 1 or 0, so there is far less basis to believe a typical HDMI cable needs to be anything special.

[salty]

Monster also sells audio cables with SIGNAL DIRECTION arrows printed on them to make sure you install them in the right direction!

[The Daring Dufas]

Spend 500% more on a cable to get 0.000001% improvement in signal quality. What's that old saying about a fool and his money?

TDD

[salty]

Obviously the folks at Monster are no fools! LOL

[Ron]

Bull. Google coat hangers vs monster cables.

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Ron" wrote

Some years back, Stereo Review magazine blind tested expensive speaker wires versus lamp cord. No difference.

[terry]

Yes; wouldn't want to get 'highs' confused with 'lows'! {:-)

[Tony Hwang]

Hmm, Really? digital bits should have no phase jitters to maintain signal quality. Any how, how many people in the world can hear/see the difference if we believe Monster's claim. There are better things to spend my hard earned money on. All HDMI cables I use is from eBay sellers in H.K. None of them gave me any sign of trouble. Maybe my eyes and ears are inferior to detect the poor quality cable. I am an advanced amateur musician all my life. I have pretty good set of ears, LOL!

[bud--]

[aemeijers]

Did their study note that the quality of the connections can make a difference? I use a thick gauge of lamp cord instead of fancy speaker wire, because I am a cheap SOB, but all my vintage sound equipment uses push-in or binding post connections. For sound and video applications where the cable needs ends put on it, the connectors on the cheaper pre-mades are usually crap. The gold-plated connectors are probably meaningless unless you live on a beach, but a quality connector and a decent gauge of wire probably helps. Of course, I am not talking about modern miniature stereos, DVD players, and tiny speakers. The cables that come with those look like fishing line to me.

[G. Morgan]

^^^^^^^^^^

what does that mean? I've been meaning to ask you for years ;-)

[salty]

That is a bit incomplete. Although the claims of premium cable companies such as Monster are mostly fairy tails, lamp cord in many applications would be too small a gauge to carry the signal properly, especially as the length of the run increases. I would agree that any generic wire of the same size would be fine. Monster tends to be in larger gauges than lamp cord. Size (and good connections) is what matters most. Advertising and marketing hype... not so much.

[salty]

I'm almost surprised they don't specify left or right channel.

[salty]

That pretty much covers it!

[Ed Pawlowski]

Oh, that is great.

[The Daring Dufas]

Many of the professional sound system installers for nightclubs use rubber insulated #14 or #12 SO cord for speaker wiring. I'll use a lot of plastic jacketed #18/2 stranded for 70 volt PA systems going with a larger gage wire for the primary link only when getting into power levels of 100 watts or more.

TDD

[Nate Nagel]

You can count me in with the "heavy gauge zip cord" crowd. I do tin the ends to keep things neater. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but if I am, it's not really that important to me.

nate