Monster Cable worth the price?

[SDAmatuer]

So I can get a 50' XLR cable from monoprice.com for about $25, or I can get a 50' Monster Cable XLR cable from Sweetwater (not the cheapest, I know) for $120. Is it really worth the extra $100? Just wondering.

[Gohanto]

Monster Cable is basically the Bose of audio cables. Spend tons of money on marketing to make people think they're the best, spend as little as possible on cables, mark them up to offset what they paid to market the cables.

Monoprice is excellent quality for most uses and the prices are great, but if you want top quality (which with that run you might consider) go with Blue Jeans Cable.

You'll likely get a kick out of this...
Monster Cable tries to harass Blue Jeans Cable, fails

[soundguydave]

Gepco International, Inc.. Learn to make your own, you'll save thousands of dollars over the long run. You could probably build that same 50' XLR cable using their best cable and neutrik connectors for about $15

And to answer your question, no monster cable is not worth it.

[georgia]

buy Gepco and make'em yourself. WHY do otherwise smart people buy into the bullcrud of these marketing jerks. Why you are spending your money on Monster cable, don't forget to by Gold plated power strips. They'll really help the quality of the power signal to your computer....

BUY Super duper monster custom high-tech special rolled solid gold audio cable!
Only $59,95 for a 1 foot cable! Order NOW and we'll throw in a custom special designed custom extruded neuve plastic power strip with 1 outlet that will increase your power output ! but remember! We can't do this all day folks! order now.
Here's the number....



just make sure you use good quality connectors and cables and that your soldering is good and your connectors and connections are solid.
Anything above that is horse dung IMHO. Just look inside your computer and inside your gear and inside your home power connections and everywhere else the "monster cable" is connected too ...
cheers
geo

[TVPostSound]

Originally Posted by SDAmatuer

So I can get a 50' XLR cable from monoprice.com for about $25, or I can get a 50' Monster Cable XLR cable from Sweetwater (not the cheapest, I know) for $120. Is it really worth the extra $100? Just wondering.

If you don't want to make your own.
You can get a 50ft Mogami, with Neutrik XLRs for $54 from Redco. (Redco Audio)
Highly recommended.

[jahtao]

I once bought a monster USB cable because i was reliably informed by more than one person on this forum that it would solve a hum/whine problem i was having with my MBox2 and G5.

It didn't

[hummer]

monoprice.com is THE BEST.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Most times you get what you pay for. Monster Cable and BOSE (no highs no lows it must be BOSE) give you IMHO very little in return for you paying big bucks for their products. As others have stated both BOSE and Monster cable spend more money per year on advertising than they do on product development. Their cables and equipment are more hype than anything else and someone who would pay $600 or more for a plastic table radio and CD player has a lot more money than brains.

Go with good quality cables that are well made and you should be fine.

[SDAmatuer]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

[soundboy]

No.

[Fajita]

the entire facility where I work is wired with Belden. sounds great to me.

[musikwerks]

Before you buy Monster Cable, do a quick search over in the moan zone. You'll find some interesting information on the way they conduct business. It may cause you to reconsider your purchase.

[Jorn Lavoll]

better than monsters: nordic gods:
Nordost VALHALLA Speaker Cable

[georgia]

here's some research on how electricity really works... things like the skin effect, and fun stuff like that. This battle over cable designs within the audio realm makes me laugh out loud sometimes...

Skindepth, Litz wire, Braided conductors, and resistance
Transmission Line Theory
Skin effect

Here's some more trivia for your sunday reading....

What Makes a Good Audio Cable?
Criteria for what supposedly made one cable perform better or worse than another is remarkably inconsistent. One manufacturer's claims countered and negated the claims made by a different manufacturer. None of the manufacturers offer documented, measurable evidence that it was producing a superior cable. Instead, we find claims of allegedly superior components or materials used in cable construction. For example, a few leading manufacturers claimed that the most important factor for a cable was low capacitance, using the justification that cable capacitance shunts upper frequencies to ground. In order to lower the capacitance, these companies increased conductor spacing to simultaneously achieve a goal of increased inductance. This approach had drastic side effects, however. Merely decreasing capacitance without taking other realities of signal transmission into consideration increased the noise pickup and introduced a blocking filter. Both of these effects would obviously degrade sonic performance rather than improving it.

Another cable manufacturer advertised that its cable "employs two polymer shafts to dampen conductor resistance", but offered no evidence to prove it. Still another audiophile company claimed that because its cable was flat, "with no twist, it has no inductance". In general, inductance can indeed be reduced by making conductors larger or bringing them closer together. However, physics shows that, in reality, no cable can be built without some level of inductance, so this claim is without scientific merit.

Cylindrical Cable Conductors and Skin Effect
Most of the popular loudspeaker and musical instrument cables on the market employ cylindrical (a.k.a. round-diameter) cables as conductors. Unfortunately, cylindrical cable designs have a number of serious drawbacks, including current bunching, skin effect phenomenon, and frequency effects that lower the performance of the cable.

It's a common misconception to think about electrical transmission in cables in terms of direct current (DC) alone. Even experienced electrical engineers frequently ignore the ramifications of frequency on cable performance. In the case of DC, current is indeed uniformly distributed across the entire cross-section of the wire conductor, and the resistance is a simple function of the cross-sectional area. Adding the frequency of an electrical signal to the equation complicates the situation, however. As frequency increases, the resistance of a conductor also increases due to skin effect.

Skin effect describes a condition in which, due to the magnetic fields produced by current following through a conductor, the current tends to concentrate near the conductor surface. As the frequency increases, more of the current is concentrated closer to the surface. This effectively decreases the cross-section through which the current flows, and therefore increases the effective resistance. The current can be assumed to concentrate in an annulus at the wire surface at a thickness equal to the skin depth. For copper wire the skin depth vs. frequency is as follows:

60 Hz = 8.5 mm, 1kHz =2.09 mm, 10 kHz =0.66 mm, 100 kHz =0.21 mm.

Note that the skin depth becomes very small as the frequency increases. Consequently, the center area of the wire is to a large extent bypassed by the signal as the frequency increases. In other words, most of the conductor material effectively goes to waste since little of it is used to transmit the signal. The result is a loss of cable performance that can be measured as well as heard.

Current Bunching
Current bunching (also called proximity effect) occurs in the majority of cables on the market that follow the conventional cylindrical two-conductor design (i.e., two cylindrical conductors placed side-by-side and separated by a dielectric).

When a pair of these cylindrical conductors supplies current to a load, the return current (flowing away from the load) tends to flow as closely as possible to the supply current (flowing toward the load). As the frequency increases, the return current decreases its distance from the supply current in an attempt to minimize the loop area. Current flow will therefore not be uniform at high frequencies, but will tend to bunch-in. The current bunching phenomenon causes the resistance of the wires to increase as frequency increases, since less and less of the wire is being used to transmit current. The resistance of the wire is related to its cross-sectional area, and as the frequency increases, the effective cross-sectional area of the wires decreases. In order to convey the widest frequency audio signal to a loudspeaker, you want to use as much of the conductor cross-section as possible, so excessive current bunching is extremely inefficient.

Disadvantages of Rectangular Conductors
As a means of bypassing the skin effect and current bunching problems associated with cylindrical conductor designs, some cable manufacturers have developed rectangular conductors as an alternative. These designs typically use a one-piece, solid core conductor. Computer simulation showing the magnitude (volts/meter) of the electric field between two solid rectangular conductors. The conductors have a cross section area equivalent to a 10 gauge conductor. The spacing between the two conductors is 2mm with a voltage of +1 volt applied to the top conductor and -1 volt applied to the bottom conductor.
Computer simulation showing the magnitude (volts/meter) of the electric field between two hollow oval conductors. The conductors have a cross section area equivalent to a 10 gage conductor. The spacing between the two conductors is 2mm with a voltage of +1 volt applied to the top conductor and -1 volt applied to the bottom conductor.

A solid rectangular conductor of this type is undesirable because the sharp corners produce high electric field values that over time can break down the dielectric, causing a failure of the cable. In general, cables with solid conductors are prone to shape distortions and kinking due to their poor flexibility. This becomes an especially important issue with rectangular cable designs. The sharp corners from rectangular conductors tend to chafe the cable dielectric if the cable is repeatedly flexed or put under stress, and this chafing can lead to a short that could conceivably damage your loudspeakers.

Characteristic Impedance Complexity
Another parameter that is critical in cable design is characteristic impedance. But because of its complexity, this important factor is often misunderstood.

The characteristic impedance of a cable is given by Z = [(R + jwL)/(G + jwC)]1/2 where R is the series resistance, L is the series inductance, G is the shunt conductance, C is the shunt capacitance, and w is the angular frequency (w = 2pief).

Note that this is not a simple number for a cable, but one which changes with frequency. It is also important to note that R, L, G, and C also change with frequency, making the impedance of a cable even more frequency dependent.
milli-ohm/loop 100 ft . Z is a complex number, and it is common practice in the cable industry to simplify the situation by assuming a loss less transmission line and, in turn, assuming that R and G are zero. While this may be a valid approximation at high frequencies, it is not valid at low audio frequencies if you plan to construct an accurate model of a cable.

For example, stating that a speaker cable has a constant, characteristic impedance of 10 ohms across the entire frequency range of 20 to 20,000 Hz is a drastic oversimplification that, in the end, is simply untrue. The same type of statement is also inaccurate when applied to loudspeakers, as the table below shows. A speaker only has a constant impedance of 8 ohms at a single fixed frequency. To state otherwise is to ignore the complexity of impedance changes as signal frequency changes.

Frequency Blurring
To minimize frequency blurring, it is important that the speaker cable parameters do not change with frequency. Ideally, the resistance and inductance would remain constant as the frequency of the signal changes.

The faintest sound wave a normal human ear can hear is 10(-12) Wm(-2). At the other extreme of the spectrum, the threshold of pain is 1 Wm(-2). This is a very impressive auditory range. The ear, together with the brain, constantly performs amazing feats of sound processing that our fastest and most powerful computers cannot even approach.

As long ago as 1935 Wilska 2 succeeded in measuring the magnitude of movement of the eardrum at the threshold of audio sensitivity across various frequencies. At 3,000 Hz, it takes a minimal amount of eardrum displacement (somewhat less than 10-9 cm or about 0.01 times the diameter of an atom of hydrogen) to produce a minimal perceptible sound. This is an amazingly small number! The extremely small amount of acoustic pressure necessary to produce the threshold sensation of sound brings up an interesting question. Does the limiting factor in hearing minimal level sounds lie in the anatomy and physiology of hearing or in the physical properties of air as a transmitting medium? We know that air molecules are in constant random motion, a motion related to temperature. This phenomenon is known as Brownian movement and produces a spectrum of thermal-acoustic noise.

In 1933, Sivian and White3 experimentally evaluated the pressure magnitudes of these thermal sounds between 1kHz and 6 kHz. They observed that throughout the measured spectrum the root-mean-square thermal noise pressure was about 86 decibels below one dyne per square centimeter. The minimum root-mean-square pressure that can produce audible sensation between 1 kHz and 6 kHz in a human being with average hearing is about 76 decibels below one dyne per square centimeter, but in some people with exceptionally acute hearing may approach 85 decibels. These figures indicate that the acuity of persons possessing a high sensitivity of hearing closely approaches the thermal noise level, and a particularly good auditory system actually does approach this level. Furthermore, it is not likely that animals possess greater acuity of hearing in this spectrum, as their hearing would also be limited by thermal noise.

References
1 Henry W. Ott, Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronics System (New York, NY John Wiley and Sons, 1988, p. 150)

2 Wilska, A.: Eine methode zur Bestimmung der Horschwellenamplituden des Trommelfells bei verschiedenen Frequenzen, Skandinav. Arch. Physiol., 72:161, 1935.

3 Sivian, L.J., and White, S.D.: On minimum audible sound fields, J. Acous. Soc. Am., 4:288, 1933

cheers
geo

__________________

[georgia]

ESP Elliott Sound products... Yeah this guy sells stuff. But, He has a few things to say about "high-end" cables...


here's yet some more....

How big should the conductors be?
The required size (or gauge) of the conductors depends on three factors: (1) the load impedance; (2) the length of cable required; and (3) the amount of power loss that can be tolerated. Each of these involves relationships between voltage (volts), resistance (ohms), current (amperes) and power (watts). These relationships are defined with Ohm's Law. The job of a speaker cable is to move a substantial amount of electrical current from the output of a power amplifier to a speaker system. Current flow is measure in amperes. Unlike instrument and microphone cables, which typically carry currents of only a few milliamperes (thousandths of an ampere), the current required to drive a speaker is much higher; for instance, an 8-ohm speaker driven with a 100-watt amplifier will pull about 3-1/2 amperes of current. By comparison, a 600-ohm input driven by a line-level output only pulls about 2 milliamps. The amplifier's output voltage, divided by the load impedance (in ohms), determines the amount of current "pulled" by the load. Resistance limits current flow, and decreasing it increases current flow. If the amplifier's output voltage remains constant, it will deliver twice as much current to an 8-ohm load as it will to a 16-ohm load, and four times as much to a 4-ohm load. Halving the load impedance doubles the load current. For instance, two 8-ohm speakers in parallel will draw twice the current of one speaker because the parallel connection reduces the load impedance to 4 ohms.
(For simplicity's sake we are using the terms resistance and impedance interchangeably; in practice, a speaker whose nominal impedance is 8 ohms may have a voice coil DC resistance of about 5 ohms and an AC impedance curve that ranges from 5 ohms to 100 ohms, depending on the frequency, type of enclosure, and the acoustical loading of its environment.)

How does current draw affect the conductor requirements of the speaker cable?
A simple fact to remember: Current needs copper, voltage needs insulation. To make an analogy, if electrons were water, voltage would be the "pressure" in the system, while current would be the amount of water flowing. You have water pressure even with the faucet closed and no water flowing; similarly, you have voltage regardless of whether you have current flowing. Current flow is literally electrons moving between two points at differing electrical potentials, so the more electrons you need to move, the larger the conductors (our "electron pipe") must be. In the AWG (American Wire Gauge) system, conductor area doubles with each reduction of three in AWG; a 13 AWG conductor has twice the copper of a 16 AWG conductor, a 10 AWG twice the copper of a 13 AWG, and so on.

But power amp outputs are rated in watts. How are amperes related to watts?
Ohm's Law says that current (amperes) times voltage (volts) equals power (watts), so if the voltage is unchanged, the power is directly proportional to the current, which is determined by the impedance of the load. (This is why most power amplifiers will deliver approximately double their 8-ohm rated output when the load impedance is reduced to 4 ohms.) In short, a 4-ohm load should require conductors with twice the copper of an 8-ohm load, assuming the length of the run to the speaker is the same, while a 2-ohm load requires four times the copper of an 8-ohm load. Explaining this point leads to the following oft-asked question:

How long can a speaker cable be before it affects performance?
The ugly truth: Any length of speaker cable degrades performance and efficiency. Like the effects of shunt capacitance in instrument cables and series inductance in microphone cables, the signal degradation caused by speaker cabling is always present to some degree, and is worsened by increasing the length of the cable. The most obvious ill effect of speaker cables is the amount of amplifier power wasted.

Why do cables waste power?
Copper is a very good conductor of electricity, but it isn't perfect. It has a certain amount of resistance, determined primarily on its cross-sectional area (but also by its purity and temperature). This wiring resistance is "seen" by the amplifier output as part of the load; if a cable with a resistance of one ohm is connected to an 8-ohm speaker, the load seen by the amplifier is 9 ohms. Since increasing the load impedance decreases current flow, decreasing power delivery, we have lost some of the amplifier's power capability merely by adding the series resistance of the cable to the load. Furthermore, since the cable is seen as part of the load, part of the power which is delivered to the load is dissipated in the cable itself as heat. (This is the way electrical space-heaters work!) Since Ohm's Law allows us to calculate the current flow created by a given voltage across a given load impedance, it can also give us the voltage drop across the load, or part of the load, for a given current. This can be conveniently expressed as a percentage of the total power.

How can the power loss be minimized?
There are three ways to decrease the power lost in speaker cabling:
First, minimize the resistance of the cabling. Use larger conductors, avoid unnecessary connectors, and make sure that mechanical connections are clean and tight and solder joints are smooth and bright.

Second, minimize the length of the cabling. The resistance of the cable is proportional to its length, so less cable means less resistance to expend those watts. Place the power amplifier as close as practical to the speaker. (Chances are excellent that the signal loss in the line-level connection to the amplifier input will be negligible.) Don't use a 50-foot cable for a 20-foot run.

Third, maximize the load impedance. As the load impedance increases it becomes a larger percentage of the total load, which proportionately reduces the amount lost by wiring resistance. Avoid "daisy-chaining" speakers, because the parallel connection reduces the total load impedance, thus increasing the percentage lost. The ideal situation (for reasons beyond mere power loss is to run a separate pair of conductors to each speaker form the amplifier.

Is the actual performance of the amplifier degraded by long speaker cables?
There is a definite impact on the amplifier damping factor caused by cabling resistance/impedance. Damping, the ability of the amplifier to control the movement of the speaker, is especially noticeable in percussive low-frequency program material like kick drum, bass guitar and tympani. Clean, "tight" bass is a sign of good damping at work. Boomy, mushy bass is the result of poor damping; the speaker is being set into motion but the amplifier can't stop it fast enough to accurately track the waveform. Ultimately, poor damping can result in actual oscillation and speaker destruction.

Damping factor is expressed as the quotient of load impedance divided by the amplifier's actual source impedance. Ultra-low source impedances on the order of 40 milliohms (that's less than one-twentieth of an ohm) are common in modern direct-coupled solid-state amplifiers, so damping factors with an 8-ohm load are generally specified in the range of 100-200. However, those specifications are taken on a test bench, with a non-inductive dummy load attached directly to the output terminals. In the real world, the speaker sees the cabling resistance as part of the source impedance, increasing it. This lowers the damping factor drastically, even when considering only the DC resistance of the cable. If the reactive components that constitute the AC impedance of the cable are considered, the loss of damping is even greater.

Although tube amplifiers generally fall far short of sold-state types in damping performance, their sound can still be improved by the use of larger speaker cables. Damping even comes into play in the performance of mixing consoles with remote DC power supplies; reducing the length of the cable linking the power supply to the console can noticeably improve the low-frequency performance of the electronics.

What other cable problems affect performance?
The twin gremlins covered in "Understanding the Microphone Cable," namely series inductance and skin effect, are also factors in speaker cables. Series inductance and the resulting inductive reactance adds to the DC resistance, increasing the AC impedance of the cable. An inductor can be thought of as a resistor whose resistance increases as frequency increases. Thus, series inductance has a low-pass filter characteristic, progressively attenuating high frequencies. The inductance of a round conductor is largely independent of its diameter or gauge, and is not directly proportional to its length, either.
Skin effect is a phenomenon that causes current flow in a round conductor to be concentrated more to the surface of the conductor at higher frequencies, almost as if it were a hollow tube. This increases the apparent resistance of the conductor at high frequencies, and also brings significant phase shift.

Taken together, these ugly realities introduce various dynamic and time-related forms of signal distortion which are very difficult to quantify with simple sine-wave measurements. When complex waveforms have their harmonic structures altered, the sense of immediacy and realism is reduced. The ear/brain combination is incredibly sensitive to the effects of this type of phase distortion, but generally needs direct, A/B comparisons in real time to recognize them.

How can these problems be addressed?
The number of strange designs for speaker cable is amazing. Among them are coaxial, with two insulated spiral "shields" serving as conductors; quad, using two conductors for "positive" and two for "negative"; zip-cord with ultra-fine "rope lay" conductors and transparent jacket; multi-conductor, allegedly using large conductors for lows, medium conductors for mids, and tiny conductors for highs; 4 AWG welding cable; braided flat cable constructed of many individually insulated conductors; and many others. Most of these address the inductance question by using multiple conductors and the skin effect problem by keeping them relatively small. Many of these "esoteric" cables are extraordinarily expensive; all of them probably offer some improvement in performance over ordinary twisted-pair type cables, especially in critical monitoring applications and high-quality music systems. In most cases, the cost of such cable and its termination, combined with the extremely fragile construction common to them, severely limits their practical use, especially in portable situations. In short, they cost too much, they're too hard to work with, and they just aren't made for rough treatment. But, sonically, they all bear listening to with an open mind; the differences can be surprisingly apparent.

Is capacitance a problem in speaker cables?
The extremely low impedance nature of speaker circuits makes cable capacitance a very minor factor in overall performance. In the early days of solid state amplifiers, highly capacitive loads (such as large electrostatic speaker systems) caused blown output transistors and other problems, but so did heat, short circuits, highly inductive loads and underdesigned power supplies.

Because of this, the dielectric properties of the insulation used are nowhere near as critical as that used for high-impedance instrument cables. The most important consideration for insulation for speaker cables is probably heat resistance, especially because the physical size constraints imposed by popular connectors like the ubiquitous 1/4" phone plug severely limit the diameter of the cable. This requires insulation and jacketing to be thin, but tough, while withstanding the heat required to bring a relatively large amount of copper up to soldering temperature. Polyethylene tends to melt too easily, while thermoset materials like rubber and neoprene are expensive and unpredictable with regard to wall thickness PVC is cheap and can be mixed in a variety of ways to enhance its shrink-resistance and flexibility, making it a good choice for most applications. Some varieties of TPR (thermoplastic rubber) are also finding use.

Why don't speaker cables require shielding?
Actually, there are a few circumstances that may require the shielding of speaker cables. In areas with extreme strong radio frequency interference (RFI) problems, the speaker cables can act as antennae for unwanted signal reception which can enter the system through the output transistors. When circumstances require that speaker-level and microphone-level signals be in close proximity for long distances, such as cue feeds to recording studios, it is a good idea to use shielded speaker cabling (generally foil-shielded, twisted-pair or twisted-triple cable) as "insurance" against possible crosstalk form the cue system entering the microphone lines. In large installations, pulling the speaker cabling in metallic conduit provides excellent shielding from both RFI and EMI (electromagnetic interference). But, for the most part, the extremely low impedance and high level of speaker signals minimizes the significance of local interference.

Why can't I use a shielded instrument cable for hooking an amplifier to a speaker, assuming it has the right plugs?
You can, in desperation, use an instrument cable for hooking up an amplifier to a speaker. However, the small gauge (generally 20 AWG at most) center conductor offers substantial resistance to current flow, and in extreme circumstances could heat up until it melts its insulation and short-circuits to the shield, or melts and goes open-circuit, which can destroy some tube amplifiers. Long runs of coaxial-type cable will have large amounts of capacitance, possibly enough to upset the protection circuitry of some amplifiers, causing untimely shut-downs. And of course there is enormous power loss and damping degradation because of the high impedance of the cable.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
¥ Ballou, Greg, ed., Handbook for Sound Engineers: The New Audio Cyclopedia, Howard W. Sams and Co., Indianapolis, 1987.
¥ Cable Shield Performance and Selection Guide, Belden Electronic Wire and Cable, 1983.
¥ Colloms, Martin, "Crystals: Linear and Large," Hi-Fi News and Record Review, November 1984.
¥ Cooke, Nelson M. and Herbert F. R. Adams, Basic Mathematics for Electronics, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, 1970.
¥ Davis, Gary and Ralph Jones, Sound Reinforcement Handbook, Hal Leonard Publishing Corp., Milwaukee, 1970.
¥ Electronic Wire and Cable Catalog E-100, American Insulated Wire Corp., 1984.
¥ Fause, Ken, "Shielding, Grounding and Safety," Recording Engineer/Producer, circa 1980.
¥ Ford, Hugh, "Audio Cables," Studio Sound, Novemer 1980.
¥ Guide to Wire and Cable Construction, American Insulated Wire Corp., 1981.
¥ Grundy, Albert, "Grounding and Shielding Revisited," dB, October 1980.
¥ Jung, Walt and Dick Marsh, "Pooge-2: A Mod Symphony for Your Hafler DH200 or Other Power Amplifiers," The Audio Amateur, 4/1981.
¥ Maynard, Harry, "Speaker Cables," Radio-Electronics, December 1978,
¥ Miller, Paul, "Audio Cable: The Neglected Component," dB, December 1978.
¥ Morgen, Bruce, "Shield The Cable!," Electronic Procucts, August 15, 1983.
¥ Morrison, Ralph, Grounding and Shielding Techniques in Instrumentation, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1977.
¥ Ott, Henry W., Noise Reduciton in Electronic Systems, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1976.
¥ Ruck, Bill, "Current Thoughts on Wire," The Audio Amateur, 4/82.

cheers
geo

[mexicola]

Originally Posted by soundguydave

Gepco International, Inc.. Learn to make your own, you'll save thousands of dollars over the long run. You could probably build that same 50' XLR cable using their best cable and neutrik connectors for about $15

And to answer your question, no monster cable is not worth it.

Agree 100%. I build all my own cables using Canare starquad and Neutrik NC3*X connectors. Never had one go bad. Saved a bundle of cash!

[soundboy]

Originally Posted by Jorn Lavoll

better than monsters: nordic gods:
Nordost VALHALLA Speaker Cable

LOL.
It really should be called "Barnum's Law". I've never seen it disproved.

[Sugarnutz]

I installed a new Neve 8232 in my studio back in 87-88. Pre-wired the racks, Elco's & DB25's with about 5000 feet of West Penn 291. Fred Hill commissioned the console along with John Klett, neither had problems with the 291 and that console worked great from day one. I think I paid $55 per 1000 ft. roll for that wire and it came in different colors which made my life a lot easier. Most of this high-end cable is just hype, if it sounds good, why worry? I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I have to work for my money and I'll be damned if I'm gonna give it to somebody for the purpose of blowing smoke up my ass.

[georgia]

John Klett is great!! I recommend him for any gig. He's a bit pricey but, as anal as they come.. Which is a good thing in wiring studios and commissioning consoles.
I bought my old Neve Capricorn from Sony ( used to be Sound on Sounds ).. it lived in his garage when i picked it up, as well as, a second for spares.


cheers
geo

[loujudson]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

Most times you get what you pay for. Monster Cable and BOSE (no highs no lows it must be BOSE) give you IMHO very little in return for you paying big bucks for their products.

I just want to put a word in for Bose 802s and 402s - they one best thing Bose ever did. I have used dozens of Boses from 900s, 800, 901s, and 802s and properly used they are great!

I currently have four 802s that i take out lots for many different kinds of live gigs, and everyone is thrilled with my work and the sound they get. Yes, they need an active EQ but with it they are just fine.

And with a 15" EV sub with 2 802s on top per side crossed over at 90Hz is a sound that works really well for up to 500 audients...

Jsut my pair of pennies. Monster, nope never but 802s can rock!

L

[klett]

Originally Posted by georgia

John Klett is great!! I recommend him for any gig. He's a bit pricey but, as anal as they come.. Which is a good thing in wiring studios and commissioning consoles.
I bought my old Neve Capricorn from Sony ( used to be Sound on Sounds ).. it lived in his garage when i picked it up, as well as, a second for spares.

Hi Georgia... Thanks for the ... kind?... words... anal? really? I'll go w Pricey, Picky, Particular, Hardheaded, Curmudgeonly... did I say Pricey?

As to storing Capricorn - you must have me mixed up w someone else... wasn't me... I think the last time I was at your studio was pre the Cap... I forget what the console was

As to topic at hand. I hate reading threads on cable. I've written volumes on this and no one goes with the physics. Monster Cable is NOT worth the price. It's not bad cable - it's good - but when you figure the dollar cost and the considerable additional cost in time and/or labor to terminate it properly it just is not worth it.

The short answer to the cable issue is that it's much more about what amplifier (with or without transformer) is driving the cable than the cable itself. If you have a "passive preamp" i.e. a 10KΩ precision attenuator in a box made of expensive and rare woods with a special wooden knob that you paid 10K$ for... if you have one of those the source impedance out of that box at 6dB down from the top will be around 5K... if you hang ANY cable off that you will have cable effects and you'll need to select a cable that sounds better to you because you will hear differences from one cable to the next. Sometimes the cost affects how things sound... and you can spend money on high voltage glass insulators to hold the cable up off the floor and it'll sound "better" to you as well if that is where you are coming from.

Put a high quality buffer on the output and drop the output or source impedance at the output of said wooden box down to say 40 ohms or less and you'll reduce cable effects by a factor of 100 or more... in other words some gear needs better cable and other gear does not as much... so... better cable - for me I look for a good low cap cable with solid or foamed polypropylene insulation around the conductors - generally no smaller than 24 awg stranded however in large installations I spec Mogami multi-pair just because it has less bulk... in lower density apps the Gepco X-Band stuff is pretty good, easier to work with a way less dough than Monster... all of this assumes you are terminating your own wire of course

As I recall the Altec 604's at the A&R R rooms on 48th street used either Columbia Flex-Life (18 gua) or Belden 8451 (22 gua) between the amp and the speakers and it sounded good enough to do a lot of hits that sound good today so... whatever

anyway - Monster good but not worth the cash IMHO

[bizzle]

Originally Posted by Jorn Lavoll

better than monsters: nordic gods:
Nordost VALHALLA Speaker Cable

7 day burn-in? Like in an oven?

Originally Posted by mexicola

Agree 100%. I build all my own cables using Canare starquad and Neutrik NC3*X connectors. Never had one go bad. Saved a bundle of cash!

Starquad is my preference too, but it may not *always* the best choice depending on what you are connecting. Some say its not great for line level connections due to the wire's higher impedance compared to non-starquad cable. I can't say that I have ever "heard" a difference. Another concern is that more care should be taken with the connector terminations, as the starquad can be tricky to solder and is more fragile. I have had no issues with my starquad cables, Canare / Neutrik.

&e

ps. Georgia- woah, your post blows my mind.

[georgia]

Hi John... ok ok.. i'll go with picky....

cheers
geo


ps: oh yeah... I remember... yeah The console was at Greg Davis' place in CT. ( another great tech. )

[nosebleedaudio]

Just a little note regarding better cables correcting some problems: Have seen several times over the years where RF (FM radio) was coming in with the signal, EVERY time a better cable had NO effect on the problem, it ended up being the mic OR the mic pre or a power amp....

NOT saying a good cable could NOT correct some interference, just saying from my past experience a BETTER cable had NO effect on THOSE problems...

Just wanted to mention it...

[Don S]

One of my buddies was on a gig NYC. He couldn't use the 4006TL because of all the RF. The older 4006 (with transformers) was dead quiet.
Another for star-quad, but I would consider canare if Mogami is not readily available.

[astronmr20]

Originally Posted by SDAmatuer

So I can get a 50' XLR cable from monoprice.com for about $25, or I can get a 50' Monster Cable XLR cable from Sweetwater (not the cheapest, I know) for $120. Is it really worth the extra $100? Just wondering.

NO!

[nosebleedaudio]

Originally Posted by Don S

One of my buddies was on a gig NYC. He couldn't use the 4006TL because of all the RF. The older 4006 (with transformers) was dead quiet.
Another for star-quad, but I would consider canare if Mogami is not readily available.

What's the connection? A different mic worked right?
How does Star Quad fit in?

[voxclimantis]

is mogami any better? i like mine just fine, but are they pretty much the same?

[soundguydave]

Originally Posted by voxclimantis

is mogami any better? i like mine just fine, but are they pretty much the same?

Mogami, gepco, canare are all fine cables.

[loujudson]

Mogami is great.

Mogami for sound, monster for profit.