Monster Cable

http://www.monstercable.com/

monster cable is really one of the worst businesses ever

― tulsa anti-juggalo league (M@tt He1ges0n), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:18 AM (2 minutes ago)

Discuss.

classic tombot post:

El Tomboto wrote this on thread truth bombs on board All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar on Apr 10, 2008

and i bought a $130 HDMI monster cable from fucking best buy two days ago

lol u got the $8 breadsticks with your salad

the best part is they sell ppl on the "lifetime warranty"...because like seriously guitar cables hardly ever crap out anyway and plus even if you have a bad run, you've still paid like four or five times over the cost of a regular one, so it would have to break like every day to get your money's worth

that said i think their guitar stuff is better than their home AV, i had a bunch of freebies we got at work and they almost all broke

my former-Dr. Hook guitar-playing and instrument salesman neighbor swears by their guitar cables. the one time i borrowed one from him it was dead

my "monster cable" solution.

go to the hardware store and buy the heaviest gauge outdoor extension cord you can find. sometimes they sell it by the foot on rolls, sometimes you have to buy it with the plugs. i bought 12 gauge but i think you can find even thicker wires. a 10 gauge wire is practically as thick as a pencil, anyway. inside the extension cord are three heavily insulateed strands of cord. you stipped back the wire to expose two of the strands on each side. bang, there's your monster cable. it cost me about $40 for 50 feet.

i meant "three heavily insulated strands of braided copper wire"

if you want to get really fancy, you can do like i did and go to radio shack and get gold-plated banana plugs (from monster) for $20 to stick on the ends of your extension cord and you have even fancier speaker cables.

^ gaming the system

in college i went to a stereo store to but a stereo i could use for vinyl, i naively asked the guy if i should get monster cable and he pointed to a big industrial roll of speaker wire and said "well, if you want monster cable i could just charge you three times as much for that" lol

'Monster Cable' has a whole different meaning in the UK.

weiner meaning?

hahaha i should prob not get involved in this, but monster cable for guitars is grade a bullshit

xpost no, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=laying+cable

I lol-ed that there was a thread on this. It really is just a farce. Don't buy this stuff, folks!

But N.p.s., Time Correct technology:

Monster's way of compensating for something called "Velocity Propagation" or better known as the skin effect. An analog audio signal passing through a copper cable succumbs to this law of physics in which bass frequencies tend to gravitate towards the center of the cable; higher frequencies are forced to the outer portion of the cable. The higher mass bass frequencies create a magnetic field in the center of the cable while traveling through the conductor, which impedes those lower frequencies. This impedance forces those lower frequencies to arrive at their destiny (the speaker or amp) delayed, which causes a mild distortion in the waveform. Monster utilizes multiple gauge windings to help compensate for this distortion. Large, solid-core copper strands in the center for bass frequencies (containing higher mass) and smaller gauges wrapped around the solid core conductor to delay the mid's and high's ensuring that the entire bandwidth of frequencies arrive in uniform.

A little more honesty here:

Why use gold plated connectors?

We use gold because it doesn't corrode and looks excellent.

I play both Rock and Jazz guitar, what cable should I use?

Since you are playing a wide range of frequencies, the best all around cable not application specific would be our Performer 500 Instrument cable or our Studio Pro 1000 Instrument cable.

higher mass bass frequencies?!?!?!?

go to the hardware store and buy the heaviest gauge outdoor extension cord you can find. sometimes they sell it by the foot on rolls, sometimes you have to buy it with the plugs. i bought 12 gauge but i think you can find even thicker wires. a 10 gauge wire is practically as thick as a pencil, anyway. inside the extension cord are three heavily insulateed strands of cord. you stipped back the wire to expose two of the strands on each side. bang, there's your monster cable. it cost me about $40 for 50 feet.

I so want to do this

too bad I don't know a soldering iron from a broomhandle mauser

Everyone should really check out that FAQ page. It is endless and there are many idiocies.

xpost you don't need a soldering iron or any special tools at all edward, you just need a pair of scissors.

i guess that explains why the bass is louder when i put my head near the ground, those higher mass frequencies must be settling near the ground while the higher mass high frequencies float to the top of the room.

you sound like you're trying to sell me on a DIY bris

xp

Monster Cable, an even bigger scam than Bose speakers.

:D

I don't think I know the brand name of any cable I've ever bought.

Oh no wait, I did get those bright green fender ones cuz I thought hey I won't mix those up with other ppl's cables like I always do. Which was really wise because I'm not in a band anymore.

This impedance forces those lower frequencies to arrive at their destiny (the speaker or amp) delayed

I love AV cable geek talk. So much fun. Someone recommend spending £500 on a new mains cable, go on! HOW GOOD IS THE WIRING IN YOUR HOUSE, YOU FUCKING PLANK.

pffft, man if your power isn't properly CONDITIONED your cables won't even make a difference! don't ask me ask steve vai!

http://www.furmansound.com/

What is the "source" in terms of connecting my cables?

The source would be the origin of the signal or sound. This would be a CD player, phono player, VCR or whatever is generating the music or video and the arrows should point away from these "sources".

THANKS FOR CLARIFYING.

Are Monster Cable Game Cables an officialy Licensed cable?

No, Monster Cable did not feel the extra money, to license the cables, was a good investment. Monster Cable would rather put more money into the technology of the cables. The consumer ultimately ends up with better performance from their game systems.

Still love this exchange: http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes-back

Not long ago we reported that Monster Cable had issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable about their Tartan cables. Little did the lawyer drones over at Monster know that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans was, in a former life, a lawyer by trade. Oops! Someone pushed around the wrong "small" company! While we are no legal experts, we recognize humor when we see it. And this is funny. With Blue Jeans Cable's permission, we've included their full response to Monster's letter below. We even discussed it before its release on AV Rant. Kurt wants to keep this entire process completely open to the public and we're more than happy to oblige. Enjoy

Why does my instrument cable have arrows?

There are two typical types of cable construction; coaxial and twisted pair. Coaxial construction, as used in our P500 Rock cable, consists of one conductor and the shield. Twisted Pair construction, used in our P500 Jazz and all Studiolink cables, utilizes two conductors and a shield. Connectors such as the RCA type and mono ¼" are considered Unbalanced connectors; due to their two contact surface areas, the tip and the sleeve. (Connectors such as XLR, TRS ¼" (Tip/Ring/Sleeve,) etc. are considered Balanced.) A coaxial cable terminated with an unbalanced connector, uses the conductor as the positive lead, terminated to the Tip, and the shield as the negative lead, terminated to sleeve. Monster Cable makes our Unbalanced cables, "Semi-balanced" by utilizing twisted pair cable. We use one conductor as the positive lead, terminated to the Tip, one conductor as the negative lead, terminated to the sleeve, and we terminate the shield to the Source side of the cable; thereby making the cable

That Blue Jeans Cable story's great. Anything come of that?

FWIW, Blue Jeans Cable is an excellent company and if you don't want to settle for Radioshack you might as well try them. I have/have had several cables by them and they've all been of excellent quality. (Did they make a difference? Well, certainly, my bank account looks slimmer...)

More on BJC vs. Monster: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm

As of this writing, there has not been a further peep from Monster Cable. If this is the end of the matter, well--good riddance, Monster. If it is not, we will be sure to update this page from time to time to give our customers and others interested the blow-by-blow account of any ongoing conflict with Monster Cable.

monster cable is overpriced, yes, but interconnects do matter; there was distortion on all my cds for about three months on my home stereo, was worried my amp was busted, lens was going out on the dvd/cd player...turned out to be dodgy cheap cables from radioshack. i replaced them with some dynex things from best buy and it sounds great again.

because like seriously guitar cables hardly ever crap out anyway

really? I go through at least one a year.

Yeah me, too. For me it's more often that they tend to wander off at shows, or bass player or whoever borrows one at practice and you don't see it again, etc, but they just plain old stop working on me often enough, too.

Cheap, shitty, badly made cables are rubbish, yes, BUT there comes a point when a wire is a wire is a wire, and you can coat it in silk and make the connector out of platinum if you want but there's not a lot of point.

It's not something I give a lot of thought to thesedays, having been cured of my audiophilia nervosa in the early '00s by unemployment, but I do wonder about the R&D at these high-end cable companies. I assume they do believe their own bullshit and there are genuine measureable differences as you step through, say, Nordost's or Audioquest's range of interconnects from $30-ish to $500-ish but whether any of them have ever been subject to proper double-blind listening tests, I just don't know.

(Actually, having just read some of the "theory" stuff on Audioquest's website and the email exchange between the Audioholics A/V forum dude and Audioquest's VP, it's clear that they just cherry-pick bits of EE and solid-state physics to suit them and bluff the rest. Add in the collusion of the hi-fi press and audio dealers on huge mark-ups and you've got an industry built on almost nothing).

I quite fancy selling all the exotic cabling I talked myself into buying back in the '90s but that involves (i) perpetuating the bullshit in order to shift them at anything like a decent price and (ii) going to Maplin and buying about 10-12 pairs of RCA cables to replace everything. I can't be bothered.

Yeah have fun with that:

Best Buy is aiming to become a destination for DJs.

The big-box retailer has partnered with accessories firm Monster Cable and headphones specialist Beats by Dr. Dre to launch in-store "Club Beats" areas.

Consumers will be able to sample the latest audio, music, entertainment and technology products including DJ equipment, mixing software, turntables, headphones and laptops.

"It may not be simple to find these products in a mainstream environment -- either you have to know what you need, or you have to talk to someone who is in the industry," said Wendy Fritz, senior VP of merchandising for mobility for Best Buy. "What we're trying to say is, 'Hey! You can do this,' and when they come into the store our Blue Shirts can say, 'These are the three or four products you need to get started.'"

congrats best buy, too bad you showed up 5 years late for the party.

X-Post

They are a few years too late on this one. Remember, "you and your band" already sold the turntables bought with the proceeds from the sale of guitars in order to purchase guitars again.

Anyways...
most generic terminated audio cables = crap
monster = crap that is still better than the above crap, not worth the markup but still the better of two shitty options
well-made cables that cost less, the same or more than monster = most likely better than monster

i have said it before, and i wil say it again, on a reasonably accurate system, cables do sound different. better or worse comes down to your ears, and usually does not correspond to price. all of the technical blah high end companies publish may explain the reason the cables sound as they do but i do not think there is a platonic ideal of cables that would serve as an objective measure to either validate or undermine all of this blah.

And I thought the annoying clikety-click-clack of Rock Band drums throughout the store was annoying...

cant imagine they will actually have needles on the tables, but, having spent 4 weeks earlier this year working in the dj section of a retail store, the constant sabuse of the pitch change functionality of CDJs and/or serrato really became grating. and i am someone who still finds it amusing to play records at the wrong tempo. actually, I a a hypocrite. when I do it to Aaliyah it is cool and when you do it to Lady Gaga you suck.

Well the ones around here have also recently added the section for live instruments, so you have to deal with little kids pounding away on the demo keyboards too.

Eh, Best Buy might be "late" but since it's the go-to for so many people I'm sure they'll do fine with folks just kinda interested in checking out dj-ing/music making for the first time.
Unless there's already a Guitar Center nearby in which case, yeah, that market might be taken.

x-post again yay

man i used to love doing that, though best buy wasnt around when i was walking seventeen miles to school in blizzards every day with my feet wrapped in newspaper because shoes hadn't been invented yet.

actually i always wonder what would have happened if my parents had gotten me one of the things i used to pound on at the music shops. maybe i would have some cool rare analog beast in my collection.

Its kinda like choosing between hanging or electrocution, but I think I'd rather put up with the blue-shirted smurfs than the douches at a Guitar Center.

anyway I think that this: "It may not be simple to find these products in a mainstream environment -- either you have to know what you need, or you have to talk to someone who is in the industry"

is actually kinda accurate and translates to "yeah, obviously we know we're serving the novice/curious beginner market and not the pros/already serious hobbyists"

guitar center used to be willing to take a beating on prices but now they are trying to not negotiate like a "respectable" company. sucks.

and i am not one to usually beat people up on pricing buts its like - i am broke and you suck at your job and i am just here because you have put other places out of business so please can you just give me 10% off on this thing that i chose without your help because you dont even know how it works?

I haven't been to a Guitar Center in a while. Are they no longer being competitive w/prices? The advantage used to be that if you could avoid human contact as much as possible, and maybe bring in a coupon (or be ready to buy a somewhat dinged up floor model) you could at least get things fairly cheap.

Their pricing is still competitive with other dealers but they wont drop their price further unless they are matching another authorized dealer. its a fairly standard policy, similar to the one that i used to work under at my old hifi shop. but whereas at the hifi shop we wouldn't "walk" a customer who made a reasonable offer on something we had in stock, at guitar center they are willing to do this now because, hey, where else are you going to go? even in nyc.

actually the "no deals" thing at GC was a new policy adopted when Bain Capital bought them.

makes sense

Courtesy of friend Mackro, a rival.

Monster Cable would be a pretty good boring band name, actually

when I saw this was on ILM I hoped there was a band called monster cable

A tale to warm your heart.

So many great quotables in that Blue Jean response letter linked upthread

It cannot possibly be that you believe that more than one of these patents is pertinent, and if you insist that they are, we cannot have an intelligent dialogue on this subject

You are welcome to point out any error in my reasoning; but I have to say that I will be unreservedly surprised if you are successful in doing so.

Never fails. Everytime I am getting in the "Tom, delete IlX now" funk, Ned posts a heartwarming take such as this one.

Take=Tale

Reviving because the Apple/Beats deal underscores again how that story I linked a year back keeps getting funnier.

http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world/1573984234/+ericlimer