Monster Cable vs Coat Hangers?
- Thread starter Joey_V
- Start date
Help Support MartinLogan Audio Owners Forum:
I saw that article, too. Some will see it as proof of the hype that cable companies push on us. Others will see it as proof that blind testing is an ineffective tool for evaluating audio components. I see it as proof that Monster Cable sucks.
Interesting article but what is its message? I will not presume to understand the workings of Monster cables specifically, but their engineers must read the same journals as their competitors and apply the same laws of physics. How then will the coat hanger test work for other speaker cables?
I am interested in this because I am in the market. Needles to say, it is not straight forward. I am not considering Monster cables because of all the negativity, but I wonder if all of it is fair.
A more complete experiment would be to test against other brands, not just Monster. I really wonder if other cables will yield the same results versus the hanger. Also, volume was not addressed in the experiment. I wonder if the results holds true at several power outputs.
I am interested in this because I am in the market. Needles to say, it is not straight forward. I am not considering Monster cables because of all the negativity, but I wonder if all of it is fair.
A more complete experiment would be to test against other brands, not just Monster. I really wonder if other cables will yield the same results versus the hanger. Also, volume was not addressed in the experiment. I wonder if the results holds true at several power outputs.
eknuds01
Well-known member
It would also be nice to see the coat hanger vs other pricey cables...
This article isn't all the surprising, really. The reviews and hype about cables are way overblown.
This article isn't all the surprising, really. The reviews and hype about cables are way overblown.
TrumpetDoug
Well-known member
Here is what is missing.
The one thing I don't believe I saw was what associated electronics were used in this test. Your higher quality components should be able to flesh out more detail...... or not depending the cable. After all the devil is in the details. The better cables would not allow you to suddenly say "wow I just heard triangle in that piece", but rather comments relative to tone, placement, air, space etc. They were using Logan's so that works for me, but what about everything else. I could believe that a system not properly set-up or featuring inferior equipment may have problems in general. Lets face it, we all hope that cables don't really matter. They are so damn expensive and you get nothing in the way of visual appreciation. I myself like probably most others on this site have invested hundreds if not thousands on cable for every link of the chain. If I thought it didn't matter, those garden hose speaker lines would be up for sale tomorrow. Reading this test hasn't changed my mind yet.
BTW I conducted a similar test at a friends house a few years ago with my nice ICs and his off the Shack Rack ICs. Yep, you got it, we could not tell the difference. It never occurred to me, until we were neck high in the test that his whole system from front-end to pre to amp to speakers had never demonstrated any detail or resolution or image or pace or............you get the idea. What would make me believe that solid gold cables with diamond casing and emerald RCAs would make any dif. (polishing that old turd, silk purse sow's ear) Alas he was able to tell me "see I don't here a lick of difference between the two". By that time I decided our friendship was more important than trying to convince him that the test really needed to be done at my house, and more importantly of course, my system. I never did try this on my system..................maybe now I will.
Doug - out
The one thing I don't believe I saw was what associated electronics were used in this test. Your higher quality components should be able to flesh out more detail...... or not depending the cable. After all the devil is in the details. The better cables would not allow you to suddenly say "wow I just heard triangle in that piece", but rather comments relative to tone, placement, air, space etc. They were using Logan's so that works for me, but what about everything else. I could believe that a system not properly set-up or featuring inferior equipment may have problems in general. Lets face it, we all hope that cables don't really matter. They are so damn expensive and you get nothing in the way of visual appreciation. I myself like probably most others on this site have invested hundreds if not thousands on cable for every link of the chain. If I thought it didn't matter, those garden hose speaker lines would be up for sale tomorrow. Reading this test hasn't changed my mind yet.
BTW I conducted a similar test at a friends house a few years ago with my nice ICs and his off the Shack Rack ICs. Yep, you got it, we could not tell the difference. It never occurred to me, until we were neck high in the test that his whole system from front-end to pre to amp to speakers had never demonstrated any detail or resolution or image or pace or............you get the idea. What would make me believe that solid gold cables with diamond casing and emerald RCAs would make any dif. (polishing that old turd, silk purse sow's ear) Alas he was able to tell me "see I don't here a lick of difference between the two". By that time I decided our friendship was more important than trying to convince him that the test really needed to be done at my house, and more importantly of course, my system. I never did try this on my system..................maybe now I will.
Doug - out
It would be nice if it were some other site than Audioholics who are well known for pooh poohing the differences between cables. Also note that not one piece of equipment is mentioned except the speakers, the music is unknown and unnamed, how old and in what condition are the SL3s? How many beers were consumed beforehand?
One of the more interesting and important things I learned this year was the positive effect of using low capacitance cables with electrostats. Although I'd had hints about this from several sources, the white paper on Roger Sanders' website is very complete, and worth studying before making any future speaker cable decisions.
The bigger question is why do they consider this to be news all of the sudden? Their source of information is an anecdotal comment from an audioholics blog post from 2004. I guess the Consumerist has run out of topics to write about so they are dredging up whatever controversial stuff they can find, no matter how old it is.
theWB
Well-known member
Went back and read more of the post. In a subsequent post, the Ph.D. ("Dr. Bob Dean") that did the tests uses the following "words" in his answer:
nervina
milenia
ads
concensus
hobbiests
opionion
sais
I am not sure if he is lying about the tests, but I have never met a Ph.D. that could not spell the word "says"...just food for thought..
That being said I do use Monster Cable, but the reason I used it was it was the least expensive of the premium cables. Also the speaker wire I use has some extremely long runs and their rated for in wall instaliation.
For what it is worth I recently replaced my cheap version of moster cable I had purchased at Radio Shack with anti cable speaker cables and ICs and there was immediately a noticable difference for the better. Music much less congested. More air and space b/w the intruments. Better high end airy extension. Definate improvement that I think anyone could hear. I was happily suprised at the improvement as this is my first venture into cables other than what is available at the local electronics house. These cables are not very expensive compared to many others and obviously a different "type" design. I think they also have a fairly low capacitance as does Sanders cables. By the way I almost bought Sanders cables instead, and still may in the future to A/B with these anti cables. So far they have made my summits sing even better!!
MickeyVee
Well-known member
Well there you go. AntiCables, the closest thing to coat hangers. Just kidding.
I swap out my AntiCables with my Nordost SolHr Winds every few months and try to kid myself into thinking they're better. hard to tell the difference even if the Nordost were 5x the price.Swapped my Monster subwoofer cable with a SigalCable sw cable and the difference was immediate.
Yes, this segment of the market is way out of wack with the rest and yes there is a difference (given you have a half decent system). I'll stay wit AntiCables and SignalCable and put my money elsewhere in the system.
The hanger thing? Just an opinion. We know better, right
I'll let you know as soon as I pick up all the clothes on the floor in my closet.
We have been reading these blind tests for years. I think it means there is no such thing as a transparent ABX switchbox.
Don't lump all Monster cables together Monster m2.2s are pretty good in my opinion. The're just like any other cables for instance some of the worst cables I've ever heard are Audioquest they also have some of the best cables I've ever heard too.
This debate, although amusing, is a bit ridiculous. In the analog domain, cables can certainly make a small but significant difference. As stated earlier, you cannot polish a turd -- so if your equipment isn't up to par, it really doesn't matter what you use as IC cable.
A couple years back, myself, a friend, and a few glasses of Hennesy XO tested some of the IC cables that I have stored in a box. The contenders were: a cheap set of Monster Cables, a nice set of Tara Labs RSC, and a set of pricey Siltech SQ-80 (I think that's right...). To minimize variables, we only swapped the cable between the Marantz CD player and the preamp.
The winner was the Siltechs. It wasn't even close. This was verified by my completely sober wife as well. The detail was vastly better with the silver cables. Piano notes rung out with awesome sustain, saxophones sounded reedy, and female vocals jumped up out of the sound stage. Chamber music, always a good test of one's system, made it obvious that the noise floor was lower and the impact crisper.
Since that day, I have used silver interconnects for my two-channel listening. Silver speaker cables make the system sound a bit bright, so I prefer copper -- preferrably bi-wired -- in that application.
So the coat hanger arguement, from my perspective, is fairly irrelevant.
~VDR
A couple years back, myself, a friend, and a few glasses of Hennesy XO tested some of the IC cables that I have stored in a box. The contenders were: a cheap set of Monster Cables, a nice set of Tara Labs RSC, and a set of pricey Siltech SQ-80 (I think that's right...). To minimize variables, we only swapped the cable between the Marantz CD player and the preamp.
The winner was the Siltechs. It wasn't even close. This was verified by my completely sober wife as well. The detail was vastly better with the silver cables. Piano notes rung out with awesome sustain, saxophones sounded reedy, and female vocals jumped up out of the sound stage. Chamber music, always a good test of one's system, made it obvious that the noise floor was lower and the impact crisper.
Since that day, I have used silver interconnects for my two-channel listening. Silver speaker cables make the system sound a bit bright, so I prefer copper -- preferrably bi-wired -- in that application.
So the coat hanger arguement, from my perspective, is fairly irrelevant.
~VDR
Last edited:
