O.K. Heres my question. I work for a home theater company that sells monsta and I went to a training today and all the sales people truely believe all the jargon that they pump you up with. Most of these sales people started out with the belief that this is the best of the best. It's kind of like when people believed the earth was flat and didnt realize differently until they wanted to find out the truth ( or accidentally found the truth in that case). Now how much of this is true? Can you really clean the power coming into your house to improve your picture, and do the so called time corrected cables time correct or not? Do different frequincies travel at different speeds? I know the value is no where near the price, but is it considered to be good stuff or not (regardless of the price)? I personally think that its not bad, but I think that alot of it is B.S. marketing strategies. They claim that their not a marketing company they just get good sales because of a good product. I know they have alot of awards and tons of patents, but how many of you dislike them because of their strategies rather than their product? By all means Im not trying to back them. Im just trying to get the truth of the matter. I personally would like to know of other manufacturers with comprable products if not better!

This might get alot of responses, so I'll go first. The key thing to remember is that the cables that come in the box with a dvd or other, are generally crap, non sheilded, poor connection cables. So offering a customer upgraded cables is not a disservice. Trying to make him believe that his 200.00 dvd player will "sound" better with a 150.00 toslink cable should keep you up at night if you have a conscience. Cables are sometimes the only way to actually make a few dollars on the sale, if you are in retail. And I am sure many will agree that after you have sold something better for the audio, the only cables that truly make a difference would be video. And in many cases depending on the cable, you can actually demonstrate the video quality difference. Is Monster the best, no, there are lots of cables out there and they can be good quality for not alot of money, without some fancy name on the jacket. There are also cables that would require most of us to have to take a second mortgage out just to buy them.
Monster is the Bose of the cable world, lots of us love to hate it, but the guys who sell it make lots of money, and the average consumer isn't unhappy owning it. Can they get better for their money, of course they can. But the average consumer isn't looking for better, he buys what you sell him. Do I sell Monster, no, and I don't get clients asking for it either.

Monster is the Bose of the cable world,


Never seen that.

yes we sell bose I mean monster it does not fail and i got cables that are at least 13 years old at some cust. houses. I don't like the cord's but do have the htps7000ss

HOLD ON TIGHT HERE IT GOES AGAIN.

I'm going to be honest. Even though I might take a beating!

The cables aren't that bad, possibly even quite good! You may have a problem snapping circuit boards or pulling jacks out of equipment with some of the 'higher' cables! They grip a little to well!

As for the 'time correction', I'm going to stay out of this one! I'm more of an electrical enginer than a snake charmer. I'm sure others will have different views.

Now for the 'power strips'.(thats what they are!) This is by far the weakest product they offer!
I suppose they MIGHT offer some filtering that could offer a benifit. But, I can't prove it.
I can tell you that they offer NO protection whatsoever in the event of a power surge.None!! Ounce you've seen one of there 'top' units go up in smoke AFTER the equipment that was connected to it smoked, you'll understand! I don't even whant to get into the 'protection' they offer for the cable, sat, and phone!

They do look pretty impressive, though!
But then, looks don't win races!

Make one cable about a mile longer than the other, but that'll probably work for most cables.

Most of their video cables have some form of RG-59 inside them. Mine have RG-6, for under $10/each. I win!

Once I got to sit in on some Monster training while I worked for the Good Guys. I was also taking an beginning electronics course and the trainer kept bring up "facts" that contradicted what I learned as fact in class. This was many years ago so the specifics escape me.

He hated me by the time his presenation was over. I kept telling him, but my professor taught us this or that. Between that and the fact that the connectors were on so tight they would break the components inputs while taking the cable on or off I wrote off using their products.

For their speaker cables, supposedly their magnetic flux tube eliminates the need for a bigger gauge wire because it deflects EMI and decreases the amount of resistance so the signal passes easier. For video they use a nitrogen gas injected center conductor so that the center conductor stays in the center therefore video transmission stays at 75 ohms giving you a better picture. Now tell me that Im going to see an actual difference in a monster video cable compared to one that I make using compression fit ends and a high quality quad shield RG-6. Last of all their audio cables are so good because they use a drain wire to draw away the noise picked up by the cable, as for the time correction they twist certain wires differently in order to control the length in able to control the time at which certain frequencies arrive.

Now can someone who actually knows what their talking about give me a logical, technical and truthful answer. Im tired of people popping up saying yeah there good, or they suck. Just the facts is all Im looking for without having to go to college to get a damn electronics degree to get an answer.

If you go to college and get a damn electronics degree, you'll find it difficult to prove any of the above! With one exception. It's common knowledge that grounding the drain wire to the source and having no connection on the other end is an accepted method to shield the cable from noise. Thats why they are labled as directional.

All decent quality video cables have the center conducter in the middle. It's far more likely to be 'off center' due to a sharp bend or a kink due to a
poor installation.

Differences of phase shift and frequency alignment between two speaker cables of equal lengths and equal gauge has yet to be proven, although many people swear that they can here a difference. I'm not one of them but perhaps I'm jaded by the lack of hard proof.

Why don't you do your own comparison. Take notes. Be open minded and see what you think? Keep in mind that your ears and eyes can tire quickly during such a process.

There have been many forums that have had this discussion. If you want all kinds of tech talk then look around, they are not hard to find. From all the reading in these forums about "wire and cables" with all sorts of experts chiming in, you will find this... Speaker wires will make you money, thats all. YOU need to do some home work. If you are in a retail enviroment, set it up. Get a system plugged in with basic 16ga speaker wire, to a nice pair of speakers. Then get a set of higher end "name brand" speaker cables the same length. Try going from the 15- 20cent a foot stuff to 3 or 4.00 ft, do you hear a difference??? You shouldn't.
Now don't forget there are some funky cables out there with "boxes" on one end, these may very well make a difference in the sound, that doesn't mean they have corrected anything, they have just changed things. If someone thinks it's better, great thats their opinion and what they like to hear. Sell them.

Same thing with the Monster audio cables, try them, 40.00 cables vs. 150.00, do you really hear anything to justify the price difference? Go get a nice piece of Canare wire and a couple of rca ends, solder them on, you just made a cable for about 20.00, that will perform as good .
Now video you can see, and there are differences in what you are delivering through a cable, so yes here is where the difference can be dramatic. It doesn't have to be Monster cable, any good video cable can produce a result that can be seen, but you still can't make a bad picture look good.

Have fun with them, find cables you like and trust, you should sell cables with every system, but don't get caught up in all the hype. Do your own research so that you know you are getting the right cable for your clients system.

Let me break it down a little differently.


How can a piece of plastic be a "magnetic flux tube"?
Anyone with a good understanding of AC will be shaking there head and smiling when you throw that one at them.
Current flow is directly related to the guage of wire.
Smaller = less. Period!


You probably won't notice a difference.



So. If you twist bare copper wires 'differently' but the strands are still in contact with each other, how do you train the electrons to follow a specific strand of wire?

Yah, but you'll have to pay tuition! :-)

The average 3rd grader can explain the flaw in the time correction joke. It starts out something like this: "A train leaves the station in Reno at 9:00pm headed for San Francisco at a speed of 65mph...

Paying dearly for this type of cable only proves that people can still make it in America without the equivelant of a grade school education.

What a Country!

Alright. Who's found the Random Bulls**t generator? Better still, tell me where it is.

Just my 2 cents. I have aproblem selling a $250 power cord for something, when you might have 15 year old romex "rodent chewed" feeding the outlet your using. Its kinda like hooking your Speak and Spell, up to 110 Volts. Its still only going to oporate as fast as Microsoft, er I mean the manufacter wants it to. Its kinda like putting a V-8 in an Escort, Its kinda like wipe'in before ya poop. Just my 2 cents.

Um, while I don't hold with much of the mysticism behind fancy cables, and I refuse to pay Monster's prices, some of the responses above also leave me wondering.

The different twistings DO give different timings. Ever compared specs on CAT5 to CAT3? There's a reason for the different twistings. Now maybe that doesn't matter to 6' runs between amp and speaker in most homes, but...get yer panties out of a bunch.

The "nitrogen-injected" or whatever applies to all coax, I believe. That fluffy white insulation is always "gas-injected" (laymen's term: foam), hardly extraordinary. Leave it to Monster to convince you all that they've snake-oiled you.

And another: "magnetic flux tube". Sounds like a shield with a ridiculous name to me.

Please cut through the hype and educate people, but don't do it with reverse-hype.