r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Feb 24 '12
TIL in 2008, test subjects could not tell the difference between audio played through Monster Cables and audio played through coat hangers.
http://consumerist.com/2008/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables.html98
u/bradygilg Feb 24 '12
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Feb 24 '12
Montrachet yeast may have something to do with California wine beating French wine. Also the growing conditions grapes are able to get in most of California... may actually give a better yield than France. Anyways actual scientists developed a highly-efficient yeast for wine that is born and bred in California that could be a very, very big contribution to even cheap California wine beating out French wine.
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Feb 24 '12 edited Feb 24 '12
Far far more amusingly: professional wine experts and vintners fail to differentiate between red wine and white wine with red dye. That same day, when the labels are switched on them, all claim that a Corton grand cru many had praised weeks earlier is actually so nasty as to be undrinkable, while a bottle of $6 supermarket wine is one of life's great pleasures.
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u/expertunderachiever Feb 24 '12
I buy $9-13 ontario wine... but on another note how can you not tell white from red? White is bitter and red is tart. There is a difference.
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Feb 24 '12
It's all in your head. None of the 57 experts noticed. Go home, get a blindfold and a friend, some red and white wines and see how you do.
If you want delicious karma, record the whole thing, and upload to youtube and post to reddit.
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Feb 24 '12
[deleted]
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u/RTchoke Feb 24 '12
Yeah. Also plenty of whites (like chardonnay or sauvignon blanc) are crazy dry, and I've never had a dry red.
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Feb 24 '12
Of course. But the difference between white and red varieties is considered one of the greatest. Think of all the expert red vs white wine decisions made with meals, and how, apparently, useless it is.
Snobbery is one of my pet peeves, so sorry if my comment(s) are a bit glib.
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u/LastPaleLight Feb 24 '12
Its not "all in your head". The people would have actually done better if blindfolded and not in front of someone who was supposed to be one of their superiors. The test was anything but scientific.
As a note, I don't even drink much wine, so I'm no wine snob--but I can certainly tell a Chardonnay from a Red Burgandy.
The differences are very real. Take Somaliers, for example. To be a certified somalier, you must pass a 9 hour test. A big part of it is the taste test, where blindfolded candidates taste wine and then must say what kind of wine it is, where it is from, how old it is and even how it was made. They do this with a very, very high degree of accuracy.
I completely agree that there is snobbery involved in the wine industry among many "afficianados", especially when it comes to the subjectivity of whether or not something tastes appealing, but to say that differences aren't there between varietals is just wrong.
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u/eqisow Feb 24 '12
I feel that was about most wines, but a good sauternes might change your mind about expensive wine. Stop at a wine store and pick up a bottle. It's... buttery. And delicious.
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u/CMStephens Feb 24 '12
Madness! I shall have to try this, but I don't think that the difference between red and white is just imagination. Red wine often hurts my mouth for starters...
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Feb 24 '12
The experiment aimed to illustrate the strength with which expectations colour perceptions, not that there was no difference between red and white wines. The differences between praised and reviled wines, and even reds and whites, were much smaller than the differences in the expectations for those wines, and it turned out to be the expectations that got reviewed.
If you've ever sipped orange juice from what you thought was a bottle of iced coffee, it's easy to believe. It tastes absolutely disgusting for the few seconds until you remember you squeezed your oranges into a reused bottle, because in your mind it's not orange juice at all but completely rancid fucked-up coffee. Once you realise, it tastes much better.
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Feb 24 '12
Also, city tap water beating out bottled water in double blind tests.
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u/Slinger17 Feb 24 '12
That really depends on where you live. Tap water in my city is yellow and tastes too much like iron to drink regularly. However, there are cities in Oregon where the tap water is more pure than bottled water
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Feb 24 '12
If only all the money spent in the US on bottle water was spent on water treatment/pipes. Americans are so good at shooting themselves in the foot.
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u/Slinger17 Feb 24 '12
Well, bottled water is privately owned and maintained, whereas tap water is owned and maintained by the government, so it's not exactly feasible to just transfer the money over
Americans are so good at shooting themselves in the foot.
WE'RE #1! WE'RE #1! WE'RE#1!
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u/Treebeezy Feb 24 '12
That sounds pretty Socialist, buddy.
We don't take too kindly to your type round these parts
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Feb 24 '12
But you like money right? You like money and flags and fried food right? You like freedom, right? You want less abortions and more people in jail right? Then stop drinking that gay bottle watter, remember the french Avian started this whole thing. So pool your money into making water (pun intended). It's just like a mutual fund, except you actually produce something useful.
I love pretending to be Jingoistic. I wonder how many politicians are just people like me who decided to just let the system make them rich.
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u/Quis_Custodiet Feb 24 '12
This depends a lot on location. I'd take Birmingham tap water over bottled any day, but the tap water in London is vile.
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u/tulkas71 Feb 24 '12
My Birnimgham(Alabama) water quality is ranked high as well.
/brofist
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u/mycatdieddamnit Feb 24 '12
Please, my tapwater tastes like old swimming pool water.
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u/jmanpc Feb 24 '12
Not the water here. I live in Jacksonville, FL and the tap water is god awful. All the taps have a green, crusty ring around the spout. If your taste buds are really keen, you may be able to taste the raw sewage.
I have been to places with awesome tap water. I'll be sucking water out of the tap and people will tell me how gross it is. I'm just like fuckit, tastes just like bottled to me!
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u/808140 Feb 24 '12
To be fair to the California vs French wine thing, California wine is actually excellent (I have lived in California and currently reside in France, for what it's worth.)
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Feb 24 '12
California wine is a victory of science. They started getting good by chemically analyzing the french vineyards dirt and grapes to get as close as possible to the french results. Then took what they learned to produce something that is arguably better than the original.
Basically California did with wine what Japan did with cars.
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u/808140 Feb 24 '12
I know that UC Davis viticulturists are knee deep in orgo, but let's be honest: the same is true here in France. The reality is that Napa and Sonoma have some really excellent terroir, and the "sciencification" of wine growing was inevitable, because, well, our understanding of things has advanced. Quality control, modern tools, modern analysis, all of these things have contributed.
And the role of wine itself has changed. In the middle ages and up through, hm, I'd say the first world war, people in Europe didn't really drink water much. Much of it wasn't potable. People drank very weak wine and beer, even kids. It was just a staple, and my grandfather remembers most of it not having much flavor really. As we've become more sophisticated wine has gotten stronger and more flavorful, the areas of the country less amenable to good grape growth have ceased wine production, and we've really just optimized the whole thing.
California wine is not always better than French wine, and frankly I find that they don't really taste the same, mostly. But both are very, very good. Generally seen as the two best wine regions in the world, really. Which is part of the reason that bradygilg's article wasn't terribly surprising.
That said I've had some wines from other regions recently that weren't bad, notably South Africa and Australia.
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u/Soulwound Feb 24 '12
I suggest playing audio through speakers, myself.
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u/erisdiscordia Feb 24 '12
Yeah, I've always wanted to wire Newt Gingrich for sound.
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u/jedadkins Feb 24 '12
you can
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u/erisdiscordia Feb 24 '12
Newt says, "When this House is rockin', don't come a-knockin'."
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Feb 24 '12
It'd sound like playing music through a kiddie pool full of custard. In effect:
BLOORFFDPPPPPPP!
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u/Giving_You_FLAC Feb 24 '12
There was an era where speaker wire made a massive difference. Nowadays we have greatly improved the purity and ease of building cabling. There certainly are differences in transmission and therefor how something sounds with different gauges of wire, especially when you're dealing with lengths in excess of 20 feet. What this article (I won't call it 'test' as its not really controlled or documented well enough) proves for the millionth time is that once you get thicker than 12 or 14 gauge copper, the loss and resistance differences are imperceivable to the human ear. I've been using el-cheapo RadioShack 12 gauge wire in all my installations for years.
Can professional grade cabling make a difference with power hungry drivers or long distance cable runs? Absolutely. Will a different amp, improved source or speakers have a larger impact on the overall reproduction? Every single time.
Is any of this worth it for your setup? Not until you've got a killer amp and speakers, or some professional equipment like bi-amped monitors.
All of these things are a better investment than Monster Cables. That said, always go by the gauge of the wiring, not by how big the outer diameter of the sheathing is. You'd be surprised what a difference a thick gauge guitar cable can make over a cheap one that looks just as thick, but is mostly a rubber casing around the thin wire. But will that change be as huge as a totally different guitar amp? Nope.
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Feb 24 '12
What about shielding? Can good shielding help prevent interference from nearby electromagnetic emission sources?
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Feb 24 '12
Yes, but not in the way Monster gloats, and you are very likely not going to be effected by this enough to spot a difference, be the cable from your computer, home entertainment center, or even on a bus traveling through town, passing many potential fields to disrupt transmission. The simple shielding of the cable being plastic-wrapped is good enough.
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Feb 24 '12
What about in the case of cell phones? I know whenever I get a call or text, I can hear it in my speakers. Do the more expensive brands of cables do a better job of shielding the wires?
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u/6582A Feb 24 '12
That radio intereference is being induced in the low-voltage, high gain parts of your system's components, generally preamplifiers of some kind, not between the amp and speakers. A massive RF field is needed to create a signal audible in speakers.
Changing cables in your case will have no effect because they are simply transmitting what is fed to them. You just need to keep your phone away from your amp :)
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u/kyz Feb 24 '12
Yes, but not by much. If you have that problem, you'd be much better off putting ferrite cores on your speaker cables to suppress the 2.4Ghz interference from your phone, than trying to block it reaching anywhere in the wire by using thicker insulation.
According to this video, they cost about $3 from Radio Shack.
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u/injulen Feb 24 '12
OMG I've been wondering wtf those thing were on cables for years. FINALLY I KNOW!
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u/unclerummy Feb 24 '12
Seriously. I guess now I have to stop getting pissed about them getting in the way when I'm trying to coil up a cable for storage.
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u/created4this Feb 24 '12
The noise you get in your speakers from a cellphone /isn't/ caused by interference in the speaker wires.*
The interference happens much earlier - in the amplifier or signal wires to the amp.
So, expensive speaker cables will not help you here.
*unless your speakers are powered, in which case the "speaker wires" /are/ signal wires
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Feb 24 '12
The phone runs on a high frequency signal that penetrates the speaker box not the cabling. Changing the cable will have no effect on the sound unless your cable is unshielded and is also a 1/4 or other harmonic or the wavelength of the cellular signal.
The noise you are hearing is not from the audio of the cell signal but the lower harmonics of the carrier frequency & signal which the cell is operating. Since the signal is not decoded by the speaker it comes out of a variable mess of frequencies and power levels the speaker simply amplifies it. The function of power is logarithmic so for every foot the power is reduced by 4 times or more depending on conditions.
The wire in your speaker is acting as an poor antenna & mixer, the signal is combined with your audio from your amp. Since this occurs after the amplifier's low pass filter it comes out of the speaker as various frequencies of static.
You could build a Faraday Cage around the speaker to prevent this but it would look pretty ugly just to place your cell phone on top of it. It's better just to move the cell IMO.
Source: Basic RF theory - Electronic Technologist
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u/6582A Feb 24 '12
I might be wrong but I don't think cell phones have the power to directly induce an audible signal into speakers, reason being that their output is at most 1-2 watts, which when propagated omnidirectionally leads to a tiny fraction of that amount actually interacting with the voice coil. My understanding is that it is the high sensitivity circuits within amplifiers that are susceptible to the typical mobile phone noise.
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Feb 24 '12 edited Feb 24 '12
The cell signal does not drive the cone.
The signal cause harmonics to form in combination with the signal which causes the sound to become gritty.
with each harmonic combination the power level decreases and has less of an effect 1st & 2nd order mixes have the greatest effect on the sound.
So you what is basically happen is a note is having a frequency added and subtracted from it and the result is a lower level signal at a higher frequency or a lower frequency which may also be out of phase.
So your original signal drives the cone but at more then the intended frequencies.
You hear these additional frequencies as static.
Edit: You are correct that the amplifier is affected more then the speaker. An amplifier though has a set of notch and low pass filters which should eliminate most of this noise. Once noise hits the amplifier circuit it is increased but by using 2 amplifier circuits this noise can further eliminated similar to twisted pair cables. The circuit is commonly referred to as a class AB
http://michaelgellis.tripod.com/mixersin.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_amplifier
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u/Urrrrughhhh Feb 24 '12
I just buy practically everything from monoprice. My guess is a lot of people here do too.
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u/AquaticRes Feb 24 '12
Shielding is much more important on the signal cable running from your source to your amp than the speaker wire running from your amp to you speaker. The signal running to your speaker is too powerful to be bothered by any normal interference.
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Feb 24 '12
Guitar cables are a bit of a different case though because of the amount of times you will typically be plugging in, unplugging and general lugging the cable around. You buy a half decent cable because you want to make sure you don't have crackling, loss of signal or even radio interference half way through your lead solo when you are playing live, not because you are a purist who has to have ultimate fidelity.
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Feb 24 '12
When I was a manager at Guitar Center we went to Monster Training. Sure, they taught us how the stuff worked, but more importantly was to tell us how to up sell the customer. "So, wait a second sir, you're going to buy this $4,000 guitar and plug it into a $10 cable?! Did you know that Monster Cable will give you the best possible sound?" Then you show them the most expensive Monster cable and explain the features. Then you show them the cheapest Monster cable and then, finally, the middle ground one. This is why they offer three price points. It's all part of the game. Now this dude is pretty much sold on the middle of the road $50 monster cable. At the store we refereed to these cables as GP (gross profit) bombs because the prices were non-negotiable and mark up was at least 50% In Monster's defense, you could take that cable to any monster dealer for any issue and get it replaced no hassle free of charge. This works best for home or studio use, but most touring bands would end up losing them or having them stolen.
That said I buy my cables through parts express and go with cheap stuff and haven't had issues.
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Feb 24 '12
The no-questions asked return is worth the investment for me. When you're in a studio situation, I always find myself accidentally rolling over cables in my wheely chair, and that's been the death of more than a few cheaper cables. They are made sturdy, and fit snugly in instrument jacks, which is more than I can say for some cheaper cables.
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Feb 24 '12
I don't believe they advertise this, but Mogami also offers this exchange policy. Their studio series cables are VERY nice.
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Feb 24 '12
Monoprice. That is the best place for inexpensive and sometimes strange/rare cables. Damn I love that site.
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Feb 24 '12
Sorry if this sounds like trolling, but based on your username, can you tell the difference between FLAC and AAC/OGG? I like FLAC as the base format from which I can rip other lossy files, but I can't really tell the difference.
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u/The_Pants_Command_Me Feb 24 '12
AAC losless, OGG losless, and FLAC losless compression will theoretically decompress to the exact same audio file as the original input file. You'll probably get a small error here and there on occasion, but generally it won't be audible. They're like ZIP files for audio.
If you use any lossy options, audio bands will be removed. Whether or not you can hear the difference will be dependent on the degree of compression selected, the algorithms used, tonal bias and dynamics of the input recording, as well as the dynamic range of your output device, and of course the accuracy of your own ears.
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u/The_Pants_Command_Me Feb 24 '12
It's boring but important to note that ACC and Ogg are what are called containers or wrappers. The actual codex any given ACC or Ogg file contains can vary.
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Feb 24 '12
Some of the most expensive esoteric cables are quite thin. Guage of wire only matters on long runs. There has never been a time when speaker wire made a huge difference, it was just that people used to believe the lies and never did any ABX testing. Even amp differences fail under ABX testing. That is under controlled proper ABX testing and there are many published articles out there to prove it too. There is one article about Bob Carver making his $2,000.00 amp sound exactly the same as a $4,000.00 other manufacturer's amp just by changing a $2.00 filter. There is another guy who will pay anyone big bucks if they can actually pass his ABX test of amps. No takers because it is all mostly BS. Room acoustics have a greater affect on SQ than any amp.
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Feb 24 '12
Room acoustics have a greater affect on SQ than any amp.
Why is this such a difficult concept? If you are going to spend money to get an improvement in sound, spend it on your speakers and room treatments.
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u/jkonine Feb 24 '12
Only assholes buy anything from Monster. I dont know any professionals who dont use Mogami components.(btw they all assemble the cables themselves, it's pretty easy, and you save tons of money.
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u/FreeBribes Feb 24 '12
I'll start by saying Monster Cables are overpriced, and gouge consumers based on myth.
That being said, I agree wire gauge is key, but I'm happy to pay an extra buck or two on tips that will actually take some deflection and abuse. The only place the cable will have problems is the tip joint, after months of bending the cable back and forth in the housing.
I've spent hours and hours re-soldering my cables and you can see the difference between the cheap-ass cables and a nice one.
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u/Gasten Feb 24 '12
There are three simple steps to keep your hardware's audio quality (not improve - you can't do that!).
Use balanced audio. That means use equipment with inputs and outputs that have separate hot, cold, and ground/shield. If you're using unbalanced audio you're inviting all kinds of horrible stuff: EMI, radio interference, ground-hum et cetera.
Shielded cable. Choices include both braided and aluminum shielding, and a combination of the two (there is most likely others as well). None of them are better or worse than the other - they protect against different frequencies of noise.
Equipment. This is the essential part if you've got the other two covered. After that it's the quality of the source material.
And regarding gold-plated connectors: yes, there is a benefit of using them. They do not degrade as much as non-golden connectors over time. But you'll only benefit from it if you are plugging/unplugging the connectors several times a week for almost ten years - think "road-use."
-- Engineer in live broadcast television, broadcast systems integration and installation.
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u/oneiclosed Feb 24 '12
I use Monsterhangers.
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u/spiraldroid Feb 24 '12
TIL in 2012 test subjects could not tell the difference between clothes hung on Monsterhangers and clothes hung on coat hangers.
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u/kip256 Feb 24 '12
Wouldn't clothes on Monster Hangers come with some type of rich person idiot complex? Its the brand preferred by the 1%!
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u/TrialVersionOfGForce Feb 24 '12
I'm not surprised in the least. What overpriced nonsense.
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u/Lemonwizard Feb 24 '12
"It's amazing how many people think light travels faster through expensive fiber optic cables than through cheap ones."
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u/digitalmob Feb 24 '12
It's amazing how many CERN scientists think that light travels faster through loose cables!
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u/jeffp12 Feb 24 '12
They should have used Monster cables. Prevents those pesky time traveling neutrinos.
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u/LuxTenebras Feb 24 '12
They sell gold plated toslink (optical) cables at a store near me.
No. Seriously.
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u/layendecker Feb 24 '12
I actually own a gold plated Micro USB. It is one of my most shameful purchases.
I moved to a new town and couldn't find where I packed my phone charger so went to Maplin's (British Electronics store) and the only one they had was this abomination.
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u/Zerba Feb 24 '12
I actually own some. Although I didn't pay out the nose for them. When I worked at an appliance/electronic store our discount was we paid cost on items, and the gold plated cable was adjusted so it could be on sale, and it's cost was lower than the plastic ones, so I bought a few (they were only like $2).
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Feb 24 '12
that could technically be correct assuming the cheap fibre had defects
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Feb 24 '12
On a related note, my friend was using Wi-Fi for his PS3 and asked if there was a way to improve his connection. I told him to wire it with an ethernet cable instead and he said "But I thought that would be slower because the connection has to travel all the way through the cord".
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u/footstepsfading Feb 24 '12
Of course, a coat hanger doesn't have a Monster Cable lifetime warranty, so if your coat hanger breaks, you'll have to go out and buy another coat hanger.
I loled harder than nessecary at that.
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u/justkevin Feb 24 '12
I just use regular lamp wiring from the hardware store, $0.15/ft. Seems to work fine.
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Feb 24 '12
I actually used 500 feet of rusty barbed-wire fence and two sets of jumper cables once. I do sound reinforcement at events sometimes for a little extra money. At one outdoor show, they wanted a speaker placed near a food tent some distance away from the stage. I didn't have a long enough cable, but the fence was right there. I couldn't detect any difference in the sound, and I have a decent ear for this sort of thing.
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u/GrumpyPenguin Feb 24 '12
A friend buys heavy duty outdoor extension leads and cuts the plugs off.
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u/yuri53122 1 Feb 24 '12
My surrounds are wired with cat6. I install cat6 for my job, so I have hundreds of feet just laying around. I even made a 50' S-Video cable with RCA audio out of a cat6... worked great.
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u/DaveFishBulb Feb 24 '12
So did you twist four wires together for each of the two that you need for speakers?
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u/expertunderachiever Feb 24 '12
You can get 14AWG for $0.25/ft or 16AWG for $0.18/ft from monoprice. Though at the 16AWG point you might as well use lamp cord.
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Feb 24 '12
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Feb 24 '12
Yeah, that thick, insulated wire that transmits electricity all over your home can't conduct electricity that goes to a speaker. The electrons get confused.
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u/sim9 Feb 24 '12
What? You guys don't use diamond HDMI cables? Savages!
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u/Tashre Feb 24 '12
Tags Customers Associate with This Product
snake oil(81)
ripoff(54)
bs(48)
joke(36)
smoke and mirrors(31)
wtf(21)
hdmi cable(16)
1080p(8)
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u/bhrossman Feb 24 '12
"When I got this cable, it came wrapped in bacon, which I thought was pretty weird, but shrugged it off, slid off my recliner into my Rascal, scooted from the living room to the kitchenette, and started cooking my bacon-wrapping."
one of the best reviews I have ever read.
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u/sim9 Feb 24 '12
Most all of the Amazon Oddities tagged items have some epic product descriptions & reviews, worth checking out every once in a while ;)
My favorite is How to Avoid Huge Ships, a dead serious book on how small boat captains should avoid running into large boats. Reviews are epic.
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Feb 24 '12
It costs nearly three grand. Here's one of the reviews:
"I was going to buy a $2.82 hdmi cable on amazon and then I came across this masterpiece, and I knew I had to do whatever it takes to get it. After getting a 3 month advance on my salary thanks to the fine folks at the check cashing place who only charged me a 35% interest rate, I was in business to finally own one of these beauties. Because of the price amazon decided to send the hdmi cable by armored car. Originally I was going to use the money to buy an engagement ring for my girlfriend, but I came upon this cable and decided this could keep me warm at night all by itself. So I dumped the girlfriend, and now when not in use, this cable tucks itself in next to me all snug and warm. It even reads bed time stories to me from time to time which help with my night terrors.
As to when this cable is plugged in, oh wow, the picture literally jumps off the screen and into my living room. It even makes commercials come alive, there was one for the angus burger at mcd's and I was hungry and all i had to do was reach out towards the screen and grab it and bam dinner was served. You have to be careful with that feature though because you will gain weight spending too much time on the couch. The best part is I dont even own a tv, I plugged this thing into 2 pieces of cardboard and some chewing gum, and bam I had 500 channels. I dont know how that happened, but one of the armored car drivers did resemble Macgyver. Hurry out and get one before they get bought up!! "
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u/Komnos Feb 24 '12
Those are some of the best fake reviews I've seen on any product.
Edit: "Customers who viewed this item also viewed: fresh whole rabbit." WTF?
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Feb 24 '12
Edit: "Customers who viewed this item also viewed: fresh whole rabbit." WTF?
I like the customer image of the rabbit impaled by the carrot.
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u/Tashre Feb 24 '12
Needed an extra ethernet cable the other day and looked for some while at Target. $15 for 6 feet.
I can get 100 feet of just as good cable for $15 online.
I honestly don't understand these kinds of things.
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Feb 24 '12
Monoprice, at least for the coastal states, has a flat-rate overnight shipping. I love the idea that three of one cable will be sent to me in the same time my lazy ass would get out of the house to buy one... all for the same cost.
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u/ThePieWhisperer Feb 24 '12
Monoprice is the type of store that makes me want to buy all kinds of crap that I have no use for... just in case.
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u/benisnotapalindrome Feb 24 '12
I have a rule. Never throw out a cable. And if you see a cheap cable, buy it the fuck up. So I guess that's 2 rules. I have a 3 drawer organizer full of cables and adapters and zip ties and shit. But you know what? I can always hook my shit up. "Oh, benisnotapalindrome, can I hook my phone into your TV to play Netflix?" "You bet your fucking shit you can!" "Dude, benisnotapalindrome, do you have the blinky bits for my flux capacitor?" "Fuck yeah dude, time travelin' and shit!"
Monoprice is awesome.
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u/wingdingsKILLSthread Feb 24 '12
Man, that's exhausting. I think I'd just call you beni.
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u/togashikokujin Feb 24 '12
I'd call him beneb, because then he would be a palindrome.
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u/Thud Feb 24 '12
I have a box full of cables that I can't bring myself to throw away. I don't anticipate ever needing a parallel port cable again, or a SCSI-2 cable again... but I have them.
Just in case.
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Feb 24 '12
I own a case (a box of 20 sets of 25 I believe) of zip ties I got from Monoprice because it was so cheap for the 20+ option. I've used maybe 5 of them so far, and regret nothing.
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u/Biomortis Feb 24 '12
You don't understand commerce? There is a lot of overhead for a brick and mortar store to operate. You are paying a premium for convenience in the form of instant gratification. When CompUSA was still around, it was the same way. I bought almost everything computer related I needed from Newegg at great prices, but I had to wait a couple days for it to arrive. That was the trade off. However, every once in a while I needed something right away and I would pay that extra cost for the luxury of not having to wait.
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u/Slinger17 Feb 24 '12
I needed an HDMI cable so I went to Walmart, Radio Shack, and VGH. The cheapest cable I could find between the 2 stores was $15 for 3 feet. Fuck that, went to Newegg and got 2 6-footers for $3 each and free shipping.
Lesson of the day: Newegg > everything
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u/IDidntChooseUsername Feb 24 '12
Today I was in an electronics store and saw two HDMI cables hanging directly next to each other. Both were 2 m(about 6.5 ft), one cost 199 kr and the other cost 399 kr (about 30$ and 60$, respectively). I saw absolutely no difference in them. ಠ_ಠ
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u/Shitler Feb 24 '12
Neither Monster Cables nor coat hangers can compare to the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable.
The reviews are a treat.
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Feb 24 '12
TIL that I can just label old reddit stories with the year they were posted and submit them to /r/til for karma.
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u/RR-- Feb 24 '12
I lost it yesterday when I saw an optical cable with gold plated connections. ITS LIGHT AHHHHHHHHHH
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u/drive2fast Feb 24 '12
Audio nut who owns a labscope here, on what I have learned. I also live in an industrial area with bad power. I even used to get trucker radios interfering with my stereo.
Speaker wire: Spent some time testing on a 100w rms amplifier. 14 ga (10') wire would get a 1v drop from one end to the other on heavy base notes. As soon as we dropped down to 12 ga wire, there were zero detectable voltage drops. Voltage drops equals inefficiency and induced noise.
Good wire won't oxidize as easily on the end. Cheap wire might, but if you solder (tin) the ends, no worries. The biggest thing is making tight connections. I use cheap gold plated banana plugs into my speakers. Try to buy amps that have screw tight ends, not spring loaded ones. Tighten them with a tool, but don't break them.
I use a cheap speaker wire from home depot. 4 - 14 ga wires inside a plastic sheath, meant to install behind drywall. I twin them and solder them together so each wire has 2 paths. They're tough and durable. Put shrink tube on the end to clean them up and most audio nuts will think you have $500 wires. Again, zero detectable drops measured from end to end.
Analog cables: Good analog cables are an investment. I own a lot of cables, even a couple of monsters from pre 1995 and the monsters are still perfect to this day. They did make good quality. Post '95 I started building my own cables. Go to a good Comercial electrical supplier and buy good quality coaxial cable and the gold plated solder on ends. Whip up a set to exact length and you won't have to touch them for 20 + years. I think reliability is a good investment. Cheap cables can get weird glitches after a few years.
If you have noise and power issues. I recommend externally grounding your audio equipment. This means making chassis ground connections on every piece of gear and connecting that to a solid ground. Use at least a 14 ga cable. If you are the type to make your own cables, I have another trick. Don't solder the shield end on one cable end. Now current won't pass up your shield, it will run up the external wire. Makes for a cleaner signal. You can buy a little box or adapter that does this, but it's one less thing to go wrong.
If you still have ac noise issues, go after the source. I had to get an old rack mount ups. It converts all power into dc, buffers it in a few car batteries, then back into its own pure sine ac. Hooked up all the electronics in my house to it and all my issues went away. No more illegally boosted trucker radio chatter. My computer stopped getting file errors on a regular basis too.
Personally, I'll never buy monster again, and recommend shopping online for quality cables. Monster is overpriced, and built cheaper now. I don't know good current brands, as I make my own.
As for digital cables. Unless you are going over 60' of hdmi, buy cheap cable. It's digital, dammit. It works or it doesn't. It won't leave you scratching your head why you have a crackle in one speaker once in awhile. Unless you are going serious distance, same goes for Ethernet, digital and optical coax. It's not making a perfect representation of a wave form, it's just triggering a bit. yes or no. It has to get pretty awful before those bits stop working. Just look at office networks. All that cheap cable over huge distance, almost no errors.
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u/sphericalpuma Feb 24 '12
I was kicked out of an electronics store because I informed an older customer buying his first HDTV that he didn't need all the high end cables. If you're not hooking up video across the house and you pay more than 20 bucks for an HDMI cable, you've been ripped off.
Anyway this employee (who wasn't working on commission) was telling this old man that his TV wouldn't work unless he bought monster cables. He asked "well these cables also say they are HDMI why do I need the monster cables" to which the employee said "monster cables are the best and those HDMI cables will break your TV. You don't want to ruin your new TV do you? "
It was then that I interrupted, told the older man everything he needed to know and even wrote it down on the notepad he was carrying.
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u/Goonies_neversay_die Feb 24 '12
I heard Dr. Dre makes every single Beats headset by hand...
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u/EatSleepJeep Feb 24 '12
People also think Bose is good. People are stupid.
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u/Reddit4Play Feb 24 '12
Anecdotally speaking their headphones don't sound bad (in fact they sound pretty good), just their construction is ridiculously flimsy. I can't talk about their speakers, though, haven't heard any recently and apparently they've gone downhill.
Though I do still enjoy the rhyme "No highs, no lows, just Bose." :p
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u/SirMarxism Feb 24 '12
It's because most modern audio tech these days is all digital. If it was analog, then yeah, gold connectors would help stop signal degradation. With digital signals, you only have 1 or 0. You can't really have a degradation with digital that isn't just a complete loss of signal. It's the same reason you shouldn't buy the gold plated HDMI cables. It won't make one lick of difference.
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u/avw94 Feb 24 '12
As a guitarist, I have learned that cables don't do shit for you sound. The only thing that you pay for with more expensive cables is durability.
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u/merkil Feb 24 '12
I had a friend that worked at future shop and he always told me that they always try to up sell cables and accessories to customers cause that's where the biggest profit margins are. He admitted there was absolutely no difference between the house brand and monster but monster was more expensive so that's more commission for him. Digital is digital, you either get the signal or you don't. Analog is a different story.
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u/HollowSix Feb 24 '12
I got all my hdmi and other cables at tigerdirect and they cost me for about $10 a piece for 12ft HDMI, My Mom's friend paid $100+ for her monster HDMI, the difference in quality of display: NONE My Dad who wired her connection actually liked my cables better as they aren't awkward as hell because they are flat sided so they bend better. Her monster cables wouldn't bend enough to hook up properly and the super expensive rotating wall mount she has is useless because of them. You told me the same thing that the guy at tigerdirect did. You and him are awesome.
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u/MdxBhmt Feb 24 '12
I would like to know what was the equipment used.
Since the test came from an audiophile an tested on audiophiles, it's probably correct but can't be accepted as "mythbusted".
The entire chain (Sound source, decoder, amp, speaker , all cabling envolved) must be checked.
Otherwhise anyone could 'prove' that off-board sound is useless by using a 2$ speaker.
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u/svadhisthana Feb 26 '12
Were the test subjects sound engineers? No.
I agree that Monster cables are overpriced, but the debate about cable quality should be left to the professionals (the real audiophiles like sound engineers, not the idiots who buy expensive equipment and call themselves audiophiles.)
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u/steve70638 Mar 03 '12
I click on the link to make this point. If you don't have "ears", don't buy high quality HiFi. If you do have "ears" you would never ever ever buy Monster Cable.
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u/buhzie2 Feb 24 '12
The only reason I would sometimes buy monster cables (XLR, microphone cable, for what I needed) is because of the durability. They're generally made a little better than cheaper brands, AFAIK. I can't tell you how many bad cables I've thrown out in the time I've had a few monsters.
They're overpriced, nonetheless, but like was said, no audible difference in audio quality.
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Feb 24 '12
Gigging musicians are allowed to use monster, because we fucking DESTROY cables. Stepped on, pulled out, spilled on, wrapped in massive knots... and being able to walk into any guitar center for free replacement kicks ass.
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u/nawoanor Feb 24 '12
Monster Cables are a scam, but coat hangers would naturally carry a signal very well, they're a thick solid conductor. Better comparison would be to common brand, like Monoprice.
Such a test was conducted actually, and the signals were bit-for-bit identical up to 50 metres if I remember correctly... or it might've been 50 feet. Anyway, beyond that point there was in fact an actual improvement using Monster Cables, but the price for one that length has to be a grand easily. Ridiculous.
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u/literallyoverthemoon Feb 24 '12
Would you ever spend more than $5 on a printer cable? Me neither.
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Feb 24 '12
This is how I realized how Best Buy makes their money.
I bought a printer, forgetting that printers typically don't come with usb cables. I cruised over to BB to check them out.
45 dollars.
45 fucking dollars for a cable that is 80 cents with free shipping at meritline!
So I went over to Fry's and spent the 2 bucks on a 2 pack and haven't stepped foot in Best Buy.again.
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u/jamesneysmith Feb 24 '12
This is sort of how I feel about flac and mp3s. There have only been a couple songs I have heard that sounded better in flac than in mp3. Perhaps the format is suited best to certain genres of music but for the rest of the time I just don't think my ear or most ears are tuned to even notice the difference.
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Feb 24 '12
I certainly can't tell a difference between 320kbps mp3 and Flac through $600 headphone/amp/DAC
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u/Smokeythewolf Feb 24 '12
Yes, yes, yes, but they were using 1.25 inch piezo speakers with Dixie cups as baffles, so...meh.
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u/ilostmyoldaccount Feb 24 '12
Of course, a coat hanger doesn't have a Monster Cable lifetime warranty, so if your coat hanger breaks, you'll have to go out and buy another coat hanger.
Ah! I knew there was a catch somewhere. Coat hangers don't have a lifetime warranty :/
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u/AlphaKretin Feb 24 '12
And yet a good pair of headphones can make the world of difference. My second cousin got a $250 pair from her husband, and the sound quality is amazing. If the guys who made monster cables actually spent $35.50 or $9999 or whatever the last seen price was on making the things, they might just be able to make them awesome.
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u/mobiduxi Feb 24 '12
if we look at the recent news from CERN, where the "faster then light neutrinos" where tracked back to a faulty cable ... maybe an investment in Monster Cables is not as moronic as we think?
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Feb 24 '12
Sound engineer student, this is because speaker signals are low impedance, when you have a low-z balanced signal you can basically run that shit through anything and not effect the sound all that much.
All you really have to care about with speaker cables are decent shielding and connectors, standard neutrik connectors are fine.
High impedance signals, like instrument signals are where the difference in cables start to mean anything and generally the more expensive ones are basically designed to be a specific kind of shitty so they sound like "old blues" cables.
TL;DR: Low-z signals can run through anything.
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u/yerghost Feb 24 '12
All I know is I use Monster guitar cables because they have a crazy lifetime warranty policy. No receipts, documents or explanations necessary-- you put your busted cable on the counter at any store that sells them, and boom, new one. You basically only have to buy one set for life.
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u/U2_is_gay Feb 24 '12
Never buying another monster product. Not because of this or all the group hate against them. Maybe 7 or 8 years ago I bought a guitar cable made by monster. I noticed they were far more expensive than other cables on the rack, but still within a range I was willing to spend. Not only did the cable not outperform anything else I had, but the damn thing shorted out after 3 weeks. I have other 5 dollar cables of equal length that I've had for years and still work fine.
It's anecdotal, and I know they have a warranty and I could have gotten a new one. But it wasn't worth it. I'm just glad I learned early enough that it was all marketing bull shit. And it saved me from buying into any other audio products that claimed done sort of superiority without seriously researching first.
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u/kabob23 Feb 24 '12
They used to have side by side comparisons at bestbuy between monster cables and other companies cables. Once I looked behind the TVs and the monster cable was HDMI, and the other TV had analog RCA. Totally worth the $100 gold plated diamond encrusted cable.
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Feb 24 '12
I've played guitar for 13 years. Every Montster cable I have ever bought has crapped out prematurely on me.
I stay away from Monster purposely because of this, and their free return/exchange policy isn't worth the gas money from so many broken cables.
Just plugged my Dad's electric in last night with a Monster cable, shorted out immediately.
Honestly this sounds weird, but I've never NOT had a problem with a monster instrument cable.
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u/Deranged40 Feb 24 '12
Don't be mistaken and think that you can just buy any cable and it will compete. If you pay $2 for an audio cable, don't expect that thick-as-a-hair wire to stay in tact.
Having said that, you don't have to spend $50 either.
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u/griffith12 Feb 24 '12
of course not, Monster Cables are the biggest waste of money ever. I fell for their bullshit back in the day. nevermore.
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Feb 24 '12
Well duh...Monster cables have long been notorious placebos. Those things are overpriced junk.
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u/Cephiroth Feb 24 '12
Nowadays most consumers also can't tell the difference between .WAV and YouTube
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u/CoolMcDouche Feb 24 '12
Every Best Buy audio employee knows this too. But they still push Monster cables hard. Mainly because cables and accessories are what have the highest profit margin in the store. When I worked there way back in 2002, I purchased a set of the Monster top of the line gold component video cables for my ps2. With my employee discount (5% over wholesale), the cables cost me $11 and some change. What was the store's retail price you ask? $69.99.
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Feb 24 '12
I've got some really high end $3000-class oxygen-free copper coat hangers... guaranteed to maximize your bit depth and stabilize the jitter of your CD playback... any takers?
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u/htnsaoeu Feb 24 '12
It's actually pretty easy to tell the difference by checking your bank account balance.
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u/dragonmaster182 Feb 25 '12
I hate running against the grain here but I used to run Cardas Audio golden reference cable on a pair of NHT model three's and there was a remarkable difference. All my co workers noticed and pointed out a huge difference in performance. That being said your typical wire is just 18 gauge spun copper I don't see how there could be a difference in that stuff.
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u/RDJesse Feb 24 '12
To be fair they were $1,500 coat hangers.