Anyways has Monster Cable sued Cookie Monster yet?

No, but they've sued Frankenstein's monster.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Glad to see this thread's still alive! 201 posts and over 5,000 views. Combined with the many similar threads on just about every other music-related forum on the 'net, maybe, just maybe we'll successfully get the word out.

It'll take a lot to counter testimonials like this one: Steve Tyler Monster Cable Ad. At least he doesn't attempt to make any technical arguments.

not very impressed by the ad...just basic "famous-person-marketing-our-product" concepts.

i have some studio link 500 stuff. it's really not bad. I've never liked the sound from hosa and my studiolink cables sound quite a bit better. they are definitely almost up to par with the pro co stuff i've got (some of which can be very expensive).

i would like to invest in some canare or mogami though eventually. the monster stuff i have i always bought off ebay and probably paid less than i would have for hosa. so i don't feel bad about it. no broken connectors just yet either.

i think it would be fun to get some liquid nitrogen cooled cables though. i'm sure any cable that becomes cold enough to be a super-conductor is going to have a pretty noticeable change in sound quality...

i think it would be fun to get some liquid nitrogen cooled cables though. i'm sure any cable that becomes cold enough to be a super-conductor is going to have a pretty noticeable change in sound quality...

Not as much as you would think...

Lets see, 50 feet of mic cable at 0.070 ohms per foot resistance (16g Mogami cable) = 3.5 ohms DC. For academic purposes we'll not include reactance, which wouldn't be affected by superconductivity much anyway since the conductors are still physically arranged the same and the dielectrics are the same. We'll assume you're running into a mic pre with about 2K ohms of input impedance. That 3.5 ohms of resistance will give you a signal loss of about 0.175%, or 0.015dB.

How much are you willing to pay for that 0.015dB?

ORIGINAL: joshhunsaker
...i think it would be fun to get some liquid nitrogen cooled cables though. i'm sure any cable that becomes cold enough to be a super-conductor is going to have a pretty noticeable change in sound quality...

What wogg said.

It is sometimes easy to forget that audio is pretty rudimentary stuff, electrical-wise, and that the frequency and dynamic range of human hearing does not include information that is very difficult to accurately transmit as electrical signal, relatively speaking.

A lot of the talk about esoteric conductivity improvements are really so much woowoo when it comes to audio.

Ordinary copper is perfectly capable of maintaining phase coherence up to about the speed of light, and in a well-designed cable, signal loss in sensible studio applications is really approaching levels that are purely academic/theoretical. Any "inadequacies" in ordinary high-quality copper conductors are for instance dwarfed by things like atmospheric pressure differences due to proximity to sea level, or whether you have a beard or long hair, dust particles on the speaker cone, what kind of clothing you are wearing as you listen, and so on.

But anyway, whether monster makes good cables or bad is not really the point of this thread, and I for one would prefer a new thread to discuss cable theory if anyone cares. This is a good one to keep on-topic, I think.

Cheers.

this thread is #6 on google when you search for "boycott monster cable".

Hey Losguy,
I did the research regarding the Tripp Lite power conditioner and the price was within pennies of the same for the Furman that I wanted. Honestly, the Tripp Lite seems to have features that are not applicable to my gigging situation so I feel like I'm paying for things unnecessary to my goals. For example, the included phone line jacks, satellite and cable connector support will never be used once my GT-Pro and BBE Sonic Maximizer are installed in my rack system. I guess if I planed to watch cable TV and take incoming calls on stage, it might make sense. I'm a big fan of buying exactly what I need and no more. They make great products and if this rig would be used exclusively at home, it would be a good idea. I just wanted you to know that I did the research as stated and I appreciate you turning me on to another vendor of merit.

thanks,
Chipstar

Thanks for checking back. Glad you found what you wanted.

chipstar, i don't know about tripp-lite but APC makes prosumer UPSes without phone and cable jacks. don't know how much the furman was but a smartUPS 750 will put you back about $240-$250 or so and runs 3 servers without breaking a sweat. plus it's got an indicator of how close you are to maxing the load. just food for thought of course, but i'll probably get one of those to run my stuff off of when my current UPS goes down.

Have to agree with you on the woo woo factor in cabling for audio.

I'm a Mercedes mechanic in my daytime persona. I'm sure that all of you know that cars are computerized theese days. Well, all of these computers talk to each other over a network calles Controller Area Network (CAN). The engine, trasmission, and anti-lock brake computers have their own dedicated high-speed CAN bus to allow them to talk to each other without interference. Imagine the potentialy dangerous havoc that it could cause if that stopped happening! Well. M-B uses a twisted pair of 0.5mm ordinary stranded copper wire to transmit that high-speed CAN bus signal. Other carmakers use a similar design.

Carmakers are now working on fully electronic brake-by-wire systems. No hydraulics at all. Mercedes_Benz already has a brake-by-wire system in place (albeit with hydraulic back-up)! How are they going to control it? Ordinary stranded copper wire. If that's all they need to get your car to stop like it should, why do you need some Digitaly heat-treated, cryogenically tempered , hermetically sealed cord with a liquid nitrogen heat sheild to get sound out to your speakers?

well for one, they probably are transmitting digital signals which are still susceptible to interference but not nearly as much as analog sound. however, i do agree that munster's "technology" is not likely to benefit anyone in an audible manner.