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Is Monster cable getting better?

I don’t like monster cables in general and I know it has bad reputation(nothing but marketing) among audiophile & videophile. It is like bragging about your Bose system to people playing high end audio.

I don’t know why but not many high end cable company makes hdmi cable. So I picked up a Monster 1000HD hdmi at best buy and thought Monster is all about marketing and its performance would be easily surpassed by other cable company. I tried Audioquest hdmi3(not sure if it is genuine but bought from an A’gon member with 500+ positive feedback), bluejean, bettercable, monoprice… Monoprice has the worst performance but it only sell for $5. Some silver cables might render a little more detail than the Monster 1000HD, but the contrast and color and overall performance are still not as good as the Monster. The monster 1000HD looks very natural and smooth without loosing details.

I guess I am done with hdmi cable search and will stick with Monster for hdmi cable. Has anybody tried the Monster M2000 and is it much better than 1000HD? For audio cable I am using transparent and haven’t tried Monster yet. Maybe they are getting better, too.
yxlei
larry_s
128 posts
 
Kirkus, you are right on the money and thanks for adding that. I was ignoring the cable length and quality issues because trying to keep people from falling for the "voodoo" that's rampant with analog video and audio. Also, at one point in the "history" of HDMI/DVI all receivers and transmitters were not "equal". Some people with long connections would replace a source or target device and the connection would no longer work properly - no connection or sparklies. Although I haven't noticed this reported recently.

Getting back to Monster, their cables are usually well constructed and work - just way too high priced.

larry
yxlei OP
31 posts
 
We did lots of blind tests for hdmi cables and my wife picked the Monster cable every time.
chrisr's avatar
chrisr
543 posts
 
The higher-end monster has never been seen as the "bose of the cable world" by serious audio nuts.
Some M series items are quite good actually, and designed by serious engineers.
What turns folks off are the marketing tactics and the fact that 90% of monster products are not up to the hype, and particularly the fact that the finish has become 3rd class (solders, assembly, etc... made in cheap factories you know where).
yxlei OP
31 posts
 
Never tried monster audio cable, but the connector for the monster 1000EX hdmi cable is very good. It is small and light, but you feel very smooth and secure when plugging into the TV. Other high end hdmi cable connectors are all big and bulky(make you feel it worth the extra money), but don’t fit into the TV connection as great as the monster one. Bigger and bulkier doesn’t necessarily mean better.
artmaltman
769 posts
 
I find their RCA interconnects and spools of speaker cable are good warm sounding copper cables, with slightly more resolution and detail and bass as you go up the line. Product names and lines are hopelessly confusing, perhaps by intention but probably more by accident over time as they serve different constituencies.
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