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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
cyclonicman
693 posts
 
There are many companies besides Monster that make HDMI cables in all sizes, construction materials, and price range. HDMI cables are made by Audioquest, Analysis Plus, Cardas, KImber, Nordost, Straightwire, PS Audio, etc.

Try audio adviser.

http://www.audioadvisor.com/products.asp?dept=238or.
yxlei OP
31 posts
 
Thanks for all your responses. One thing I want to correct: the cable I use is Monster 10000EX instead of 1000HD. I am not sure it will make a difference.

I have to agree with Loomisjohnson that most of high end audio cables are over-priced like my transparent cables. You have to pay double the price when you want to move up one level with transparent cables. The top of line transparent Opus sells for $20,000. So the price tag can reach $1 million soon if they can come up with several levels high than the Opus.

I know it is far easy to tell the difference among audio cables than video cables especially hdmi cables. According to the specs, hdmi cables should have the same performance if they have solid construction, but I am not the only one who feels the Monster or other hdmi cables look much better than the well constructed Monoprice cable.

Maybe the difference is there, but many people are incapable of telling the difference. When you do a hdmi cable comparison, sometime people will forget what they saw from cable A after they switch to cable B. My wife can remember those details better than me. For those who can’t tell the difference among hdmi cables, lucky them because they can just happily use $10 cables.
audiolui
295 posts
 
I guess Monster started it all with high end (expensive) cable. 20 something years ago, I started this hobby thinking cables didn't make any difference. However, the Monster Cable Interlink Reference A interconnect blew me away. It was way better than the stock ICs that came with your components. It was like $100 for one meter then and was considered very expensive. But look at today's high end cable market, Monster Cable is quite cheap. Hype and overpriced or not, they have a place in the audio and video business.

I agree it is harder to discern a difference between video cables (HDMI). But some people are better with their eyes than their ears though or vice versa.
russe41
95 posts
 
I to used to think cables were difference makers,but never quite understood how other people heard differences and I didn't. Then I started reading more technical papers and got away from the magazines and cable advertising ads.
Try some of these links.
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/cwo/Back_Issues/
http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/top-ten-signs-an-audio-cable-vendor-is-selling-you-snake-oil
http://www.verber.com/mark/ce/cables.html
larry_s
128 posts
 
Here's something I posted in another thread here about HDMI cables and video. It will save some of you the trouble of looking it up....

HDMI uses TMDS (Transition Minimized Differential Signaling) to send data. In short, each 8bit data value is encoded into a 10bit value before it is sent over the "wire".

The encoding is done to minimize the 0->1 and 1->0 transitions: The encoder chooses between XOR and XNOR by determining which will result in the fewest transitions; the ninth bit is added to show which was used. In the second stage, the first eight bits are optionally inverted to even out the balance of ones and zeros and therefore the sustained average DC level. The tenth bit is added to indicate whether this inversion took place.

In order for a cable to uniformly change a video stream that looks "better" or "worse", the random bit changes of every 10bit value would have to somehow decode to uniform changes in the resulting 8bit value. Chances of this happening - ZERO.
---------------------

Sending PCM over HDMI is somewhat different. The audio info is sent in between the video frames (blanking interval, IIRC) and is has error correction (unlike video). When just audio is sent, video frames still have to be used. However, the clocking is sent over a separate "wire" of the cable so recovering the clock on the target end and "synchronizing" with the incoming audio data could be prone to jitter.

larry
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