cable ? again

Len Amaral · Post by **Len Amaral** » 13 Feb 2000 5:25 pm

I was in the Guitar Center today killing time while my wife was next door shopping. I began looking at a huge wall of instrument cable and noticed that the Monster cable Co. has diversified their cable line. A salesman approached me and asked if I had any questions. Yup! Sure do! I told him I noticed Monster had 3 series of speaker cable and he explained the following: (1)Standard series with nickel plated 1/4" jacks, (2) "Performer 500" series with 24k gold plated jacks and "time correct" wire winding for accurate phase alighment for a wider dynamic range. $40.00 for a 20 ft. cable SHEESH! (3)"Studio" Pro series and this baby is up toward a $100.00 for a 25 ft cable and I forgot what benefits this series has. Also, Monster has instrument cable that is designed for a specific type of music such as JAZZ, ROCK or BASS! OK! I realize a good quality cable will improve your sound. But is 24k gold plated jacks and "time correct" wire winding for accurate phase alignment or wire specifically designed for a certain type of music a valid appraoch or is this just HYPE? Hey! Maybe they could design the "Pedal Pusher 2000" instrument cable for us steel players?

Ronney Bailey · Post by **Ronney Bailey** » 13 Feb 2000 5:30 pm

No Thanks My George L cables are just fine.
Thats a little high priced for my blood.

Ricky Davis · Post by **Ricky Davis** » 13 Feb 2000 11:45 pm

It is just Hype. Best cable in my book is the George L cable.

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Ricky Davis
ICQ# 62060713
http://hometown.aol.com/sshawaiian/RickyHomepage.html
http://users.interlinks.net/rebel/steel/steel.html
sshawaiian@aol.com

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 14 Feb 2000 4:32 am

The electrical characteristics is the prime consideration for cables, of any kind. They can add gold plated jacks, make them of various colors and materials, give them various names. But in the end the electrical characteristics are the main consideration.

C Dixon · Post by **C Dixon** » 14 Feb 2000 4:36 am

Farce!

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 14 Feb 2000 6:17 am

You folks know what you'r doing....... and talking about.

The one's that buy the high priced "Momster" type cable is the same ones who put two 15 inch speakers in the back seat of their car and try to entertain the people 3 cars back of them. (Everybody with car windows rolled up)

1st) They loose their money on "Power Amps'
and such.

2nd) They loose their hearing abilities.

All comments are my own, NOT supported by any teenagers at all

Too bad

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 14 Feb 2000 6:18 am

What about for long (20 feet +) speaker cable ? I have been using George L but I wonder if thicker would be better.

Bob

Greg Cutshaw · Post by **Greg Cutshaw** » 14 Feb 2000 6:22 am

I did an evaluation and made a long post many months back looking at the capacitance of the George L cables and connectors. They are very good just as Belden thin coax such as RG-178 is. The Monster stuff is all hype with many "audiophiles" writing reviews that the sound is "clearer", "more spacious", "better soundstage", "more transparent". Hard to argure with these precise engineering evaluations! The George L cable is equivalent to the best cable I have ever seen as far as being low capacitance (low loss of highs) while maintaining a decent shield. If you couple this with the fact that repairs can be made quickly on the spot, it has no peers. If you visit audioreview.com and read the reviews on Monster cables you will actually see some honest people saying that the Monster discrete video cables have so much capacitance that they DEGRADE the video signal. There needs to be more science applied to cable reviews and less hype. The hype allows dealers to give away the audio gear but make big bucks on the cables.

Greg

Mark Amundson · Post by **Mark Amundson** » 14 Feb 2000 6:29 am

Two weeks ago I got my ProSound News magazine and noticed that there is an opening for Marketing Product Manager for Monster Cable. My first thought is that they must of caught on to the previous person and marketing hype that was esposed as selling points.

Yeah, gold plating is nice and helps a little electrically, and low capacitance designed cable brings back the treble that is missing in other brands. But a rugged cable with reasonable flexibility is what we giggers are after. Figuring out the grain structure of copper and how oxygen-free it is, is getting a bit out of hand. An engineer once said, "If the conductors are not balck or green, it is oxgen free".

Joe E · Post by **Joe E** » 14 Feb 2000 8:23 am

Sorry To burst your bubbles guys but Monster cables are the very best. I'm not affiliated with them in any way. But here's the low down. Freq's travel at different speeds through cable. Unless you have an expensive setup that can time align your signals you will always be sightly out. What the monster cable company did was: The bass signals flow through the center of the cable, so there's less twists in the center. The high freq's travel through the outside of the wire and so they added more winding to the outside. This slows the high Freq's down to arrive at the same time as the lows. Is this noticeable? Heck yeah. Is this affordable? Maybe, maybe not. I was fortunate enough to be one of the engineers chosen to listen to a demo of these cables and was blown away by the clarity. I compared these with beldon cable, and there was no comparison. As for the jazz, rock, studio.....Monster cable was able to warm up a signal for jazz by changing the windings, and open more highs on the rock cable. The studio mic cable is very expensive, but worth it. I did a recording session with a very good cable, and then bought a Monster cable. The artist came back for overdubs, and No matter what I did I could not produce the same sound as the old cable. Ended up re-cutting the vocals with the new cable as it was much more clear. IMHO.

Joe

Steve Feldman · Post by **Steve Feldman** » 14 Feb 2000 9:08 am

This also sounds like an ad for BBE Sonic Maximizer, which is yet another, more expensive, way to correct this time delay thing. I HAVE heard some pretty good testimonials about correcting this effect.
Steve

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 14 Feb 2000 10:04 am

I must have lost something in my 40+ years in electronics. Coaxial cable, the type that is used with musical equipment has a shield and a center conductor. The shield is grounded. The center conductor is "hot" and contains the signal. I didn't read anything about two separate "hot" conductors and band pass (or reject) filters to route the different frequencies to the separate conductors, and a mixer to bring everything back together.

Sounds like more marketing hype to me.

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 14 Feb 2000 10:38 am

Gotta go with Jack on this one, how is band pass filtering done on a piece of wire??

Joe E, what is the winding you refer to? If you have inductors or transformers, you've opened a whole 'nother can of worms, these devices can be notoriously non-linear. If you plot phase and gain over the frequency of interest (audio band) for a typical good quality guitar cable, I would expect it to be pretty uninteresting. If somebody could show me some hard data, rather than 'marketing BS' I might believe it.

IMO,
BT

OK, nerd that I am, I wanted to figure out where this claim for high frequency on one set of windings and lows on another came from. I seemed to remember something about skin effect from Emag so I searched a bit and found it. It seems that at relatively high frequencies ("100KHz up?") a physical characteristic of the generated field in the conductor causes more current to tend to shift toward the surface of the conductor and away from the core, hence "skin effect". On a very brief look, it seems to me it would have little if any effect at audio frequencies and is primarily a concern in design and implementation of RF circuitry.

Any physicists or RF cats out there that can comment???
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bterry.home.netcom.com

[This message was edited by Bill Terry on 14 February 2000 at 11:06 AM.]

Peter Jacobs · Post by **Peter Jacobs** » 14 Feb 2000 11:00 am

There are tons of forums and resources on the Net for those interested in audio cables. Some people swear by $2000 speaker cables that look like garden hoses, others believe that braiding cables is the answer, and still others believe that you should just go to Radio Shack or Home Depot for wire.

Fact is, what sounds good is what sounds good to you. Look for quality construction (good solder joints, strain relief, plugs that feel solid, etc.) and things that affect durability and flexibility.

Regarding long lengths -- a lot of capacitance will affect high frequencies (in fact, some guitarists use extra long cords to roll off the highs on their Teles), but again, the best way to know is to listen -- make sure that you get a good return or exchange policy, then try some out, but don't be swayed by advertising -- as a junior audiophile, I'm still trying to figure out how certain electrons "know" which wire to travel on.

Joe E · Post by **Joe E** » 14 Feb 2000 11:56 am

From what I understand: between the Freq's of 20-20k the signal still passes through the conductor at different rates. Also the energy to push a lower freq. through the cable uses the center most portion of the cable or the core. Hi freq's pass easier through a cable and therefore pass on the outer part of the wire. What monster cable did was, the center strans of wire in the cable are almost straight. The outer strans around the same wire are twisted several times per linear in./mm or something. The low freq's witch uses the center portion of the wire to travel go straight through. The Higher freq's that travel faster and trave down the outer part of the same wire now have two or three times the amount of wire to go down to reach the end. So if you were to strip a piece of monster cable back and expose the wire, you would see that as you untwist the strans, the center strans have much less wraps than do the outer. I'm not sure if I can do any better of a job explaining then that. Sorry. My suggestion is to go to a store and do a side by side comparison.

Craig Allen · Post by **Craig Allen** » 14 Feb 2000 12:25 pm

C'mon. Don't ya'll see that this Monster Cable thing is a little over the edge?!?!?!?!? Ya know; OBSESSIVE.

Give me a break.

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 14 Feb 2000 12:42 pm

For our instrument, the high-end cable is probably a bit of an overkill, considering the frequency response of the instrument and the amps/speakers we are putting it through.

However, there is truly a huge difference in these cables in a higher end environment like the studio. I have been through dozens of blindfold tests, and the high end cables always win, hands down. Speaker cables, too.

I have carried custom cables for all my high-end mics and outboard gear for years, and would not be caught without it.

Definitely not a farce.[This message was edited by John Macy on 14 February 2000 at 12:44 PM.]

Jerry Hedge · Post by **Jerry Hedge** » 14 Feb 2000 12:49 pm

About 2 years ago or so Guitar Player did a review of the instrument cables on the market. After trying literally every cable available (including Monster Cable) they ended up using George L as the standard of comparison. They thought that George L was the best,audio-wise,on the market. I've used George L and their predecessor Lawrence cable for over 15 years and haven't found ANYTHING better. I have friends who have started using it and they're as hooked as I am.

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 14 Feb 2000 12:59 pm

I think the George L is great cable, and use it myself on my steel rigs.

We have included the George L on some of our mic cable tests, and it did not fare as well as some of the Mogami, Canare and Monster cables.

Mark Amundson · Post by **Mark Amundson** » 14 Feb 2000 2:08 pm

I'd to take exception to Joe E's comments on cable constructions. Don't take this personally, as you are the messenger, but this frequency specific propagation business does not apply in the high impedance/low current application for transporting instrument audio signals.

As an RF engineer, I know all about skin effect, propagation (group) delay, conductor purity issues. Since we have passive pickups or volume pedals with tens to hundreds of kilo-ohms of impedance driving amplifiers with hundreds of kilo-ohms to one meg-ohms of input resistance, the conductors used in instrument cables do not need low resistive loss characteristics. While cable capacitance and a little inductance gets to effect the higher frequencies at these input impedances, guitar audio is treated much like direct current.

For speaker stuff, I can understand the focus on low-loss cabling, especially for long runs. Back in my audiophile days, built my power amps with twists of litz and regular wire for skin effect and low dc resistance reasons, but you can only guild the lily so much. Usually the transparency of electro-acoustic transducers(speakers, pickups)out-colors any sonic effects of the electronics and associated wiring. Look in the back of any mass-produced speaker cabinet and tell me that they put a premium on the hook-up wire (not!).

Joe E · Post by **Joe E** » 14 Feb 2000 2:30 pm

I tend to agree with Mark on the speaker cable issue. This is probably were these cables shine!! The test included cabling to monitors, which was a drastic improvment. As for Inst. cables, I can't confirm or deny your remarks, I just know these cables sound GREAT! Maybe someone could contact Monster Cable for a better explaination!

Advocate of practicing SAFE SOUND!

Mark Amundson · Post by **Mark Amundson** » 14 Feb 2000 2:31 pm

My favorite cable is Canare GS-6. While not as low of capacitance as the George L's, I willingly trade a little very high audio frequency clarity for a thicker cable with decades of life expectancy. If I keep my cable lengths 10 feet or lower (or drive longer lengths with buffer), I can keep most all my signal quality. The Canare GS-6 has a very large center conductor (18 gauge) within the dielectric and then has an outer conductive plastic dielectric touching the shield braid to drain all cable motion noise. The outer jacket is a durable irradiated polyvinyl that is super-flexible at most temperatures. I am not out to sell you anything, but to point out that I choose rugged, high performance cable that does not cost me very much (about $0.55 per foot less connectors). When I build up a cable and let my belden using friends try it out, I usually have a hard time retrieving the Canare and typically end up selling it to them.

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 14 Feb 2000 3:20 pm

John Macy,
Uhh... what long cables are really good for speaker to power amp ? I'm dizzy from reading all this stuff.

Bob

Len Amaral · Post by **Len Amaral** » 14 Feb 2000 3:49 pm

Wow!
Great opinions! As long as everyone is on a roll I will post another question about connectors on a new thread.
Len Amaral

Joe E · Post by **Joe E** » 15 Feb 2000 11:18 am

Just checked with Monstercable.com and they had tons of research backing these cables.

Here's the site: http://monstercable.com/net/html/prolink.html

Joe