Okay, this is from the "You can't make this stuff up" file. Engadget posted a story where a group of 12 "audiophiles" showed just why they get so much abuse from pros over their so-called "golden ears."The group was A/Bing different cables, and unbeknownst to them, the engineer running the test swapped out a set of cables for coat hangers with soldered-on speaker connections. Not a single listener was able to tell the difference between the Monster Cable 1000 (at $500 each) and the coat hangers (free), and all agreed that the coat hangers sounded excellent.
It's easy to get down on the Monster cable here, but the fact is that a coat hanger very well may have been a better conductor since it may have been thicker and maybe shorter, although it's certainly not as safe or easy to use. Monster Cable takes some reasonable good cable and markets it in such a way that its perceived value is a lot greater than it deserves to be. The problem is that for speaker cable, 12 or 10 gauge zip chord (lamp cable) will work just as well as expensive Monster cable.
For low signal level work like guitar and mic cables, Monster makes a decent though overpriced product that will certainly sound better than most cheap cables, but you'll bet a bigger bang for the buck from some plain old Mogami or Canare, the studio standard for more than 30 years now.
Still, you have to laugh at the so-called "audiophiles," who many times have a lot more money than sense. After all, how many pros would buy a $500 volume knob?
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