When Audio Cables Cost More Than Cars

During a recent interview with mastering legend Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering for the 3rd edition of The Mastering Engineer's Handbook, he mentioned that he rewired his entire studio with Transparent Cable and both he and his clients were astonished at the improvement in sound. I wasn't familiar with the brand so I decided to check it out.

Talk about high end, here's an example of the company's most expensive power cable (from their online catalog).

Their power cables are priced from $195 to $2100 (I usually pay about a buck).






Okay, if a $2100 hundred dollar power cable isn't enough for you, how about an RCA cable for $11,580?

In fairness, they also sell RCA cables as low as $95 (I'm used to buying them for around 50 cents).






Perhaps you're looking for speaker cable. Here's one that goes for $34,735.

Of course, they also have them for as low as $210.

And of course, we all need lots of XLR mic cables around. How about buying a few of these babies for $20k each?

They also have them for as low as $485.

Normally I would scoff at the perceived worth of cable at this price, but I have to trust Bob Ludwig on this. All I know is that it's out of my price range until I have about 5 hit records.

Does anyone reading have experience with these cables? Comments?

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The Sound Of Monster Cable Versus Coathangers

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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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.