Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
Welcome to TalkBass! Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Have You Listened to Your Cables?
- Thread starter Callus McFinger
- Start date
- Status
Regarding Monster cables for bass:
I cannot confirm whether there is any truth to what I read years ago about Monster cables for bass, but what I read was, those cables were designed to remove some of the high end frequencies, fooling the user into thinking that those cables provided more bass.
Also, (and again, I cannot confirm this), but I recall reading that the 1/4" plugs that Monster was using were ever-so-slightly larger in diameter than what most other cable manufacturers were using, making it an uncomfortably tight fit in some 1/4" jacks.
This is going back 20 years ago or so, so maybe things have changed since then. I am only sharing what I recall reading back then. So please take that for what it's worth!
Yes, they had oversized plugs for a while, but that was fixed. Regarding the idea that there is less high frequencies being passed by the cable does not match my listening test now, nor 20 years ago. Read my analysis - they have less woofy bass, but a clearer bass fundamental, and clear high end. Thanks for the post.
I can't find it now, but I recall seeing when they were tested. They measured with capacitance that was so high they were deemed defective.
I agree - you're right about my method. What I didn't think to share, as the post was long enough, is that I was switching back and forth over and over without looking at the channel, noted my analysis, then looked at which cable was which (A or B). I can repeat my test, have someone else switch the inputs blindly, and I'll get the same result. The difference was that clear.
See, I agree with that but found the results to be totally different. Then again, I wasn't convinced that "monster cable" was what made everything much... more like proper cables vs junk are what made it all better.
...and if you see the first reply to my post, someone had measured the capacitance of many cables, and the Monster were fairly average. "Deemed defective"? We should all check our memory for accuracy before posting blindly.
A couple of years ago I had the honor and privilege of meeting and hanging for a while with Steve Swallow at a tiny venue he was playing in the little town where I live. He was using a cable that I had never seen before; it turned out to be made by a Swiss company, Vovox. I asked him if it really made a difference. He said "Absolutely, I won’t use anything else." His recommendation was enough for me. I went and bought one and haven’t used anything but Vovox since.
They do indeed make a difference.
They do indeed make a difference.
Looks like someone stole my idea! I conducted this test way back in 1986. The rep grabbed his cables and stormed out accusing us of knowing nothing about audio.
The author of the linked article mentioned a benefit of shielding speaker wires when longer lengths are involved. Shielding is of little use and will only increase the capacitance of the wire. Perhaps they meant a larger wire gauge.
When I switch in my cheaper cables for practice at home, the jacks work just fine. I imagine some jacks reacted badly to the oversized plugs, but not mine.
A difference that clear would be even more obvious on an RTA that showed the actual measured differences between cables in use. That definitive proof is the one thing you never see from cable companies, because it doesn't exist. They have never provided actual proof of their claims. On the other hand...
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
Some people won't notice a difference, but then some people (not to disparage yours truly) eat at McDonalds. Of course, remember these aren't $100 cables, so for a modest price bump, the quality improves dramatically...and while others have replaced their cables every 5 years, mine are perfectly good after 20. If it breaks tonight at my gig, they'll replace it for free. I'm getting a much better bargain, and better sound, by using these cables.
Nonsense. Electronic Musician magazine did a double blind test and published results. No one could tell the difference between a $5 Hosa cable and a $100 Monster cable.
Electrons don’t care.
Electrons don’t care.
Do the cables sound different after eating at McDonalds?
Whether my subjective descriptions are accurate to a measurable scientific analysis, I don't really care, because audio gear choices are largely made due to preference. What is true is that there IS a notable difference in the sound, regardless of whether the right tests have been able to measure it in a meaningful way.
Here is an example. Monster at one time sold both a Jazz bass cable and a Rock bass cable. Since a cable is a passive device, it can only restrict frequencies, not add to them. If there were a real scientific reason to have these two different cables, one or both would have to intentionally restrict a frequency range, not something any reasonable person would want. Another example is their ridiculously high priced HDMI cables. Since the data is digitized and restored at the other end, there is no "quality" drop unless the cable is broken. Any claims of better performance are pure bunk. I'm not saying that all audio cables are the same, but any decently designed cable will perform pretty much the same.
All the hype over oxygen free cable too. If the copper is shiny, copper color, it's oxidized. The only un-oxidized copper I've ever seen is when a circuit board is in the etchant tank; it appears a dusty rose pink color.
Come on over - I'll show you. This is ridiculous. The test scenario set up they used probably didn't give people a chance to note the differences. The channels need to be switched fairly quickly, before the ears get too used to the current sound. What the hell is it with trolls? I noted something quite obvious, in a repeatable way, with a controlled test scenario, and listened/switched with my eyes closed.
Thanks for the injection of science - some people like to ignore it.
- Status