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Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables?

Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no. He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. The kicker? None of the subjects even knew that coat hangers were going to be used. This is, of course, "nothing new," a Google of "monster cables vs coat hangers" shows that some users have been saying this for a while. Still, this is an experiment begging to be recreated under controlled conditions (say, for instance, a double-blind test). Science fair project! Read how it went down, inside...

I'm so sorry, but I do not buy into 90% of the hype brought to us audiophiles by the commercial sector of our hobby and the home entertainment industry at large. My brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me what is real and what is not. Let me rehearse with you an example of how he does this.
We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables [ed. Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnects] (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right...most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.

This is for a short run of cable. If you're going over 50 ft, then you may benefit from better shielding, but for most home people's home theaters, this is not the case. Remember folks, just because something performs better spec-wise doesn't mean it actually sounds better. Specs are one thing, psychoacoustics are another. Of course, a coat hanger doesn't have a Monster Cable lifetime warranty, so if your coat hanger breaks, you'll have to go out and buy another coat hanger.

HA!

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Folks, there IS a difference between "Quality gear/equipment" and "junk"

...but, the difference is NOT what the advertisements and supposed "word of mouth" would have you to believe.

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$10 for a $1 cable is TOO MUCH (no matter how "hip" the ad/street says about it.)

Just use your head about things.

(Especially when you are like me and ain't got no munny!)

I continually hear about these so-called experiments, which are ludicrous. The results only pertain if you look at it in the context of a panel of five people listening to an unfamiliar system.

When you listen to a system for a long period of time, you learn its quirks and can distinguish small differences. That said, your system will change in sound from day to day, from perhaps changes in humidity, powerline hash, maybe the nutritional state of your brain. Who knows.

But good cables do make a difference. Maybe not a huge difference. Maybe not worth lots of money. That's a personal judgment. That said, I've bought some Monster Cable that was pretty bad. I think they are trading on their name, selling cheap junk cable for their lower end products, just because it has the Monster Cable name and hype attached to it.

I'm not in the audiophile race anymore. I listen to music on my computer. With the right headphones it makes a pleasing noise and is reasonably detailed. That said, I don't pooh-pooh the quest for more detailed and more accurate reproduction. Part of that is good cables. There is a difference.

I agree with autodidact that there is some difference between good cables, and average to poor ones (you know, the ones that are about 2mm in diameter). The results of this experiment are no surprise though, since the coat hanger would actually provide less resistance for the signal.

However, marketing of Monster Cable is definitely done in a shady manner - especially in this age of hi-def tv, etc. For the past 2 years, I have seen at Future Shop (a Cdn division of Best Buy) a display of 2 LCDs that is supposed to show how much better the picture is with Monster Cable. And looking at the 2 LCDs, there is a distinct difference in picture quality.

What MOST people don't notice, though, is that the regular cable LCD is receiving a composite signal (single RCA) while the Monster Cable LCD is receiving a component signal (3 RCA's for R,B,G). The fact is, any component signal is going to look better than a composite signal because you're going to get 3X the data going to the panel - even if you use cheap Radio Shack RCA cables.

I actually wrote to Future Shop about this deceptive demonstration, but (no surprise) never got a response. Wonder how many consumers have been duped by this?

At an AES show in the 90s, there was a guy there with a black box. The box had a switch for people to use while monitoring a CD through headphones. Move the switch, hear three different types of wire. The wire choices were mislabeled, with Beldon wire labeled as Monster Cable. People picked the Monster cable. Later the guy published the big "gotcha".

The diameter, braiding, shielding, length and metal type does change the sound. Wires built for digital (AES/EBU, SPDIF, etc) sound great with analog, because the top end is linear. Cheap cables can crap out toward 20kHz. BUT, the packaging, marketing, fancy insulators and such are not worth the big bucks. Mogami, Beldon and others are good bang for the buck choices.

can u hear me now

Cheap cables can crap out toward 20kHz.

Which is not a big deal because 20kHz is the spot where the human ear ceases to detect a sound.

Most adults' ears crap out at about 16kHz. That's why the kids were using a 17kHz tone as a ringtone -- none of their teachers could hear it.

Additionally, a pure 17kHz tone will melt the high frequency driver in a JBL SF15 cabinet in about 5 seconds, emitting a beautiful orange glow from the bass ports before it even begins to chase those darn kids off the lawn.

Even with cheap cables.

JBL Soud Farce drivers suck anyway. Those are good for low-level, low-fi playback. I get a kick out of bands trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

I like TAD compression drivers myself, but they are too fragile.

The deal with high frequencies is this. The ear is not as sensitive to those highs. It takes exponencially more power to generate a ultra high tone at the same perceivable loudness as 1kHz, or 500Hz. So, you are right. It takes a driver with some balls.