Death of a monster
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsConsider this post an unofficial death notice.
Monster Cable appears to have died. If you go to their website https://monsterstore.com/ you get a notice no one is home. With a little further investigation you find that link is from Shopify, an online store service unrelated to them. The URL Monstercable.com doesn’t go anywhere yet it is still owned by the company.
There’s plenty of articles speculating what happened: how Monster Cable resorted to making their own BitCoins and failed, how they lost the Beats Headphone brand, how crazy investors tried to take over, how they’re working to restructure, and so on.
I haven’t any more clue as to what happened than what I have reported here in this post and, to be honest, I really don’t care about the gory details.
The passing of Monster Cable is a seminal moment in our industry.
I first met Monster Cable founder Noel Lee in the early-1980s at the home of Infinity founder Arnie Nudell. Over drinks and dinner, I heard all about how Noel wanted little to do with his roots selling premium cables into the high end audio sphere. He said to me something I will never forget:
“You can round up all the audiophiles in the world, drop them off the Santa Monica Pier and it wouldn’t make a dent in Monster’s business.”
Over the years Monster became the juggernaut that we all came to know it as. And now it looks as if it has fallen.
Even the biggest among us don’t live forever.
It’s just a little sad when they are no more.
We should be popping the Champagne!
Monster, was exactly that; monstrous.
The world is a better place without Monster Cable; it was awful stuff.
The biggest deception in the history of audio.
Back in the 80’s everyone was pushing it…it was a masterclass in marketing, but it made your audio system sound muffled & dead.
Then Furukawa Electric PCOCC, from Japan, came along & the nightmares & the cold sweats from the guilt of having sold Monster to so many customers whilst telling them that it was one of the best cables in the world, slowly started to dissipate.
Does anybody else here have fond memories of Monstrous Cable?
I couldn’t ever possibly agree with you more then right now with everything you said Fat Rat about Monster.
Monster Cable was the biggest crooks snake oil sellers on the planet.
Yes , I have had lots of their cables from hdmi, interconnects, and speaker wires. They were so expensive and i was lead to believe by the Sam Goodys employees they would be the best.
They stayed in my system for years until one day my bud said to try these other cables for a lot less money called monoprice.
Well ,my system was reborn and so much better sounding.
I have moved on to Audioquest and have settle there after trying out many others. I do believe cables sound different , but Monster was all advertising n hype.
Sonas far as Monster Cable dying , I say about damn time and not soon enough.
Ps replaced their power conditioner with a panamax and a nice improvement in sound. Someday ill be able to save for a PS Audio Powerplant. That would be sweet.
Tonight the contributors seem split three ways:
1. Those who know that Monster Cables were absolute sh!t & aren’t afraid to shout it from the rooftops.
2. Those, for reasons only known to themselves, that had a soft-spot or liked Monster Cables.
3. And those who don’t have a clue who Monster Cables was (the ignorance about Monster Cable is bliss group)
So, all in all, kinda interesting.
The thing that irked me the most was that I was expected to sell this ‘sh!t’ & it was awful.
It’s not like I could resign from one retailer & go to work at another one that didn’t have Monster; it was everywhere.
Store owners were coming in their pants with the insane 200% mark-ups & so we were expected to sell, sell, sell this crap wire. We used to joke that if it wasn’t for MC half the HI-FI stores in Sydney would go under.
Anyway, nice to hear from you Ron B.
I first sold audio gear back in the age when we would actually give speaker buyers as much free zip cord (lamp wire) as they needed! Noel Lee came along and changed all that. Along with Bill Lowe of AudioQuest, he educated us (and the masses) to the concept of wiring as a critical component. When I became a store manager I forbade my crew from bad mouthing Monster (or any other brands we didn’t carry). Our answer was always, “that’s OK wire but we have something even better for the same or less money. Let me prove it to you” (we sold AQ and Kimber). Part of it was simple respect – Noel deserves massive credit for creating a market for cabling. I remember one customer asking, “What kind of monster cable do you sell?” We would also tell the customer that Monster was like McDonald’s. OK, but have you ever tried an In-N-Out Burger?
…& then he lost all respect by becoming the litigious bully monster.
Even at the time of the RS-1’s launch, A. Nudell was not an improvised manufacturer, so some reason (not necessarily economic) would have had him, to have used Monster in the intricate wiring of this speaker system.
Can anyone say that this Infinity model sounds horrible just by using Monster Cable?
It’s easy to make firewood from the fallen tree !!
I was burning this ‘monstrous firewood’ lo-o-o-ong before the behemoth company tree had fallen Audiomano.
All you had to do was wire your speakers with anything else & you’d hear it straight away.
As anyone can see, my 4:14 post was not addressed to you, since I generally do not comment on rants that show free animosity about something, this is without exposing valid arguments, but since you have taken it for granted, I answer the following:
1.-) You are not who like to tell me what I should or not, do with my audio installations.
2.-) A very close friend who has the RS-1b, blindly following the “suggestion” of a dealer of a well-known manufacturer of ultra-expensive cables, hired him to replace all the wiring of the panels of his RS-1 . After having spent a huge amount of money, the sad news (for him) that he gave me was that the result of the supposed improvement was totally marginal, and this after the break-in period.
In consideration of the above, I state very emphatically that I am far from being foolish enough (to say the least) to even think about your suggestion for my RS-1b, even if you had done them with the yours, assuming you have them.
I beg to differ Audiomano.
It is obvious to anyone that your “It’s easy to make firewood from the fallen tree !!” comment, right underneath my “rant”, is pointedly referring to my comments about Monster Cables being rubbish.
Now, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse (‘ass’, if you’re American) what people say about my comments, this should be a site where we are able to discuss things freely & express ourselves openly.
Firstly, I did not tell you what to do with your audio installations & I have no idea where you get that from.
Secondly, I have not, at any point in time, made any suggestions whatsoever to you about what to do with your RS-1b’s.
Unless I am a mind reader, & I’m not, how the f#@k would I know that you even have RS-1b’s OR that you had them rewired!!
You need to take a chill pill or go to the gym & hit the punching bag for half an hour because you’re super stressed about something.
I went from Monster to VdH, surely the definition of chalk and cheese.
And Allan, as a ‘Fat Rat’, I can concur…about the chalk & cheese.
My RS1b rewire from Monster to VdH silver soldered to each driver terminal was transformational, the difference was nothing short of astounding.
I seem to recall that the Monster wire had a propensity to turn an attractive green even in the best of atmospheres, terrible stuff!
Allan please don’t use ‘Monster wire’ & ‘attractive’ in the same sentence…it’s doing my head in.
Yep…green with envy, that other cables were so much better than it!
Verdigris encrustation is more apt, you’re absolutely right ‘attractive’ is an inappropriate word under the circumstances.
I wasn’t being fair really Allan because you did redeemed yourself somewhat by including, “terrible stuff”…& so my cranial contusion has gone away 😉
There wasn’t anything remarkable, either good or bad, about the Monster Cable hookup wire used to wire the Infinity RS1/a/b speakers. It was off the shelf Belden 600v AWG 16 stranded cable with fancy colored Monster Cable sheathing and graphics. If you can hear a difference when replacing this wire, good for you (referring to another post here). But you should consider it possible that the biggest source of difference was removing corrosion at the driver terminals. BTW, the Belden cable used had a DCR of 12 ohms per kilometer.
In my case the terminal connections were maintained extremely clean so I generally discount that as a factor. As a retired electronics person I prefer soldered joints anyway.
I’ve never heard of the brand. I did a little internet reading. The company seems to have featured years of high-profile marketing and sponsorship, endless and multiple litigation and absurdly expansive brand diversification. Not surprising it ended in tears. All that remains is the litigation.
I have heard of Santa Monica. We went there once. I seem to remember cycling down there and that the Santa Monica Mall was Frank Gehry’s first major public commission.
I find the timing of this article so ironic as I bought, and still have 100’ of the monster cable I bought in the 80’s and had them driving my ass kicking Wharfedales. Now comes my question. I had always used the monster cable believing that it sent a bigger fuller less restricted signal from amp to speaker. Then I got married and hiding speaker wires under bace boards became a requirement of “happy wife happy life”, this has been the cace for the past 18 years. I just unearthed my monster cable last week from long term storage thinking that it’s time my system sounded good again, believing the thin fine speaker wires I am currently running are some how inferior in producing a good signal to my Klipsch towers. Can someone tell me what the actual gauge of speaker wire should be used before I go to war with my wife and lay my monster cable proudly across the floor? Thank you all in advance.
Dale it depends on how long the wire (let’s call it wire because cable sounds like something that runs along the ocean floor) run is.
But generally 14 or 12 gauge is about right.
Personally, I use 1.5mm diameter solid core (single strand) electrical wire because it sounds magnificent. Some guy in England, back in the 80’s, discovered that, regardless of the copper purity, 1.5mm dia. solid core copper wire was ‘da bomb’ as far as anything up to $35.00 per metre was concerned & even though I’ve experimented with different brands & prices of speaker wires over the last 28 years nothing seems to ‘sing’ like this stuff.
If you can find some (it’s around 70c per metre) give it a go…at that price you can not lose.
Clear & clean mids, tight & punchy bass & detailed, crisp highs.
It was probably Mark Baker. Before he started making amongst the best tonearms, Origin Live Ltd was called Cable Design Ltd. The cable he designed was called Soli-Core.
It is explained here:
https://www.originlive.com/faq-items/soli-core-speaker-cable-review-hi-fi-answers/
You can still buy it here:
https://www.originlive.com/shop/hi-fi-accessories/cables/speaker-cable-wire/speaker-cable-wire-origin-live.html
I used it when I had valve amplifiers, a common approach.
The only problem is that the thicker cable is very rigid and a bit unmanageable.
I also use one of his premium tonearms and silver tonearm cable.
Thanks for that info Steven.
It’s only ‘unmanageable’ as you position it but once it’s ‘down’ & connected you don’t need to manage it anymore…maybe every 18 months clip/snip off 2cms from the ends & reconnect (oxidization)
The pure joy of what it does sonically far outweighs the initial unmanageability concerns.
Big (unmanageable) effort; big (fantastic) result!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
1.0mm dia & 2.0mm dia do NOT give the same amazing result as 1.5mm dia.
I don’t know why, there are some things that I just don’t need to know, but I’m sure that there’s a valid scientific reason for 1.5mm 🙂
A good ploy is to tin the wire ends with good quality solder to prevent oxidation Mr Rat.
Indeed. I’ve been told that silver oxide is an even better conductor than pure silver, so when they go a bit black it’s best to leave them rather than clean them. Obviously you need a good quality silver solder and a good soldering iron, $10 Walmart soldering irons won’t do the job properly. I’ve been there and it was an epic fail. A local repair shop will surely do the job for a few cents, less than buying the solder and an iron.
Oh no Steven, I have a soldering (soddering for you Yankees) iron that can boil a cup of cold water in thirty seconds; but as always sir your suggestions are greatly appreciated.
The silver in silver solder has nothing to do with “sound” at all. It is a HEAT conductor so that lead free solder flows better at lower temps so you don’t get a terrible slder joint. And yes, lead free solder is way harder to flow than tin/lead.
Silver allows more uniform and FAST flow of heat through the solder, lowering the melt point. The silver molecules are too far apart to change the solder electrical properties meaningfully.
Thanks rower30, I didn’t know all that 😉
Well put rower.
The other thing I remember from soldering qualification classes (point to point wiring) was that the key to a good solder joint was a good mechanical connection. Also that the primary point of soldering was to prevent corrosion.
Just wondering if you thought any of that still held true….
Found this on physics stack exchange –
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/365419/how-is-silver-a-better-conductor-than-platinum
It seems you can always find a dissenting point on any subject. 🙂
“ There is a widespread misconception that silver oxidizes. This is incorrect. Solver does not oxidize at room temperatures. There also is an equally big misconception that silver oxide is a good conductor, thus tarnished silver connectors do not make a big difference. It is true that silver oxide is conductive, but the tarnish that easily develops on silver plated connectors is not silver oxide, because silver does not oxidize. Instead it is silver sulfide, brown to very dark brown (as opposed to pure black for silver oxide). Silver sulfide is not a conductor, but a semiconductor. Thus the idea that the silver tarnish does not affect the connection is a bad myth.
Silver aggressively reacts with hydrogen sulfide, a gas that naturally occurs in the natural gas and also comes from cooking eggs (even fresh) and from the car exhaust. If you have none of these three sources in your area (unlikely), then your silver plated connectors would stay shiny for much much longer. ”
Brilliant!
Thanks Mike 🙂
True dat Mr. rwwear, but I’ve always been a ‘bare wire’ kinda guy.
Call me weird (please) but there’s something refreshing about cutting back oxidised copper wire & stripping back insulation & exposing fresh, shinny, clean, gleaming copper…..sorry….I have to go & take a cold shower….
Very interesting Fat Rat. While my house’s built in 50 year old stereo system is far from high end quality, the rebuilt Frazier monitors with new crossovers, rebuilt ALNICO Fostex tweeters, and 8” Altec drivers in the ceiling sound pretty good. All sixteen are wired with 1.5 mm solid core copper. Probably over 1,000 feet through the whole house.
There you go… 🙂
I have always considered using 1.5mm dia solid core to your loudspeakers akin to a serious audio system tweak.
It even sounded better than the 2.0mm dia. & 3.5mm dia. stranded PCOCC FURUKAWA ELECTRIC, 2.5m lengths that I was using before I discovered solid core.
A tweak is something that you can do without. You can’t do without speaker cables. So it’s not a tweak, just a good component choice. So is QED79. Both are low inductance, which is particularly important for certain amplifier/speaker combinations, like electrostatics and valves. Atlas Hyper 2.0 is another good relatively cheap cable in that regard, very popular with Quad ESL users. For ultra-low inductance there is Nordost, which Quad use in their own demo system.
It’s a tweak as far as I’m concerned because yes, I need loudspeaker wire BUT, I don’t need THAT particular loudspeaker wire…so!
Then again you could also argue that I DO need that particular loudspeaker wire because it’s the only one that I like to ‘listen’ to…so.
And I did state in one of my previous ‘rants’ that over the last 28 years I have experimented with other, almost all multistrand, loudspeaker wires but that I keep coming back to this particular 1.5mm dia solid core.
The list includes the QED79, Nordost, AQ, DNM & lots of others that currently escape my mind (because it has been a while & given enough time disinterest does set in), but not the Atlas Hyper 2.0 BUT if said Atlas Hyper 2.0 is a multistrand…I’m not interested.
Thanks again, I always appreciate your input Steven, even if it doesn’t seem that way.
Happy Brexit 😉
1.5mm / 60 mil wire is pretty BIG for the best sound. Wire imppedance goes up as you make it beigger, and increase the frequency. This is measurable through the audio band.
Low frequency is difussion coupled evenly through the wire, not so higher frequencies. Smaller wires forces the higher frequencies to more evenly distribute through the wire as it gets smaller, improving the wire’s efficiency and lowering the wire impedance to higher frequencies.
This makes a problem, though. How to properly use many smaller wires to allow better efficiency and not screw-up L and C meeting R for the lowest frequencies.
Most people correctly so, think “solid” wire usually sounds better. But BECAUSE the variables necessary to make more smaller wires work right is largely IGNORED the sound is WORSE as a result. It isn’t the smaller wire’s fault, it is a BAD DESIGNs fault.
The physics are not going to change. Smaller wire used right is far better, always. The key is used right, and that is more $$$ to do.
Interesting reading rower30, but you know what? I’m gonna go with what my ears are telling me regardless of scientific measurements (inductance, capacitance, resistance) because I love the way these two 1.8metre lengths of 1.5mm solid core sound in my audio system; even after all the other cable that I’ve auditioned in the last 28 years.
You need to know the truth. What you do with it isn’t my business either way.
Most cable is not made well, or even really designed. It is a random shot at what, “looks like it sounds good”. The data supports that conclusion.
In the end, the best DESIGN also ends up sounding the best. Mother nature isn’t stupid. We are. The audio band requires the best attributes where our ears are the most sensitive. We misplace that fact and look for data in areas that don’t apply, like RF.
Ok, well r30, I bought Furukawa’s top of the line PCOCC 1m length, 0.8mm open twist solid twin core with outer braid (shielding) wrapped in so much Polyethylene & PVC that they will not only outlive me but probably even the Egyptian pyramids.
Cold pressed into 24k gold plated PCOCC RCA ends. Model# FA-11S. Bought them in 1993 & I’ll never part with them…they sound exceptional (to my ears) & the loudspeaker wire, well, you must know all about that sir, since I’ve been banging on about 1.5mm sc all night on this post…&, well, that’s it. So, I’m set for life as far as interconnect & loudspeaker wire goes…right…done!
Oh, as ‘back-up’ I’ve got a 1m length of Denis Morecroft’s V3 (DNM Design) interconnects, which are 4 solid core’s, flat on a ribbon…0.5mm live & 0.65 return…copper of course… soldered to gold plated nickel RCA’s…RIGHT…that’s it.
When life was simple and solid core was very popular, its was argued with justification that you might just as well use 15A mains cable for speaker wire. The important thing is that solid core speaker cables are twisted pairs, like the Origin Live cables, whereas mains cable is not. The benefits of twisting cables has been known for a century.
Another approach is ensuring a stable air dielectric between parallel conductors, as per DNM solid core cables, which I use in my office.
http://www.dnm.co.uk/cables.html
You DO NOT want AIR between the speaker leads! This raises the loop area and forces higher INDUCTANCE which makes the cables PHASE worse.
With waht ever insulation you have, ower delctric constant the better, keep the leads as CLOSE as you can. Speaker cables respond to low inductance ore than capacitance since capacitance is almost immaterial (ha!) to audio used in modertion as the first order filter effect of a cable is in the MHz range. Inductance is influencing phase THROUGH the audio band.
The amplifier wants low cap for stability. The speaker want low cap (to match its load impedance) AND low inductance for phase. But, if you increase capacitance to LOWER the cable impedance, it makes you amp go nuts.
We have to BALANCE the capacitance to meet BOTH requirements while holding a low inductance. That isn’t easy to do. ALL cable are a compromise, some more than others depending on the and and speaker used. That’s a big reason speaker cable sound different. No, it isn’t the exotic materials, but how the amp / cable / speaker network interact. And believe you me there is an interaction.
Agreed. I use flat copper cables, very low inductance, immune to RFI, high capacitance with a network to reduce it.
Flat is not immune to RFI, it is a wave guide just the same. And, once you upset PHASE, the passive or active “corrections” can’t get it back to where it was ever again.
Flat geometry is a simple way to lower inductance but you toss capacitance and band-aide it after the fact. Not really a good design as it has to be patched up to work, and the patch adds it’s own damage. But hey, it is easy to do and cheap, just not the best way to make a passive cable.
The next step is to use a flat design for low inductance (plus some other tricks that work), but OMIT the high capacitance! And, the design that does it IS INDEED field cancelling EMI /RFI.
Cable should not need the customer to become a systems engineer to finish the “network” because the designer sold you one-half the problem fixed.
The things. They’ve been popular for over 30 years without any marketing at all.
http://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/townshend-audio-isolda-edct-speaker-cable-speaker-cable
I got Denis to send me some but I sent it back because the 65c per metre 1.5mm solid core, that I just keep banging on about relentlessly throughout this whole post, STILL sounded better to me than Mr.Morecroft’s lovely solid core ‘ribbon’
You want the voltage divider equation between you SPEAKER and the CABLE to drop no more than about 3% of the voltage across he cable. The higher your speaker impedance is, the easier this is to do.
If your speaker was nearly infinity ohms, ALL the voltage would go to the speaker. If you speaker is nearly a SHORT, all the voltage is on the CABLE. This is a simple E=I*R. R is your load value. The higher the value, the more of the “signal”it uses. The lower the speaker impedance means the WIRE feeding it needs to be proportionally lower to pass the voltage to the speaker.
So the AWG needs to be big enough to keep that equation happy. Most typical 4-6 ohms speakers require about an 11 AWG to meet the requirement. Larger is a waste of a too small an improvement and smaller wire will modulate the speakers frequency response.
Super LONG runs may need a larger AWG depending on how good it has to sound, though. Not everyone cares about minor frequency modulation with smaller wires as long as the AWG doesn’t burn down the house.
But let’s assume you do care to keep that to 3% or less across the wire then there is a REAL answer to the question.
…or I’ll just use my ears.
That’s why MONSTER cable existed. Most customers don’t want to understand the data, and what they are really paying for. Some understanding is best for us all.
rower30, in audio my ears do the understanding; they understand what sounds good (for me) & what sounds sh!t…that’s how I knew, all those years ago, the MC was sh!t.
I’ve always lived by the KISS principle…
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
(That’s me being stupid; not you…ok?)
Interesting…I never cared, so I always thought it’s just a slightly bigger audio cable company with little too fat sound.
Seems it got a victim of its own greed?
Monster Cable was the Bernie Madoff of the audio world…almost everyone got sucked in.
The reason why I have never heard of Monster is that in 1973 a company called QED started in the cable business in the UK and is still going strong. QED79 has been the stock cable for decades. They have been publishing comprehensive manuals about the importance and science behind cables for 25 years. The first one was The Genesis Report.
There are here: https://www.qed.co.uk/cablesmatter
Steven, QED made the best loudspeaker stands ever called QED Tristands back in the 1990’s.
I wish I could send you a photo. Rectangular tubing, three legs, carpet spikes that looked like hypodermics, T shaped brace at the top & a much larger T shaped brace at the bottom.
They held my Harbeth HL Compacts rock solid on an open frame. I could kick myself for selling them years ago because QED, in their infinite wisdom, decided to stop manufacturing them…now THAT was a sad day.
Thanks for that. I’ve always thought 3 feet are preferable to 4, no chance of rattling, but for speakers they need a bigger footprint to avoid instability. Both my turntable and server have only 3 feet. All Innuos servers now have 3 feet arranged asymmetrically and damped. Their view is that stability is critical and it should not be left to the customer to buy aftermarket products.
These babies had a huge footprint, absolutely NO instability; pyramid shaped. I would not have placed my precious Harbeths on them if they weren’t rock-solid-stable.
Two spikes at the front & one at the back. In three heights; 12″, 17″ & 22″
Yes, a tripod will always be more stable than a ‘quadpod’ & that’s why they put cameras on tripods 🙂
And that’s why the four factory feet come off my CD player & three after market feet go on, because, well, just in case the customer does in fact have a fully functioning brain he/she (in this case, he) can organise his own isolated aftermarket feet & position them asymmetrically precisely around the transformer so that the weight is evenly distributed…it’s all common sense really 😉
Great company that sold great products for reasonable costs. They started it all. Sad to see them go.
“…It’s just a little sad when they are no more…”
I bought Monster cable when I was very young (some dealer told me it was good), only to find out very soon that it sounded monstrous. The biggest mistake of my audio life.
So it is indeed sad. Sad that they did not cease to exist a long time ago.
BTW., having said that, it cannot be denied that it is (was ?) a well known brand in audio.
So if people on this site say they “never heard of the brand” I find it hard to believe, to say the least.
That was me jb4; sorry.
My take is that Noel Lee said that Monster Cable had become the Bose of cables.
Yes that would be right; Bose is crap too.
I took it to mean a name brand recognized by consumers and not well regarded by audiophiles.
That’s just a kind euphemism G49.
My Condolences as well. Like it or not they started a market. Nostalgically its always sad to see a company like Monster exist no more, However I feel that they were the catalyst that spawned some good cable companies
I remember that Monster Cable products got good reviews in the audiophile press, especially The Absolute Sound, back in the ’80s when the idea of budgeting extra money for wiring up a high-end system was preposterous. I bought some at the time and still have them in a box full of wires in the basement. As competition developed and I heard other wires from Cardas, AudioQuest and others, I decided that Monster’s products were variable in sound quality, not ever the best, but not outrageously priced.
Noel Lee started something that got out of hand. Why get mad at Monster when currently successful companies are selling speaker cables that cost more than a Mercedes?
It was amusing to me when the Brits countered all these thick, tarted-up American cables with thin, plain, solid-core cables. No question that they made an audible difference, and certainly masked the shortcomings of some famous British turntables and speakers. 😉 I still have some of those British cables in that same box in the basement.
Regardless of whether their products were good or not, I’m glad to see them fail. Any company that feels the need to resort to bullying tactics such as they did by suing everyone in sight with any affiliation with the word Monster is not one I’ll support by buying their products.
Agreed. Noel Lee went from genius to bully to idiot rather quickly. But I feel sorry for him, as I’m sure his degenerative nerve disease, which he maintains was caused by radiation exposure during the years he worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs, has distracted him and kept him from making good business decisions over the last few years.
I heard Audio Research sued for the use of the term High Definition. Of course they lost.
For what it’s worth, here’s a link to the Better Business Bureau with complaints from people who recently bought Monster products:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/south-san-francisco/profile/cable-tv/monster-store-1116-65006/complaints
Like many, my first foray into the wild and controversial land of cables was some Monster speaker cables and interconnects. Though I quickly moved on and am now an Audioquest acolyte I do have some fond memories of Monster cable and swapping out that early zip cord and cheap ICs. RIP Monster!
As it turns out, Monster as we knew it died many months ago. That none of us were aware shows how far the company had sunk.
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/monster-2019-end-era
My views about audiophile cables are well known. IMO it’s the biggest fraud in audio ever. I’m an electrical engineer, not an audiophile. I’ve specified, bought and installed countless millions of dollars of other peoples’ money on wire. Wire is a frequency filter network. Can it change sound of an audio system? Sometimes. How? It depends on variables you can’t know. An equalizer does the same thing a different way, predictably, cheaply, adjustably. But there’s not much profit in it. So if you make or sell audiophile wires your first job is to convince the market equalizers are the devil’s work. It’s your money not mine.
Hi soundmind,
Cable is a frequency filter but at MHz region before the -3 dB point is ever reached, or the PAHSE effects of that firs order filter. The Inductance does effects phase through the audio band so it is more important than capacitance…to a point.
Amps hate too high a capacitance. They start to RING in the audio band, so keep cap low enought to prevent that. Cable can make the AMP sound bad, but we blame the cable for an amps stability.
The problem with too low a capacitance, is that it RAISES the cable impedance seen by the speaker. This causes simple voltage reflections that ZOBEL networks and other passive devices try to solve. Mostly not to well.
An EQ device cannot REMOVE the speaker to cable interaction, which can be pretty bad, and yes, it is a complex load that changes with frequency so it is near impossble to know, as you point out.
Cable is pulled from the amp end and the speaker end, and no end is happy…it is a compromise at audio as the velocity of the signal drops with frequency from about 55% to 10% or even less. We can’t make a cable that is a moving match the load like we can at RF.
We can make better cables, with more appropriate compromises for audio with “known” calculations and measurements. You are 100% right that the interaction of the cable to “unknowns” are largely what we hear. But, better cables do mitigate the worst interactons, and lessen the need for EQ devices that don’t alleviate the amp /cable/speaker nonlinearities that remain. You can’t white wash over them with an EQ, better to REMOVE as much as you can. Once PHASE is changed, it is permanent in an anlog system. Phase becomes and UNKNOWN.
The issues are the less than honest use of KNOWNS to make better cable. Certainly not every application needs the most optimized designs ignoring costs. Few, actually need that level of precision.
Some cable that DO INDEED need to be the highest capability are $$$ to buy. Ever price a S-parameter set of 50-ohm leads? As long as what is being changed, and how it was changed is transparent to the end user, I’m good with technology. But as soon as it falls into marketing prose with no basis to the underlying KNOWNS, I get real skeptical real fast.
The last point, is can the REAL changes influence your system better than the next best, and cheapest, alternatives? That is true across the board, not just a cable.
Love your practicle outlook on things, They are far too scarce now-a-days. Decisions are best made with the facts fully understood. Sadly, many don’t want to provide the facts, and many more get bored with them when they are provided. Worse, improving the facts is an ongoing process and many take criticism of HOW the data is provided. The more that can understand the data the better.
In what has become known as a zero phase system there is a direct correlation between amplitude frequency response and phase frequency response together known as a Bode plot. This is why you will never see a phase response for an amplifier.
It’s an exercise for electrical engineering students;
Amplitude frequency response
Phase frequency response, n
square wave response
impulse response
For a zero phase system I give you any one, you derive the rest.
A multiway speaker system is NOT a zero phase system. Not electrically and not acoustically. There is no correlation between amplitude frequency response and phase frequency response.
The telegrapher’s equation shows the equivalent lump sum parameter filter network for wire. You can ignore the resistor between wires. Take it as infinite. To solve the network parameters you need the complex source and load impedances. Caution, for a loudspeaker there is an active element that generates voltage by converting potential energy into kinetic energy by the woofer at the system resonant frequency. Series high impedance such as from thin wire reduces the amplifier’s ability to damp it out quickly.
I was very sceptical about wires for a long time Soundmind (especially after the whole Monster Cable fiasco in the early to mid 80’s) until I heard the difference (until I sa-a-aw the light; f#@k it sounds like religious experience)
But for me the best ‘sounding’ loudspeaker wire ends up being a 1.5mm dia solid 2 core electrical lighting wire (cable) at 65c per metre that I discovered 28 years ago & still use today…an absolute bargain 🙂
Next spring, when I finally finish our music room, I may test different speaker wiring for fun. In the music room speaker placement and acoustics will be optimized. Also in the custom cabinets there will only require 4 ft of cable between the amp to speaker terminals. So I won’t be wasting a lot of money with playing around.
For the living room where speaker placement and room acoustics are outside of my full control for reasons of matrimonial harmony, I have wired in a 32 band perchannel professional equalizer.
Sometimes you need to use a saw instead of sandpaper.
It is sad indeed that Monster cables is no more. Just another example when concerns become too big and have too many cooks spoiling the broth and forget what their primary goals are. Having used monster cables and related products always with good results in the past it is a loss. It is understandable why they decided to branch off into other things what with cables coming out of every nook and cranny. The sales volumes are low for individual brands and thus the prices are through the roof. Irresponsible reviews with product of the month approach have not helped either. Regards.
What I find incredible about this story is how they appeared to have massive distribution channels. Any store that sold audio video usually had monster on hand. This was not an audiophile type product but more of what I’d call a ‘tweeter’. You just bought an OLED or a surround receiver – why not buy the little nicer cable – at least from appearances. You could piggy back this discussion into the ps audio distribution model. Hmmmm. Maybe Paul understands something I don’t as I would have thought monster would have had buckets of cash. 🙂
I didn’t know until a decade or so had passed, but according to Jan Mancuso (publicist for Monster Cable and later for Reference Recordings), my write up of Monster’s initial cable offering was the very first review published by anyone ever, 1979 or 1980 if Wikipedia’s Monster article had its dates right.
I found out about my article’s status during a “By the way, you do know that…” conversation with Jan at a CES. It might even have been it its Chicago days. At the time I was a contract writer on home electronics and occasionally music for the Buffalo News.
Another minor first while with the News was that I was the first outside-the-office writer to submit articles electronically after they computerized the newsroom.
I don’t know how much this has to do with Noel Lee himself, but Monster was well known in the industry for its legal maneuverings to intimidate its competition. Here is a link to a tale about Kurt Denke, the founder of Blue Jeans Cable, and his response to a 2008 cease-and-desist letter from Monster’s law firm alleging patent infringement.
Monster’s lawyer, as is evident, was unaware that Denke was an Ivy League law school graduate, but for anybody who loves a good David-tells-Goliath-to-go-to-hell tale, it’s hard to do better than this one.
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/
Brilliant. Fascinating. Thanks for posting that Peter.
I had a cable vendor, well one of their hired help, not an attorney, threaten me a few years ago over a disparaging yet nevertheless scientifically true online forum assessment of their products.
This company had all the usual BS. Aerospace industry employment, advanced engineering education, of course nothing traceable was listed. I reminded them that if they sue for libel, all that advertising bunk and claims are then subject to discovery and testimony under oath. Add the fact that court records are public information, if proven to be liars, it will be documented for all history. Never heard another word, and I’m no attorney either but it just goes to show how shallow some of these charlatans are. They don’t even understand rudimentary legal process.
Isn’t it fun to smack bullies down with your knowledge when they threaten you & then watch them run away with their tails between their legs 🙂
Seems a bit unreal……….
Great news! I hope Audioquest is next!
Geez Paul, from the headline, my first reaction was an obituary of the physical sense.
I first met Noel at the 1978 Summer CES, we happened upon his suite in late afternoon after a long day of meetings. On display were a few stacks of 500 foot reels of 12 gauge speaker cable. He proposed this $1.00 ft retail speaker cable with a generous sliding scale dealer cost and freight allowance depending upon the size of the order with a substantial 10% Rep Commission so we agreed and picked up the line. The pitch to us was all about making money, not necessarily “sound quality”.
Having walked what seemed like miles that day and no lunch, exhausted, i sat down in a chair, his first wife (i believe her name was Alice) walked over and proceeded to give me a relaxing neck, head and shoulder massage. She was very nice to do that.
Noel was all business and Monster Cable was hugely successful for years playing a big role in the awareness of the importance of cables in A/V systems while helping to grow the industry at large. He made millions of dollars and over time became a sue-happy litigious prick, truly living up to the name, “Monster”. The irony of karmatic retribution perhaps?
Anyway, his is quite the story of the so-called “American Dream” that influenced several who followed in his footsteps.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/noel-lee-monster-no-not-t_b_7776912
I just came here for the spirited comments. This group did not disappoint. 🙂
MONSTER CABLE succeeded in three ways:
(1) it made money for a lot of investors and retailers
(2) it gave the common audio consumer the feeling they were doing something special for their sound system (don’t turn your nose up at the accomplishment of satisfying a customer)
(3) they put a spot-light on the importance of cords
I’d say that’s quite an accomplishment.
(1) Ripped off customers
(2) Misled customers
(3) Done by others for years before them, like QED, who are still trading
Quite an accomplishment.
Steven — What do you want? A pat on the back for not being taken in by Monster’s marketing? Caveat Emptor, right?? You’re more perceptive than 99.9% of the other consumers. Congrats.
Mislead customers?? Totally disagree. Monster wasn’t marketing its products to “golden ears” like you. John Q. Public got snowed by the marketing B-S, bought his monster cords, impressed his friends, and he was happy. Most Monster customers probably didn’t have highly resolving systems, so what difference does it make? The customer is satisfied, and customer satisfaction (at any level) is nothing to sneeze at.
Ripped off customer?? It’s proven that people are more satisfied with products that cost more. I would argue that people would have been LESS satisfied with cables costing 80% less. Was Monster a good value? Probably not. But there’s a lot more to customer satisfaction than getting a good value.
Yeah & Hitler did a lot for Germany too before it all turned to sh!t.
Here is my take. I have been in the custom install business since the early 90’s. I’ve never hooked up anything Monster Cable and thought it sounded bad. The construction quality of their wire that I personally used was much better than many others during and since Monsters apparent departure from the bulk CI business many years ago. The quality I am referring to is low failure rate (like ends falling off or falling apart on interconnects, speaker wire becoming brittle and cracking, UV damage of speaker wire outside, etc.). I never had much if any trouble with Monster Products. When they left the bulk business and stopped catering to Custom Install dealers, I think quality has dropped in many, many respects referring to what is available today for CI at all of the distributors.
I’m not saying that Monster Cable sounded the best, but I will say it was built well when I was using it (after the translucent stuff that turned green). When I tested the sound of cables from zip cord to Monster to Ice to Audioquest the only cables that sounded like something I prefer to never use or purchase for resale again were specifically one brand of interconnects by the most prolific manufacturer that replaced Monster in the CI business. I could hear differences in the other speaker wires and interconnects but not enough to justify spending $800 on a pair of 8′ battery assisted speaker cables (and that’s cheap compared to some stuff out there). Monster OMC 12 guage speaker wire at a couple bucks a foot or whatever it was sounded pretty good for the price, and the bulk Monster interconnect with chrome/gold ends that I used to solder on sounded good for the price too. If Monster Cable was an overpriced scam, I want to know what everyone thinks of all these other cable manufacturers that sell stuff that cost more than most peoples systems and beyond. My take on Monster was not anything like Fat Rat’s. I didn’t know Noel Lee or much about his business practices. Maybe Fat Rat was able to spend way more time A/B testing cables than I have. I never spent that much time testing cables over the years. But Monster did have a reliable build quality and my customers did benefit from that to some degree. I have seen other unknown brands of in wall rated cable stubbed out to outdoor speakers exposed to the sun where the outer casing and inner casings became so brittle they were gone in 5-8 years, I have had plenum cable from Liberty fall apart on the unused spool, I have had wire from Liberty have a big kink in it every so many feet on an entire 1000′? spool. I only saw one quality control issue with Monster when I used it and it didn’t appear to hurt the quality or longevity. I still have Monster bulk interconnect on spools from 15-20 years ago that looks the same as it did the day I bought them (other than dust). I wish that I could still buy more Monster ends to solder on. If anyone has a good source for other quality solder on RCA ends please let me know.
It’s good to hear that someone had relatively positive experiences with Monster Cable IGBAMV.
I was in retail sales in home audio in Sydney Australia back in the 80’s & early 90’s.
I felt that Monster was definitely overpriced here & what cable companies want to charge for their stuff these days is also criminal…imo.
Yes, I was able to listen to different interconnects & loudspeaker wires back in the day & it was on those comparisons that I based my comments two nights ago on this post about MC & as you can see there are others who were also unimpressed specifically with the cable’s terrible ‘sound’…nothing to do with Noel’s bullying or MC’s litigious marauding; those are separate matters.
Audio gear in Australia has always been overpriced so Monster probably got a double or triple whammy from the greedy retailers in this country, which also put my nose out of joint.
The pair of FURUKAWA interconnects that I bought in Japan in 1993 cost me $480.00AU ($336.00US) & I’ve still got them & I still use them & I will probably be buried with them because they still sounds brilliant & there’s no reason why they shouldn’t stay brilliant for many years to come.
And, at 65cents per metre in 1998, the 1.5mm dia. solid core is THE BEST bargain ever in the history of audio given the clarity of midrange, detail of highs & tightness of bass notes that it delivers to the loudspeakers.
So, today’s cable companies can extort at will because I wont be paying their ridiculously high prices for their product because as you can see, as far as interconnect & loudspeaker wire is concerned, I’m set for life 🙂
Hmm… not sure for the rest of you guys but the website http://www.monsterstore.com works for me at least, although not very well-made or maintained for that matter.
Yup. You’re right. It’s working now. Thanks. Maybe there’s a light on.
The company seemed to have transformed into a patent troll.
Not Pom Poming for Monster ! but it was better than Lamp cable or Rat Shack zip wire. ( Those old enough will remember searching for that square edge or micro line for the ground wire on that brown cord ) Never were my eyes better and I still struggled !
Monster’s facility was less than 1 mile away from where I currently live, near SFO and the building is now occupied by Amazon. They made a dent in the industry, but like most good to great companies, many have too short of a lifetime. My favorite gone audio company is Infinity and most of the guts of another has moved from Krell to now D’Augustino. In computers it was Sun Microsystems. I wonder why their are so few great minimally affordable products. Products that can last 40 years or more. Are we destined for more mediocre products that get replaced every few years? To finish this, I have a 4K TV, that not even Comcast/XInfinity broadcasts 4k material and most of their main residential boxes only support hi-def via HDMI. I see advertised a 8k TV, but who can use it? Most streaming via Netflix, now Disney, etc. is compressed less than video 4k material. I understand the chicken & the egg problem, and we always seem to be there. I guess this moves me to DACs, as hopefully PS Audio can come up with audio material that can exceed Reference Recordings, Sheffield, etc., and can validate our investments in higher resolution and higher quality DACs.
On the subject of Monster: Yes, they were ubiquitous. Yes, they were marked up nearly double (no more than a good speaker and no more than other cable/accessory brands). Yes, much of the science was dubious. (But there is more than enough snake oil to go around in the audiophile accessories category, so, you know, glass houses.) And finally, yes, they completely lost their focus on making audio gear and became a shell of what made them Monster.
However, as much as it might irk some folks to hear this, Noel Lee and Monster undisputedly elevated the lowly audio/video cable category. They also invented the best ways to market the category and sell it at retail. Nearly all speaker cables were basically lamp cord before Monster. Noel’s upscale selling, training, merchandising, and marketing techniques paved the way for subsequent companies such as AudioQuest, MIT, Kimber Kable, and all others. Monster co-founding Beats by Dr. Dre did the same for headphones, and not just lifestyle headphones: Sennheiser, BeyerDynamic, AKG, and many other mid/high-end headphones saw a tremendous boost after Monster elevated the category.
I get it: You don’t want Monster anywhere near your system. But their profound, in many ways positive impacts on the industry cannot be denied.