More Monster fun - a quick investigation

[BuyOtherSoundEquipment]

Most of you already know that I am not a Monster cable fan, but that I did at one time "drink the kool-aid" and purchased a few of their higher-end products. Well last week I decided that, heck, I had a spool of their XPHP-CI speaker wire, so why not hook it up and do a little demo. I went over to my RB-61s which were set up for some 2-channel listening to my Yamaha RX-V1800 and switched out the Monster cable in place of some plain-jane 14 gauge wire.

Immediately, I noticed a BIG difference in the sound... It was was much, MUCH quieter. Basically, I had to take the volume from a comfortable -20 dB listening level on the Yamaha to -9 dB to get the same 90ish dB output (using my handy new Radio Shack SPL meter!). It was almost as if the RB-61s just lost a good chunk of their sensitivity...

Fast foward one week, and I decided to perform a little impromtu surgery on the Monster wire, to see what was up with it.

What I found was this:

You might be able to see the "time correct winding" sitting on the outside of the inner-insulators. It is basically a piece of string, like you would pull off of your shirt.

After cutting into the inner-insulators, I found this:

Inside the wire is the "magnetic flux tube" which is a thick, long piece of rubbery plastic. It makes the wire appear much thicker from the outside, but as you can see the actual conductors on the inside are about equivalent to 14 ga wire. Could this be what is creating the apparent "lack of efficiency"? Is Monster cable really that devious/inept?

Thoughts?

[CECAA850]

I'm sure their marketing department has a perfectly logical explination for this. [:$]

[Guest " "]

The purpose of the fishing line type material in the center is not to give the illusion of a bigger wire, but rather to deliver an implementation that subscribes to the theroy of positioning the wire bundles at an optimun position so that their inductance does not overlap with each other much in the same way that inductors on a crossover should be at 90 degrees from each other. The fishing line material is intended to keep the bundles of finer wire at a prescibed position with none in the absolute center.

The difficulty with developing metrics to capture how effective the approach is has to do with the relatively low inductance in the wire to start with, and the question of where the skin effect is actually occuring. If this was litz wire, the whole thing would make sense. But atoms in an uninsulated wire won't vibrate in a spiral fashion if their is a shorter direct straight line path.

[Islander]

I went over to my RB-61s which were set up for some 2-channel listening to my Yamaha RX-V1800 and switched out the Monster cable in place of some plain-jane 14 gauge wire.

Immediately, I noticed a BIG difference in the sound... It was was much, MUCH quieter. Basically, I had to take the volume from a comfortable -20 dB listening level on the Yamaha to -9 dB to get the same 90ish dB output (using my handy new Radio Shack SPL meter!). It was almost as if the RB-61s just lost a good chunk of their sensitivity...

I'm not clear on what you did. Were you already using the Monster cable and switched it out, or were you using the generic 14-gauge? Which cable gave you the lower volume level?

Were there other differences, like in clarity, bass response, musical transient response, pleasant or unpleasant sound?

[Hifi jim]

The string or fishing line which can be easily seen in the second photo, is there only for the purpose of a zipper, something that makes stripping back the outer insulation easier.

[BuyOtherSoundEquipment]

I'm not clear on what you did. Were you already using the Monster cable and switched it out, or were you using the generic 14-gauge? Which cable gave you the lower volume level?

Were there other differences, like in clarity, bass response, musical transient response, pleasant or unpleasant sound?

I started out using the 14 ga regular wire, which gave me the "comfortable" listening level. I then switched to the Monster cable, where I had the apparent decrease in volume. I couldn't pick out any other real differences, I consider my self pretty tin-earred and like I said, it was just a quickie little test. Nothing scientific.

Speakerfritz, I'm not exactly sure what you were getting at there. Are you saying their so called "flux tube" should produce results, or not?

[toddvj]

I'm not clear on what you did. Were you already using the Monster cable and switched it out, or were you using the generic 14-gauge? Which cable gave you the lower volume level?

Were there other differences, like in clarity, bass response, musical transient response, pleasant or unpleasant sound?

I started out using the 14 ga regular wire, which gave me the "comfortable" listening level. I then switched to the Monster cable, where I had the apparent decrease in volume. I couldn't pick out any other real differences, I consider my self pretty tin-earred and like I said, it was just a quickie little test. Nothing scientific.

Speakerfritz, I'm not exactly sure what you were getting at there. Are you saying their so called "flux tube" should produce results, or not?

Your first post wasn't very clear at all. I thought you meant exactly the opposite and was wondering why you'd be complaining that the thin wire was more quiet. Somehow I doubt the speaker wire would make that kind of difference, but if you say so...

[Guest " "]

" Speakerfritz, I'm not exactly sure what you were getting at there. Are
you saying their so called "flux tube" should produce results, or not? "

It won't produce results in the wire you have. It's a great theory, just not the right application.

[Islander]

Monster makes it hard to figure out what size their cable is, without actually measuring it yourself. Your Monster cable may have been 16 gauge, but even so, it's surprising to hear of such a difference in apparent resistance. Anyway, the cheap stuff actually seems to work better in your system, so that's great.

[BuyOtherSoundEquipment]

Monster makes it hard to figure out what size their cable is, without actually measuring it yourself. Your Monster cable may have been 16 gauge, but even so, it's surprising to hear of such a difference in apparent resistance. Anyway, the cheap stuff actually seems to work better in your system, so that's great.

That's the conclusion that I came to...