Tara labs vs Monstercable interconnets.

[dantfmly]

In your opion which is better. i have all monster cable now, and i want to upgrade. I wonder if i should stick with monster or upgrade to tara labs or other manufactures. I am starting with my subwoofer cable, which i am using a interlink 300 mkII right now and i want to go to a actual sub woofer cable. than i want to upgrade all of my other cables some are interlink 200 and interlink 300 mkII. and go from video 2 composite to s-video.

[Cal Blacksmith]

Here we go again. Another my wire is better than your wire debate (see the thread on bi-wire)

There is no magic in the wires. Any good quality wire with good connections and soldering will get the job done. Personally I have plain old $4.00/3ft long stereo interconnects for half of my components and they sound just fine. I also have the $12.00/ 3 ft long av grade co-ax interconnects (picked up at my local electronics store, not rat shack) and there isn't any difference I can tell. If you have a real problem with interference, you might want to make your own interconnects with a shielded twisted pair cable. Only ground one end of the shield and make sure the grounded end is connected to the sending equipment. To ground both ends of the cable encourages a ground loop.

For my speakers, I have plain 10 gauge O2free fine stranded cable. There is no magic in O2 free copper as electrically it is EXACTLY the same as regular copper. Its main advantage is that it forms better when making things out of copper (bowls etc.). The only reason I used it is that it was reasonably priced (50 for about 30 bucks) and mainly it is very soft and flexible. Is it any better than 50 of .29/ft wire at the hardware store? NO, I just liked how soft and flexible it is.

Or what the heck, go out and spend $200 for a 3 foot long wire, I dont care, it is your money. If you feel better spending large amounts of money for the name go ahead. Again please see my posts on the bi-wire thread.

[dantfmly]

speaking of speaker wire, you are right about that. I went out and bought 34 cent a foot home depot 12 gauge wire and it sound better then the 16 xp monster speaker wire i used to use. I did not mean to start a flame war or anything i just want poeple's honest opinions without flaming the other guy out, please

[T2K]

I used the same MC interconnects that you have in your profile for years. Changed them out with some of the lower priced AQ. Immediately sounded better. Also, AQ speaker wire will sound cleaner in the upper end than multi-strand wire. Listen to them a while with familiar recordings before making up your own mind. AQ may not give desired results with your KLF20's though. I have about 80 feet of high priced monster speaker wire that someone gave me that I use to tie up tomato plants. Works great. Just my opinion. Take it for what its worth.

Keith

[nuclearay]

$0.24/ft for a 250 foot roll of 12g HomeDepot. It sounded better than the 10 year old 16g monster cable that had turned green. I've got some long runs in my house which had some bearing on my decision, though. Not sure how much improvement you are going to get spending that kind of lettuce on a cable. Save your money for another sub?!

Hey Keith, my fatherinlaw is planting his garden this weekend... how many rows of 'maters to do think I could plant and tie up with about 20ft of old Monster cable?

[T2K]

That should be enough for about 5 plants there Ray. The beauty of it is that the wire will turn green quickly and you will not be able to see it. The MC wire will also thicken up the low end and give you more blooms.

Keith

[dantfmly]

thanks art for your constructive input you emailed me.

[prodj101]

MC are garbage...To me they are the Bose of the speaker/component cable world. Overpriced, and a whole load of BS. The bit that I have had from them sounded pretty yucky. Their interconnects have a kind of tinny sound to them, and are harsh to listen to. I prefered the generic cords that came with my gear. Then I upgraded to MIT, which sound very, very good. They go a bit beyond typical speaker cables ( mitcables.com ) and I think you'd like them if you tried them out. I didn't believe that cables could make a difference until I switched to monster cable and hated them, then moved up to MIT and loved them...

[JewishAMerPrince]

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On 4/29/2004 9:56:55 AM cablacksmith wrote:

There is no magic in the wires. Any good quality wire with good connections and soldering will get the job done. ----------------

I used to be of that opinion until a few weeks ago when my local friendly Klipsch/Rotel/Aragon dealer responded to my comments that "a wire is a wire is a wire" by loaning me a pair of "Straighwire" mid/high end cables to AB against my own very inexpesive but nicely made double shielded cables from KnuKoncepts.com. I am now a believer. There is a difference in the clarity and fullness between the two different brands, so a wire is not just a wire after all. What surprised me was which one we judged to be better!

Jerry Rappaport

[phatbass]

I could never hear a difference between to well designed* functional(not broken) cables of the same gauge. Numerous ABX tests of hundreds of so called audiophiles also supports this, none of them could tell a difference. This is also why McIntosh used to use lamp cord for their demonstrations at shows like CES, the only reason they don't use the lamp cord now is because people would talk about the wires instead of the products they were trying to sell.

*Well designed means no battery cables or anything else that would negatively affect the signal going through the wire.

[dantfmly]

anybody heard of canare? if so how are they?

[pzannucci]

I have some Monster, Esoteric, and a set of Tara Labs rectangular core interconnects. The Monster don't seem to have the quality highs though they are very inexpensive Monster cables. The Esoteric caused the highs to be strident. The Tara Labs interconnect at around $179 got rid of the glare I had with the Esoteric but was not as dark and subdued sounding as the Monster cables. Very clean and clear but not bright.

[TauRus]

Dantmfly, most likely you dont need to upgrade the cables, unless:

- you have some dollars burning your pocket;

- current cables are really old and turned green from corrosion;

- current plugs do not provide tight connection.

A year ago I did the same - I had Monster M-Series speaker cables all around and decided to get some more "serios" cables. I bought StraightWire bi-wire cables for all speakers. They are nice, much better banana plugs than on Monster. So, now I have both sets of cables. Someone asked me whether they differed a lot acoustically - so we tried to do an A/B to the extent we could and though there was a small advantage to StraightWire, that difference was not jaw dropping, but rather subtle. If you would be buying from scratch, then I would advise not to get Monster cables. THey do have some nice ones, I think in Z Series, but they are so overpriced, that hardly make sense. Since you already have the cables, I would just save the money for something else.

I think you asked also about Canare. Yes, it is a well known brand, one of the leading cable manufacturers. Many custom cables are built using either Canare or Belden cables.

[TauRus]

Ok, let me steal your thread for a moment Since we are on cable topic anyway, I was just wondering if any one here had any direct experience with the flat speaker wires. Cannot recollect all the brands that promote those but most likely you all had seen or heard their promos. I think QED is one of those brands. They are selling flat speaker wires (like 1mm thin) that can be glued to walls and painted over, thus virtually consealing themselves.

Not that I am willing to buy them, but just every time I come across some promotional material about those cables I am qurious how much of the info there is true. They seem to defy all basic theories behind speaker wires - they are not constructed as twisted pairs, just have two flat thin copper conductors running in parallel and with no shielding to speak of. Looks like an axample of how a speaker wire SHOULD NOT be built. Looks like an antenna to me rather than a speaker cable. Yet, somehow now and then some "prominent" HT professional starts claiming they sound great, bluh bluh .... So, am I missing something here, or all those flat cables are crap?

[michael hurd]

It is pretty impossible to do a true a/b test, without some time to switch wires, without the use of a switch box, and we have a poor memory, to compare something we heard a few moments ago to the same selection.

The same goes for color, as we have a poor memory for color. I am trained to blend color on a vehicle, when I paint, rather than butt-match. The basecoat is blended with a low pressure "puke" technique, and the entire panel is clearcoated.

So, rather than noticing a slight difference in adjoining panels, like a new fender and hood, by blending the new basecoat onto the top of the opposite fender and also onto the door, you will not notice a slight variation on the color.

Some vehicle colors have many variants and alternates. A variant may be yellower, bluer, redder, greener, cleaner, dirtier, and so on, depending on the color and effects used in the formula.

Getting back to audio, I give the interconnects a twist when I move something, and clean behind the stand. I have also cut back the bare wire on the amplifier end ( can only use bare wire or pins at amp end ). While this is not something that you need to do, I just do it out of habit.

[michael hurd]

I haven't had any direct experience with using flat spearker wire, but as long as the effective gauge is large enough, it will work fine. A friend of mine did have a sample of goertz flat wire sent to him, and I did look at it, but that is the extent of my experience with it. Speaker wire does not require twisted pair construction, or shielding for that matter. In some electrovoice paperwork that William F. Gil McDermott sent me last year, they even advocated the use of "ordinary twin lead flat tv cable" for short distances under carpets, etc.

[dantfmly]

micheal hurd: I see you have a pair of sennhieser hd 570 headphones. So do i. They are great aren't they. use them with my laptop.

[TauRus]

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On 4/30/2004 10:55:29 AM michael hurd wrote:

It is pretty impossible to do a true a/b test, without some time to switch wires, without the use of a switch box, and we have a poor memory, to compare something we heard a few moments ago to the same selection.

----------------

Yes, Michael, I fully agree with what you said, that is why I noted that to the extend that excercise could be called an A/B test we did not notice any significant difference. Should the difference be great, we would definitely notice that even with the time lapse for cable switching.

As for the flat cables, I thought the theory of having twisted pairs for speaker cables was quite commonly accepted. I talked to so many people and read so many articles all of which claimed that twisted pair method reduces EMI/RF. So, your comment is interesting. I wonder what others think about it as well.

[michael hurd]

dantfmly: The sennheisers are nice, especially for the price I paid for them. I don't regret buying them, that's for sure. I tried several other models after buying them, when I was in Toronto, at bay bloor radio. For the small difference in sound from the hd 570's to the hd 600's, it didn't justify to me spending over $600 cdn to move up.

I also tried on two models of grado's, and while they did sound great, they were not comfortable to wear for me, as the smaller earpiece sits directly on your ear, not over. This, and the fact that I must wear glasses, means that they are not for me. I can wear the sennheiser's for hours at a time, without feeling any pressure.

The headphone jack on my receiver really doesn't work that well, as the volume level must be turned way up in order to produce a reasonable volume level. An older Akai am-u7 integrated amplifier I have drives the 'phones much better. Also, they seem to work fine with my sony mini-disc walkman, so go figure.

The marantz must have a budget headphone section, if I turn up the volume to a good level, the sound starts to sound pinched on louder transients. However, when I turn the Akai up, it sounds the same as when the volume is low ie: fine.

[michael hurd]

TauRus: Twisted pair constuction will reduce noise, but what everyday speaker wire uses that construction? 99.9% all use flat, parallel bonded wire or zip cord.