MONSTER CABLE HTIB CV-KIT Home Theatre in a Box Component Video Connection Kit

Rating:
Summary: Liar, Liar, Speaker Wire! Is Monster Cable Worth The Buy?
Review: I remember way back when my father used to get his speaker wire, where everyone else did, from the hardware store on a giant spool right next to where you got your amplifier and your eight track tape deck and your wire cutters. Those were the good old days my friends when technology was affordable, wire was wire and what was good enough for your lamp was damn sure good enough for your speakers. Well times, they have a changed.

So you ask, is Monster Cable actually worth spending my hard earned money for? Is there any way I can make a common sense decision on what looks to be, from the individual price tags I am seeing, a couple of hundred dollars worth of Video Component cables and Fiber Optic TOS Link cables and even the lowly RCA Jacks, then add that 100ft spool of Speaker Wire and ?... What about that other brand of cables (Audioquest, Cobalt, Sound King) I heard about that goes for $1500.00 a pair? The sales guy says they will make my sound system better, richer sounding, with more presence... dang it! Is any of this really worth it?

It depends. Notice the use of the highly accurate verbiage "richer" and "presence"?

Let me be honest here. Go looking for a scientific, third party, Consumer Reports type, unbiased data extravaganzas on the differences between Monster Cable and Radio Shack and say, add in some exotic brand like Artic. Just try to find a double blind audio test with documented results, a reasonable common sense approach, and a perfectly good explanation to this quandary.

THERE ARE NONE! Zilch, zero, nada!
It all seems to be an out-right snake oil and con man game.

So what does yours truly do in cases like this. I swallow a ton of salt, a grain of truth, a hardy hi-ho silver, along with some idea about what I need and dive into this mess with the goal of connecting my Onkyo HT-S870 THX certified Home-Theater-In-A-Box together with my DVD player and my Sony KD-34XBR960 and do it for the most reasonable price. That's what I do.


Interconnects - Where the excrement meets the whirling cutting thingy.

Out of all the places I feel you should spend your hard earned dollar and do a little testing is right between your DVD player and your receiver and the TV. This is where the smallest amount of interference and connection issues will cause the most damage to your audio/video experience and here is where I say make sure you have the best.

What is the best? Well from my reading everyone and I mean everyone points to Monster Cable and says they either suck big wind or they rock da house. You have your audiophile purist (men of golden ears) who swear on their graves that they found some guy who makes cables for NASA and sold them this or that type of cable and it's sooo much better than Monster Cable and then you have your standard cavemen (such as myself) still swearing that S-Video is da bomb (Boy did I learn my lesson). To my way of thinking this places Monster Cable squarely at the water mark of what is defined as good and what is said to be bad. Add the fact you can find it everywhere and you are more likely going to be able to find it on sale, well there you go. Try to mention the term "on sale" at a high end audio shop sometime, try it.

You would think in the realm of Interconnection cabling is where most audiophiles worth their snobby little Denons would be battling over the hard data of what is the best quality for the money. HAH! No such luck.

I personally think you can side step allot of issues initially by thinking all this through and by using the best connections you have available built into your current system. If you have the ability to use Fiber Optic Audio lines then save yourself allot of trouble and pump your audio through the fine tuned glass of Fiber Optic cabling. No signal interference, no electrical trickery, keep it simple!

If you only have Digital Coaxial check your receiver to see if you can connect that up. Look at your video, DVD player, satellite receiver etc... Can you use Video Component connections? There are some reasonable, scientifically provable, step-ups in the world of video and audio connectivity so remember that when you go shopping for deals for your whole system.

Well look at the Monster Cable - Component Video/Fiber Optic Audio Kit. See the price? Just go to your local Circuit City or Best Buy and look at the prices for the individual parts in this Kit. This is a steal! It's literally below half-price for both these connectors. This kit will single handedly connect your DVD player for one low price and if you get another kit you could connect your PS2 using Fiber Optic Audio and get an extra set of Video Component cables so you could run everything through your receiver... and guess what?

This is real secret to how I buy these things.

As I said keep in mind how you are going to connect your system together and then go shopping online. Look for these pre-packaged kits which Monster Cable excels in creating and then look for the best price. There you go, no muss, no fuss, no big arguments. But always, always test and make sure you are at least getting a better connection than the one you had before. I had a recent run in with an Acoustic Research subwoofer RCA cable and a radio signal that still annoys the hell out of me.

Double check the real world sound and quality of picture and do not just rely on a brand name.

For a complete listing of all the different types of video connections be sure to checkout my review of the Sony KD-34XBR960.


Now About Speaker Wire - Once more into the breach!

THERE HAVE NOT BEEN ANY CREDIBLE SCIENTIFIC STUDIES CONDUCTED BY UNBIASED THIRD PARTIES THAT COULD DEMONSTRATE A STATISTICAL DIFFERENCE IN DOUBLE BLIND TESTS OF TWO SIMILAR GUAGE SPEAKER WIRES!

Am I making myself clear? Will the fan boys from all those audiophile web sites please refrain from flaming me if you have no honest to god hardcopy. Thanks, move along.

So what do I do when I go shopping for speaker wire? I for one always keep an eye out at Radio Shack for the prices on 16 gauge wire. That is debatable but I personally think 12 gauge is ok but not necessary and as a rule of thumb I then follow my three little rules to live by.


1) How much can the pig spend without facing the night on the couch, other wise known as the wrath of the other half?

2) How much work will the pig have to do to install it?

3) How durable does it look to the pig?


Well just look at this
Monster Cable HTIB CV-KIT Home-Theater-in-a-Box Surround Sound Connection Kit / Component Video

Yep another kit, I got dem there expensive brand wires for my Onkyo HT-S870!

Two 20-foot front speaker wires, One 10-foot center speaker wire, and Two 35-foot rear speaker wires and One 10-foot Monster subwoofer wire that I could not use, but oh well.

The kit also includes adapters for Sony Dream and Kenwood systems.

And the biggest selling point to me that cinched the deal?
Monster Cable not only measured and cut the wire but then they clamped on some 24k gold-plated connector pins for the ultimate in piggy convenience.

That's right folks, it all came down to not having to break a sweat or use a pair of wire cutters. I hate using bare wire with the typical speaker clamps, bare wire tends to fall out of whatever you used to clamp it down with faster than a tampon out of Paris Hilton.

Oh did I forget to mention the Monster Cable 8-foot Component Video cable that also came in the box?

All for a extremely reasonable price around $100.00, not bad and even my other half thought it was a deal, and then all I had to do to show the world how thrifty I am was recycle one of my Acoustic Research speaker wires for the rear center speaker. I might get around to buying a single speaker wire pack from Monster Cable someday when they go on sale, like around January.

So be careful out there and do not buy the hype!

Rating:
Summary: Dependable product but greatly overpriced with inflated ego.
Review: These interconnects work perfectly fine and if you want capable yet expensive looking cables then buy these. However, any standard RCA cable with reasonable shielding will give you exactly the same audio reproduction.

In fact, in a scientifically engineered ABX double-blind test five specialty interconnects from AudioQuest, MIT, MONSTER CABLE, H.E.A.R., plus Belden cable with Vampire connectors were compared to a $2.50 blister pack RCA phono interconnect. Seven listeners were asked to identify whether they thought they were listening to one of the name-brand cables or the cheap cables. Out of 139 trials only 70 were correctly identified. This is a result of 50% which absolutely corresponds to pure chance as would be expected of random guessing.

The placebo effect should not be ignored here. If you WANT to justify your purchace by WANTING the cables to sound better then you WILL subconsciously think they sound better. People who are not made aware of the brand they are hearing simply aren't able to hear a difference.

But another important consideration here is the durability of the cables over the long term. Monster Cable is very durable and will resist deforming, cracking and shorting out. This is certainly very important especially if you are in the habbit of frequently repositioning or otherwise adjusting the layout of your cables.

Do ALL cables sound the same? Not neccessarily. Some high-end cable manufacturers advertise that their product deliberately favors certain parts of the sound spectrum. Sometimes it's the low frequencies (bass); sometimes it's the high requencies (treble) - sometimes both. Why do they do this? Search me. The purpose of an interconnect is to transmit the data from your audio source to your components UNALTERED! If Monster Cable doesn't distort the audio stream by favoring certain frequencies then it is doing it's job properly - otherwise the sound you hear from your speakers wouldn't be what the recording artist intended you to hear would it? If you want a warmer tone, or brighter highs, or more balanced resonance - then that's what the sophisticated equalizer is for that is built into your receiver/stereo.

Monster Cable is more expensive than it needs to be to do the job required of it, but is still quite capable over the long term and is a justifiable purchase for those who don't mind spending the cash.