How does Monster Cable manage to scam people into buying their cables?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

The three things with the highest margin in any audio video store are:

[ol]
[li]Extended service contracts (by a HUGE margin)[/li][li]Cables[/li][li]Speakers[/li][/ol]
If you can get into a trade show like the Consumer Electronics Show (starting this week), you will find that the biggest booths, with the thickest carpet and the most attractive both attendants are the extended service contract companies. And the best parties are thrown by Monster and the other snake oil companies.

By the way, Monster is considered “cheap crap” by the purveyors of the much more expensive, more highly refined type of snake oil sold in the “High End Audio” pavilion (Pear would be over there).

62

Sorry but this is just wrong. JREF have several times offered the prize on challenge terms to people who themselves say that what they can do is not paranormal. Randi has challenged snake oil salesmen of various descriptions even though they themselves say there is a medical or scientific explanation for what they say their product does. It’s whether Randi thinks its paranormal, not what the applicant thinks.

Note the Challenge FAQ:

In the links given Randi specifically says that he considers that if the cables could do what Pear said, that would be paranormal. So right away Randi has laid the way for Pear to take the challenge. There is no way that Randi could say in writing and in public that Pear’s claims are paranormal, then refuse to approve the claim when submitted on the basis that the claim wasn’t paranormal (well, except by Randi totally discrediting himself).

Pear’s excuse was pathetic. They just know they couldn’t pass the challenge. If they thought they could pass it they would have just accepted Randi’s offer, and passed the test, thereby gaining massive publicity and kudos. If Randi had sought to back out on the pathetic basis that Pear say they believed he would, he would have looked like a weaseling asshole, and Pear would have been the winner.

Time and again one sees woos and fraudsters say they won’t take the challenge because they suspect the money doesn’t exist or the rules will somehow be twisted to deny them the prize or whatever. It is abject crap and it amazes me how many people give it an ounce of credence because it makes no sense whatever.

If I can juggle four balls at a time and say so, and you deny my claim in front of a crowd and offer me $1000 dollars if I can do it, I will simply do it. I won’t quibble about whether you will weasel out of the offer, or whether you actually have the cash. It would be stupid for me to quibble since you have presented an absolute win/win for me. Either I get the money, embarrass you and prove myself in front of the crowd or I don’t get the money, but embarrass you even more while proving myself in front of an even greater crowd, attracted by your weaselling.

The only reason for me to refuse to demonstrate my juggling and instead to quibble about your offer is because I can’t juggle four balls. It’s that simple.

63

I put Bose right up there with Monster. Hang around and serious audio folks and most with laugh and/or snort when you say the word ‘Bose’.

64

Here’s a $1000 AC power cable. It doesn’t even transmit a signal, just raw juice. Beat that!

65

Indeed, and I meant to give credit to the store guy at Harvey"s for not pushing some “higher end, Stage 3 with LED indicator” power supply unit, but simply pointing to the cheapest power bar they had with a power line cleaner and saying, “that should solve your problem”.

66

If you’ve never tried HDMI how can you compare? I had to “downconvert” an HDTV display from HDMI to component cable to try out an HD Slingbox last year (which doesn’t support HDMI) and the difference was very noticeable.

While $50 for HDMI cables that can be gotten for $8 or less (much less, depending on the length, from sites such as cablesforless.com) is silly, saying HDMI isn’t a clear improvement over component or RCA connectors is also (potentially) silly, if he’s actually getting HDTV signals of any kind and sits close to the screen (which given that you said it dominates his room seems like a given). It probably wouldn’t make too much difference for a SDTV signal, but even a relatively crappy, highly compressed HDTV signal from your digital cable provider will look significantly better without a digital - analog - digital translation.

And cable TV is surely not the only input he’s got into this display; you’d notice the difference from using a pure digital input via HDMI just from a DVD player, and if you have Blu-Ray or some other uncompressed source of true 1080p content, the difference is sharpness is very apparent.

67

Maybe he also wanted to watch bluray movies.

68

“No highs? No lows? It must be Bose!”

69

Maybe I’m not understanding you, but you seem to be saying two things here. “Digital cables will be an all-or-nothing thing” - which I agree with, and " more expensive cables definitely made a difference even for HDMI" - which I don’t agree with.

Any HDMI cable I have ever seen is certified, meaning it is good enough to work and deliver the data. What difference does a better cable make to a bunch of “1s” and “Os” as long as they can be read on the other end?

70

I haven’t noticed a difference between HDMI & component cables (actually the Time Warner box I have looks better with component than HDMI) but it’s a staggering improvement over RCA cables. Unless you’re just connecting an old VCR there’s no reason to use RCA.

71

Can you provide an example or someone actually being accepted for a claim that isn’t paranormal? The Challenge is specifically limited to paranormal claims.

The fact that they can’t pass the challenge is pretty obvious no matter what. I’m simply pointing out that it isn’t clear if Randi is directing them towards the JREF, and him saying “I think it’s paranormal” would not technically qualify them for the test, according to a plain text interpretation of the JREF Challenge, which is not Randi’s to unilaterally change (it is not his money.) We’re just quibbling over a technicality.

I mean, if they don’t qualify for the $1,000,000 prize on a technicality then the obvious thing to do would be to DO THE TEST THEMSELVES. Hire a university to run some double blind tests, release the results of the amazing sound improvements, and say “Look at us, we stand by our products and we didn’t need this Randi guy to pay us to do it.” In any event, I doubt a million bucks is all that much to a company that is successfully convincing people to pay thousands of bucks for a $10 cable. It’s hard to top that kind of margin.

The reason they - and all the other super-expensive cable manufacturers - don’t do that is that, of course, the test will confirm there’s no reason to buy their products.

The difference with the JREF Challenge is you can’t simply “do it” - to win the million bucks you have to go through a process of filling out an application, proving you’re already known to the media, getting letters from an academic stating you can do it and that it is paranormal, agreeing to test criteria, passing one test, then passing another test. You and I both know nobody will get past the first test, because all paranormal claims are garbage. But the system is designed to prevent people from getting to the first test (which is understandable; if they just jumped straight to the test they’d be besieged with lunatics.)

If Pear wanted to prove their cables were better why even worry about engaging with JREF at all? For that matter, **why have they not presented this sort of thing before James Randi said anything? ** I mean, as a consumer, what would impress me is if they could actually show the cables made the audio/video experience better, right? Wouldn’t that be the best marketing you could possibly do?

Indeed, you could apply that logic to almost all advertising, even for stuff that isn’t quite as mendacious as Pear Cable. If the advertising doesn’t relate to objective evidence that the product satisfies customers more than competing products, then you have to wonder why that is.

72

OK, what I meant is this: I used the cheapest long-run HDMI cable less than 50 feet that I could find, a 35-foot long run (I don’t remember from where any more), to connect an A/V receiver with a DLP HDTV projector, and it dropped signal. The image flickered out every few minutes, as though the input (a DVD player) had been rebooted or the display selection changed on the projector. Hence, “all or nothing”: there was no fading or ghosting, the signal just blanked out as far as the projector was concerned.

I then tried a more expensive cable, being a thicker gauge and “in-wall rated” meaning better shielding (the 25-foot long “Ultra HDMI” cable from CablesForLess.com) and the problem went away. Hence, I have observed a difference between HDMI cables… But as I was careful to state earlier, for the typical three- or six-foot long cables used by most people, it should never matter. (I always use the cheapest three-foot long cables from CablesForLess.com now for general HDMI connections)

73

Bose doesn’t cost way more than other speakers. And I don’t get the “no highs or lows” stuff. Maybe that was true in the past. I know their 901s don’t have woofers and tweeters, just midrange speakers.

I am well aware that many audiophiles hate Bose but mine sound very good. BTW please spare me the stuff about how I have low standards, tin ears, etc.

74

The scientist in me compels me to admit that I can’t rule out simply having had a flaky or not-to-spec long run 35-foot cable in the first place. All I know is, when I asked the CablesForLess folks why the “Ultra HDMI” cable was the only one they sold as long as 25 feet, they explained it was because “for runs that long, a lower gauge may cause your digital display to drop signal depending on how sensitive it is”. That explanation which rang true to my earlier experience, and their 25-foot long Ultra HDMI cable works, so in the end I was happy.

75

Just to nitpick, component cables use RCA connectors as well. What you’re calling RCA should be called composite. Signal format and connector type are independent - most all broadcast-grade video equipment will use BNC connectors for any analog video cabling rather than RCA, for instance.

Composite video - the analog lo-def format commonly carried over cords with yellow RCA jacks
Component video - the analog hi-def format commonly carried over three cords with red, green, and blue RCA jacks. Sometimes labeled YPbPr.
HDMI - digital hi-def format with the HDMI-specific connectors.

Depending on the specific signal and display, there’s no reason hi def over composite can’t look just as good as HDMI, much as some computers can display just as well using VGA as using DVI. And actually, if the video being displayed is standard definition, it’s entirely possible that it will look just as good using the composite output. If you can see a difference between HDMI and composite (yellow rca) displaying standard definition video, it’s because the TV and the receiver are up-converting differently.

76

It doesn’t help the general public to see audiophiles (not meaning anyone here - I mean in product reviews and on their own boards) arguing that these expensive cables make all sorts of differences to things like the ‘colour’ or the ‘presence’ of the music. I think that at least part of the reason ordinary folks get bamboozled into buying these products is their apparent endorsement by self-styled audio experts.

For a laugh (if you haven’t seen it before) - take a look at this product:

It’s a $500 ethernet patch cable. There’s nothing useful this cable can do any better than a budget one costing probably less than a dollar.

The product reviews are a scream though - my favourite:

77

Previous thread on this. :smiley:

78

Monster’s initial shtick was speaker cables and RCA interconnects for higher end component systems (see history).

As someone who was into hi-fi audio systems in the 80’s (even if it was mainly as a spectator), my experience with Monster cables was that they friggin rocked! Everyone who could afford Monster bought them. At a time when the default speaker wire was 22 AWG, they had cable in 16 and 14 AWG sizes. Their RCA cables had gold plated connectors and were built like tanks. Monster gained a reputation because they were vastly superior to the standard connectors that came with components and for a while they were the only game in town. You could definitely hear a difference when you went with their cables.

Even today, when there are many other options available, I do not think that you will find many people say that Monster cables are crap. They may be greatly overpriced, but at least you have a reasonable assurance of quality. The issue with lower cost alternatives is “you pays your money and you takes your chances.”

79

That’s hilarious. Last year, the AT&T guy who came to set up my UVERSE left me with about 50 feet of extra cable. I posted an ad on craigslist giving the stuff away for free…I got zero replies.

80

Sadly, the Denon cable thing’s a spoof.

Still… I wonder if you might not have found a buyer if, instead of giving your cable away for free, you’d charged a high price for it and hyped it as some sort of supercable with “anti-jitter properties.”