Customer Reviews

Monster Standard THX-Certified Speaker Cable (100 Feet)

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I used this Monster cable to replace an ordinary speaker cable that came with my Onkyo speaker system, mainly because I needed a longer cable. My ordinary human ears could not notice any difference in sound before and after. But the cable is strong and well shielded which made it more reliable when I had to pull it around the attic, down the wall gap and through rough holes. And, the price (despite all the hype) wasn't much more than what I was expecting to pay.

All availible double-blind testing indicates that differences between copper wire of the same gauge over the same distance is completely inaudible.

Monster Cable is no better than any other cable of the same gauge in terms of audibility, except in terms of Monster's marketing budget.
16 gauge stranded copper is more than enough for nearly any power draw over nearly any reasonable length of cable to any speaker.
Anyone who claims otherwise has never attempted to A/B speaker wire under double blind conditions.

Spend your budget on speakers and amplification and use the change in your couch to buy 16 gauge lamp cord at a hardware store. Anything more is a monumental waste of money.

Thus spake Julian Hirsch, and it is the truth.

Monster Cable and its similarly overpriced imitators are a triumph of hype over substance, and ruthlessly exploits the consumer's naivete and trust in shady audio/video salespeople.

Yes, for most things you DO "get what you pay for"---but when it comes to speaker cables, interconnects, and other a/v wiring however it's another story.

All you need for optimal sound is any 12 to 16 gauge generic cable which you can buy at Home Depot for a fraction of the cost.

Save your money for things like speaker stands, which really do make a world of difference.

I was looking forward to using this product for all of my home theatre speaker-amp connections. As I was running the wire, I discovered that the wire pair does not have clear distinguishing markings identifying the polarity. The ridge on one of the wires is very difficult to detect as the jacket is clear and the wire inside is identical on both sides. Putting a stripe or wording more often on one of the wires would make identification much easier so the speakers don't get hooked up out of phase. Otherwise the wire functions very well.

I actually didn't buy this because of the Monster name brand, I bought this because it was the cheapest 100 ft. of 16 guage wire that I could find anywhere. It worked perfect too! It was a good length that setup my 5.1 surround system without a problem. Don't skip out on monster just because people say it is expensive. Sometimes it's the cheapest if you look around.

Its good wire for the price on amazon nothing special about it being thx certified.

I purchased a spool of this monster cable to use for part of my whole house system over a year ago. While I've always been dubious of paying up for "brand name" wires and cables, I was in a rush at the time and the reviews were positive and the price didn't seem terrible so I went ahead and bought it anyway. As it turns out, I didn't need to use any of it at that time (had enough left over on an existing spool), so this sat in a closet for a year until I recently wired my home theater system, at which time I also purchased some 12 gauge speaker wire from monoprice at the advice of some of the people on avsforums.

As I completed my HT setup, I needed a little extra cable, so I rummaged around and found this spool of Monster wire sitting in the closet, but after comparing it to the speaker wire I got from monoprice, frankly I have to say I'm blown away by all the positive reviews here - guys, this is a sub-par product at a premium price. Why are you giving it 5 star reviews?

The first thing you'll notice about this speaker wire is it does not appear to be solid copper - there's a "nickel" colored wire intertwined with the copper, I assume it's aluminum, and I assume it's there as a cheap filler to reduce the cost. That might be acceptable for bargain priced budget wire, but not for name brand wire that carries a premium price. Maybe it does not noticeably degrade the music quality, but I think we can all agree there is no way it improves the music quality vs. solid copper and there's no reason to pay up for it. The cheaper monoprice speaker wire is solid copper, FYI.

The second thing I noticed about this wire is the jacket is not very easy to work with - for one thing, the two wires do not easily pull apart when you go to separate the ends to plug into the corresponding pos and neg terminals of the speaker or receiver. Worse, i found it was far more difficult to strip the jacket off the ends of this wire in order to form a connection. I had neither of these problems with the cheaper monoprice wire, which had a nice thick jacket that was easy to work with, both the regular and the CL2 in wall wire I purchased.

Bottom line - at about twenty five bucks for a 100ft spool, this 16AWG Monster wire is almost the exact same price as a 100ft spool of 12AWG wire from monoprice. The monoprice wire is solid copper while this Monster wire is about 50% cheap filler (aluminum?). The monoprice wire has a superior quality jacket which makes it easier to work with. And again, the prices I'm comparing are 16 gauge for the Monster and 12 gauge for the monoprice (you could also choose 16AWG from monoprice, which is also 100% copper, at about half the price of the 16AWG monster or 12AWG monoprice, but at 25 bucks per 100ft I felt it was worth getting the 12AWG). What would you rather have, 16 gauge wire with cheap aluminum filler and a cheap jacket, or thicker 12 gauge solid copper wire with a quality jacket for almost exactly the same price?

Do not buy this product, it is a low quality product at a ripoff price. In the end, I was able to scrounge up enough scraps of my 12AWG CL2 monoprice wire to finish my project and was thus able to avoid using this Monster wire, so it went back in the closet, hopefully never to see the light of day again unless it's to melt it down and sell it for scrap :D

I started out with lamp cord cable from Radio Shack (they called it speaker cable). It was very rigid cable which made it a pain to work with. Short of stapling it to the floor, I don't think it would stay close to the wall. It was also a very bright gold color and stuck out like a sore thumb.

In comparison, the Monster cable seems to stick to the edge of the wall. It was like it was magnetized! I have the cable ran in front of a door (no other option). I couldn't do it with the Radio Shack cable but with this speaker cable you can hardly tell it's there. I also have it going up the wall to the speakers and it doesn't stick out as bad as the Radio Shack cable.

Finally, I don't see the sense of buying expensive equipment and using cheap cables to connect it together. I'm not saying to buy Monster all the way. There's now way I'd spend spend the kind of money they want for their cables but at the price this speaker cable is on sale, your aren't going to save much buy getting cheap lamp cable.

Shop around if you must have monster, they make a quality product but it is questionable if it is better than others 1/10th the price. Regardless I like their products and this one fits the bill for me.

Have not used item from this shipment yet. However, this is a repeat order. The first order of same product of 100 feet is working fine. We would regcon it will do the same fine job.