What we use depends on the budget and type of installation. For instance, if someone has the money, and doesn't mind spending it, I like Ultralink, Tributaries, AR, and several others. The one that I absolutely refuse to use is Monster. In my experience, he failure rate is outrageous. I think that Monster is the worst value out there. If I work on a job that already has Monster Cables, I refuse to put them in. I get a lot of jobs from frustrated clients who have spent a lot of money with other installers and are tired of the problems, so they call us in to fix it right. The first thing I do is throw out the Monster Cables. If they want to keep them, I won't guarantee the work. I often find that inexperienced installers use them (people that are installing on the side, but really work retail). The workmanship from these inexperienced installers is usually messy and the cables are unreliable. I have had more defective Monster Cables than any other brand, including the free ones that come with the equipment. I think that the name Monster is like Bose-- everyone asks about them, but name brand recognition is no substitue for quality. They spend all of their budget on hype and packaging instead of a quality product.

I know that several of you like Monster, and I will probably get a lot of flack for my coments. These coments are based on my many years of experience and my engineering background. I'm not saying that the Monster brand doesn't transfer good sound or a good picture, my concern is with reliability. It bothers me that the price is high and the reliability is not. I believe that most premium brand cables will produce a picture and sound as good as any Monster brand cable. I think that a lot of people are brainwashed by their three-hour "class".

Okay, Monster class alumni, you can give me hell now.

What about Impact Acoustics and River Cable?

How dare you say such things about Monster. What are you unamerican?

Baseball, apple pie, Bose & Monster Cable!

Actually, I would tend to agree. I've had a larger percentage of Monster's break then the out of box cables too. I've always attributed the lack of sound that I got from the left channel to my own ignorance.

They're so transparent sounding that I can't even hear the music.

Speaking of Monster, have any of you noticed that about a year ago, virtually NOBODY was able to purcase equipment and leave Best Buy without additionally purchasing a Monster surge protector and a few cables to go with their new gear?

We make our own.......much happier since making the switch about a year ago. We are never out of a specific length or color b/c we make em. We never have to worry abut cables that are too long or too short. Best of all we do not have 277 cable SKU's to track. Also increases the profic margin greatly. You just have to make the choice of what bulk cable to start with and what brand of terms to use.

We use IXOS cap system. I know it looks cheap but it has saved our ass on several occasions (another post all together) Also very inexpensive (both parts and tools)

Don't know what MC you all have been using, but we sell boatloads of their video and digital interconnects, and even more boatloads of the Power products, and the only things that were consistently bad were the UPS Products (CG500,UPS1000)... I can't remember the last time I had a defective cable out of the box... (and I've been installing MC since '97)

We also use Tributaries, Tara Labs, NordOst, and some Liberty...

Liberty for me, the great one stop shop, with great relationship/customer service. But i don't think they have cable with arrows that tell you which way the signal flows. (HA, HA).

What about magical conductors that automatically direct the bass frequencies to the center and the high frequencies to the outside of the cable?

That would actually be just about any cable, but by "bass" we mean anything below, say, 2 to 3 megaHertz, and "high" we mean anything above maybe 10 megaHertz.

The individual wire conductor diameter influences the actual frequencies involved, but I think the portion of the highs that travel on the outside of audio conductors due to the skin effect is on the order of 100 dB below signal levels for the types of wire we use, both for line level and for speaker level.

Just a guess to try to give some perspective. Skin effect ainn' no thang in audio.

We make our own video cables using canare cable and prefer to use kimber as far as interconnects. Both more reliable and better performing than most other products in this part of thee world

As far as the best cable, my vote would be for Bluejeanscable. They use Canare and Belden components, which are some of the best made. However, they are not as pretty as some of the other brands.

CJ

I've been using Tributaries as my main line followed by Ultralink.Monster has been ok and I stopped using Proflex due to unreliability.

We use Revelation and monster. ahem to the lack of margin in the monster. I did just pick up the Holland Electronics mini RG59 3ghz custom cable w compression ends. Cable is made for them by belden. I love it comes in single dual, three pack w/ shield 5pack w/ shield and 10pack w/shield. priced it just like a component video cable, monster video2 or revelation. margin is great and then preconstuction you dont have to press the ends on.

Dave
ps the specs say that you can run hd component for over 200ft w/ 0 loss. and we wired our whole store w/ it and audio athority distubuters works great.