Are more expensive cables worth it?

welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm an editor at how stuff Works dot com and sitting next to me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, and uh, I think we're going to uh talk some cable today. Yeah, we're gonna talk cable kind of the way we talked megapixels. And you know, it's funny because all this WiFi we've been talking over the past few months, and now we're talking cables. Cables. We're not we're not necessarily talking cable television or cable modems.

We're talking about the actual physical cables that tether one device to another. And if you're not familiar with cables, ha ha, they're basically long strings of copper wire that you plug one thing into another thing to connect them. Yeah, to allow electrons to pass okay, jokes aside from one to another. Um. The question has been posed by many people over the centuries that we've had electronic equipment. Yes,

I remember Shakespeare himself wondering about this question. You know we're gonna get an email saying you don'ts no, seriously, Um, there have been people who have asked for a long time, you know, because they are all kinds of cables you can get in the store. Some of them are really cheap, some of them are really expensive, some of them are short, some of them along and people go, what the heck is the difference? Does it really matter what cable I get?

And the answer to that is, well, answer is no, it's not No. Answer is more or less no, Okay, more or less no, I will accept. Okay, there, but actually there's some there's some gray area in there, all right, Yeah, again, there's some gray area. Okay. So what we're talking about here are let's say that you just bought a really, really nice sound system and you want to hook your sound system up, and you know, you don't want to just use the cables that came with it. You want,

you want some nice cables. Um, you don't wanna you know, full around, because I mean, if you spent this much on a on a sound system, you don't want something as simple as cables making it sound crappy. Right, Actually that sounds a lot like what a salesperson would ask you in the store. I know, this is why I'm going this way. So then you go down to the audio aisle and you look at all the different cables and you see some they're they're you know, fifteen dollars,

and you see some of they're twenty dollars. And then you look and you see some that are a hundred and twenty dollars and they're the same length as the twenty dollar ones, And you think, huh, the d and twenty dollar ones must provide a much better sound than the twenty dollar ones. I've spent all this money on my uh stereo. I'm going to go ahead and get the top of the line. And you take them home and you look so and you think I've got the best there is. Well, would you have had the same

experience of you about the twenty ones? Would it really have sounded that much different or would it sound different at all? Would you even be able to detect it? Perhaps the most sensitive sound detecting equipment could pick it up, but would your ear pick it up? And that's the question. I mean. I wasn't long ago that I uh, that I edited Dave Russ article how do I know which cables use? And it doesn't really talk about this, at

least not mostly. But he did put a sidebar in there about an experiment that was held not too long ago. They got picked up and it made headlines, well sort of headlines, blog headlines all over the internet about these people who substituted coat hangers for Monster cables. Let's see if they can tell the difference. Actually, no, they couldn't, yeh um. And let's just say this. We're not talking about a double blind study held in um a lab and the results were published in a peer review journal.

But um, the original of this appeared in an audio file um uh message board. It's the audio Holics Home theater forum and basically, um, some serious serious listeners decided to do a test on two different kinds of cable, basically trying to figure out because Monster has a reputation for making really good cables or at least really expensive or at least really expensive, wasn't And and uh, if anybody's name is thrown around with are these really expensive

cables worth it, it's theirs. Um. So they said, okay, well let's do let's do a taste test, if you will, And they plugged in some really nice monster cables and they also put in some fourteen gauge oxygen free Belden copper wire and tested them and basically, um, all this

wasn't a scientific, scientific test. It was pretty scientific. They picked a band that none of them were familiar with so that nobody would have a personal biased that they used the exact same length of wire and said, okay, they hooked it up to an eight B box so they could just throw a switch and uh. Basically they exposed five people. Again not a giant scientific example, but two of the five could accurately identify the monster cable

out of the two as sounding different. And then they threw him a loop and pulled out the belden wire and swapped it for coat hanger that had been rigged into speaker wires, and uh, and ran the A B test again, and not one of them could tell the difference in Monster cable or the the coat hangers. Not that we recommend you going out and replacing all of your wires with coat hangers. No, No, that could potentially

cause you a little bit of a shock, exactly. And um, not to disparage the work of the audio holics who have who have done this study. It's it's certainly um uh you know, somewhat scientific. Um. But they you know, people have been really excited about this because you know,

people like to pick on Monster. Let's face Yeah, No, they're They're an easy target because their products are very very much in the you know, the limelight, and they are very expensive or for the high end ones anyway, And uh, I just want to really quickly go into what a double blind study is in case you're not

aware of what that is. Double blind is a methodology, and it's one in which both the person administering the tests and the person undergoing the test have no idea which of the two or more UH scenarios they are encountering at any one time. So, in other words, the person who is pushing play on the stereo U doesn't know which wires are being used, and the person listening

doesn't know which wires are being used. Now, ideally you're using the exact same equipment apart from the wires, and you're using the exact same recording in all these cases, so that you know, no, you don't have any other variation there. The only variation you should get are from the wires. And the reason you do these double blind tests is to avoid a kind of almost like a well,

it's really a psychological effect. If you go in expecting to hear a better sound, you might be convinced that you are hearing a better sound, even if on any other day, if no one had told you that, you wouldn't have that expectation. So, I mean, someone could tell you, oh, well, these are the high high end speaker wires, and and be pulling your leg, and you might convince yourself, wow, those really do sound great, and then it turns out that you know another the cheap little fifteen dollar ones

you can get on the aisle um. That's why double blind tests are important. It takes that kind of bias out. Actually, James Randy, do you have you do you know who James Randy is? I've heard his name, James Randy. Uh, it's a professional magician UM and also a noted skeptic, and he has the one million dollar Chi Lenge, which really is open to various claims of um of abilities

that fall into the paranormal range. But he opened it up the one million dollar challenge to anyone who could reliably tell the difference between I think it was a seven thousand, five hundred dollar cable and a I think a two hundred dollar cable. So we're still talking about high end cables on both ends, but one that's incredibly

expensive versus one that's just expensive. And his argument was that the human ear would be unable to detect the the difference between these two cables, even if the two cables performed exactly the way they were supposed to perform according to advertisements and packaging. UM. As of right now, no one has uh that they have not done any of these tests. I think because the company that was

going to supply the cables backed out in the last second. Yeah, maybe they just didn't want anyone to find how that their product may or may not be distinguishable from significantly cheaper products. I think that might be it. That that could be it. Yeah, we don't know. We can't say it may be a totally different reason. Um Wilson Rothman UH from Gizmodo has done a series of articles about Monster cables and whether they're worth it UM and worth

worth the price. And you know, he actually met with some some folks at Monster and they explained to him some of the reasons why they feel UM their cables are worth it. And I should point out that UM.

According to one of his posts, uh it talks about the the consumer blog Consumerist, UM, they got an inventorialist from radio radio shack employee and there was a a cable that had a markup of actually UM and nineteen h d M I d v I digital cable was a hundred wholesale was which is a profit of eighty dollars and fifty four cents, which is actually, as Monster points out, a margin of which is just a little higher than their normal margin, which is thirty seven. That's

according to Monster them, you know, the company itself. UM, but there are a lot of things that Monster says makes a difference for them. Um. They make heavier duty cables, which UH, in the long run will save one wear and tear. They showed Um Wilson Rothman and an X ray of a monster cable and a less expensive cable, and they showed the difference in wear and tear just at the point where the connector touches the cable and just bending it back and forth can can damage the

cable where the Monster cables were more robust. Also, they're certified for things like h technologies like h d M I, and they're saying, you know, basically, when you pay for us, you're getting a higher quality copper cable. You're getting, you know,

a more robust cable that will last longer. The connectors tend to be made out of pretty expensive material as well, with the idea that you know, this is the part that actually you insert into whatever equipment you're going to plug the cable into and for it exactly and that therefore it does make a difference which material you use.

And uh, you know, to his credit, uh, you know, Rothman was really sort of skeptical about the whole thing going in, but he said, you know, these things honestly do play a part in whether or not the cable, um you know, is worth more to the to the consumer. But he also advocates trying a cheaper cable to start out with because he said, you know, for the most part, most people can't tell the difference, UM, and for shorter lengths, um,

it doesn't matter as much. He said. What's really funny is the cables that seem to be the most overpriced are the mid range cables, because you sort of get what you pay for when you buy an inexpensive cable or the monster cable. But the mid range cables really aren't that much better than the cheap ones, and you're paying a premium for that in between, and you're not

really getting that much more for your money. And when you're talking about longer cables, that's when you're getting into situations where you may have to, you know, move the cable around corners and things like that, and this is stuff that can produce wear and tear, or you may have to if you're if you're wiring through the walls, that may also play a factor. If you you know, there may be a point where you have to kink the wire a little bit in order to get around

a certain point um. And of course the heavier duty ones can take that better than the cheap ones. So in that case, yeah, if you're using a long cable, uh, you may need to look into one of the more expensive ones if if a cheaper one just isn't giving you the quality of picture that you really want. And uh, and it is true that there are times where you'll look at an image on a TV and you'll think, this is a high definite definition television. Why don't I

have a better picture? And sometimes it is the cable. Sometimes the connectors not not quite sitting right, or uh, the cable itself has a weak spot. Um, if the fielding around the cable isn't very strong, there could be interference from other cables. Keep in mind that you know, cables that don't have any shielding are essentially emitting radio waves. So if there if you have a whole bunch of

these together, there is chance of interference. If you've ever had, um, for instance, a a cell phone near cheap set of speakers, and the cell phone updates and then you start hearing this did it? Did it? Did it? Did it? Sound? That's because the the uh, the speakers are picking up the interference from the phone. Actually the speaker wires are picking it up and sending it to the speakers. I always thought that was the ghost of Porky Pig could

also be that. So the we miss you mel blank the but no, the shielding around the wires is very important. So if you have a lot of if it's gonna be laying around a lot of other cables, I mean my house, that's the case behind any entertainment system. But yeah, if there are a lot of cables there and they have poor shielding, then you can have interference and that can affect your pictures. So in that case, you may need to look at a better, better set of cables.

But in general, like like s net, c net reviews lots of products, and one of the things they review, among many others, are home entertainment systems, and they have the people have seen it, have gone on record saying, you know what, there's a two h d M I cable that we could get, and there's a twenty dollar h d M I cable we can get. We stuck with the twenty one. We can't tell the difference. Uh,

you know, we compared the two. We've used the twenty dollar one for all of our tests from that point forward, and that's what we're gonna stick with because for the purposes of our tests, it's exactly what we need and you're talking about, you know, testing really high end systems. So again they're using you know, an average length of cable. I think I think two meters is like the longest

one they use. Um. And so they they say straight out like, don't bother buying the really expensive ones because you're just wasting money. Um yeah, and that's uh yeah. Rothman sort of tempered his his message after having met with the Monster folks. Basically he said, we're not saying that Monster cables aren't the best. That's not what we're

saying at all. We're saying you may not need, you know, to buy a really expensive cable unless you're using it for specific applications where you need an extra long cable or you know you're going to need heavy duty cable to to run through the walls, you know, things like that, if you need you know, if you don't use that for for that, then it's it's seriously unlikely that you need to spend the extra money on a Monster cable because you know, after all, they did do some lab

testing and the Monster cables tested very very well. Um, you know, so you know, sure you can you can buy that if you really want to. And they you'll get an excellent product, but you know you may not need require it, maybe more than what you need exactly. Yeah, audio files and video files will often tell you they want the absolute best in order to get the best, and that they can tell the difference. I can tell you as someone who has looked at a lot of

these things personally. Um, there was a time actually at the last consumer Electronics show where I was walking around and I was walking into a booth. This is the first day of the show, and they had not yet put up the signs for which TV was which for certain things, and I couldn't tell the difference. And I came back to that booth later and then I saw which one was supposed to look better than the others, and I thought, you know, I still can't tell the difference.

But if I had walked into this the first time and saw those signs, I probably would have thought to myself, hey, that that picture does look better than this other one. But without the without that information, there there was no way for me to tell. So no, not granted, perhaps that's a fault that lies on yours, truly, you know, maybe I'm incapable of seeing those differences and that's my my burden to bear in life. But I'm just saying

I couldn't tell. Yeah, And I'm sure that if I had been there for the audio Holics testing procedures, I would not have been able to tell the difference in speaker wire versus uh, you know, code hangers either, um, you know. And they're a lot more highly developed ears than mine, certainly, And this just n yes, the j REF challenge I was talking about earlier, it was seven

speaker cables versus eighty dollar speaker cables. So I just want to get that straight before we started getting emails about it, all right, I hope people didn't pause the podcast and type out an angry email and then started up again. If it makes you feel better, I'll send you an angry email. It always makes me feel better. Well. I think now's a good time to thank our sponsor,

audible dot com. And hey guys, if you go to www dot audible podcast dot com slash tech stuff and sign up there, your first download is free, and we have a couple of suggestions for what that first download could be. If you like Chris, what what suggestions do you come up with? We'll see this was obvious for me, I chose Nick Hornby's High Fidelity right. Well, of course, you know, I don't think there were any code hangers

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story about Rob and it's it's autobiographical. Um. He he describes himself as a shy, skinning Irish Catholic geek from Boston, and it's kind of about his love affair with a young woman named Renee, who he describes as an Appalachian punk rock girl from nor across Georgia. I feel a certain kinship with both of these people, being both a geek and a punk rock fan. And uh, it's a great story. It's very funny, it's very very sad um

and he narrates it. So that's my recommendation excellent, and remember you can get that or one of fifty other audio books for free as your first download if you sign up at www dot audible, podcast dot com slash tech stuff. And now you know what time it is, don't you. Yes, that's right, it's listener mail. So this is from Catherine from Philly. Hey Katherine, and uh, I've expurgated your email slightly. It's I just took out the

middle part. Hey guys. As a lifelong geek girl, I'm quite enjoying the podcast and hope you keep up the good geeky work. Well, we don't have a choice in the matter, so thanks Katherine. But she also says also in your podcast where you talked about which platform is better, a harry topic to say the least. Kidding, she's not reading the other emails that you mentioned that if you're doing web development, it really doesn't matter which platform you use.

This is true, but it's important for any web developer to be sure to test their website on both platforms. I developed sites on my PC, but I'm always sure to check them on a Macan Safari browser has around a ten percent share of the browser usage at the moment, so let's not forget about our Mac friends. When we PC users build our sites. Keep on seeking. Katherine from Philly, who was incidentally saddened to report that tagging web pages

with HTML does not technically count as programming. Sorry, guys, it's well, you know, and we we did say coding. We said that wasn't programming, it was coding, and we were we were kind of weakling out of that one. Anyway, that was a great point, Katherine. Um, and a lot of web developers do have to check on multiple not just multiple platforms, but multiple browsers to make sure that

a website looks correct in every single one. So you might have to, you know, check your website and Chrome and Safari and Opera and what's that big one, uh Firefox, that's it. No, of course, we mean Internet Explorer. I meant Firefox. Okay, when you meant Firefox. We do have some Firefox fans out there who are very adamant about us talking about Firefox. And I mean, if you're going to get into the whole extra browsers thing, we could get into Flock and Camino and anyway, right, So anyway, yes,

you do have to take that into considerations. Um, and the same thing goes for people who are developing programs you know that they want to run on both platforms. Obviously that that's a lot more work you have to you know, and you often have to build from the ground up on both versions. So and then you have to take into other other stuff into account, like the colors are different on Windows versus a Mac. The actually display different colors slightly, one darker, one finer. It's kind

of weird. Actually. Yeah, anyway, thank you for actually taking the time to take that into account, because a lot of people don't. Yes, we greatly appreciate that. And if any of you want to write in and talk to us, give us any suggestions or comments or corrections and anything like that, you can do so at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember we have blogs at blogs dot how stuff works dot com slash category slash tech stuff and of course you can find lots of

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