Monster Cable or coat hangers, take your pick

Five audio fanatics take the Pepsi challenge with a set of THX-certified Monster Cables and—get this—four coat hangers. Think they could tell the difference? Think again.

The bloggers at Consumerist found this amusing post on the Audioholics forum, and it's yet another example of how pricey audio cables (or video cables, if you ask me) are little more than cash machines for electronics stores.

Here's the setup: two brothers, one of whom is described as "an audio engineering whiz kid," rounded up five audiophile pals, a pair of Martin Logan SL-3 speakers, a set of four-foot Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnect cables (which sell for about $100—yep, one hundred smackers), some 14-gauge Belden stranded copper wire, and a pair of two-meter cables made from four coat hangers.

The test group donned blindfolds and compared the Monster Cables to the Belden copper wire, and even after seven swaps, no one could tell the difference. Then came the acid test: the brothers replaced the Belden wire with the jerry-rigged coat-hanger wires. And yes, you guessed it: after repeated "A-B" tests, the blindfolded guinea pigs said they liked what they heard, but they couldn't tell the $100 Monster Cables apart for the two-cent coat hangers. (All the cables involved were about two meters long.)

Of course, as Consumerist points out, coat hangers aren't exactly recommended if you're talking about a 50-foot run of cable (and touching unshielded coat-hanger wires together would probably fry your receiver). That said...consider this little anecdote the next time a blue-shirted sales clerk tries to sell you a reel of $99 speaker wire. Instead, try a standard coil of 16 gauge copper wire—that should do the trick for short runs (say, 20 feet or less), and a 50-foot reel should only cost you about $10.

Related:
Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables? [Consumerist]