I just got my brand new epic 80 500. I am using a denon 3808. I still have not connected the equipment. I bought axiom cable, but now I wonder if I should buy the Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Speaker Cable for front and center speakers and use the axiom cable for my rear speakers.
A long time ago I had an equipment that sounded pretty bad with rca digital cable but when I use the monster cables , it was like I just bought a new set of very expensive speakers. The difference was that big.
Any comments
You'll be fine with the Axiom cables all the way around. While the Monster Cable features the words "Ultra" and "THX" it is more an indication of price rather than performance.
Heck, you'll be fine with lamp cord all around, as long as it's sufficient gauge.
Any quality speaker cable will do fine. I would stick with the Axiom. You will not notice a difference between the two. Monster is mostly a name, kind of like Bose, in that they have an extensive marketing campaign. Don't buy it- it's too expensive. Instead, stick with Axiom cable and go buy some nice interconnect cables from Monoprice.com. Excellent quality for low direct price.
Use the axiom speaker wire you have, Monster will give you no better sound.
Hello! I certainly would go with the Axiom cable instead of Monster or "lamp cord".
I personally would go with Kimber Kable or Purist Audio Design. Many in this forum would disagree with me, and that is OK!
For speaker wire, I wouldn't use anything less than 12AWG.
Have a great day!
Mike
If you haven't seen it already, here's a great article that gets techinical about the science of speaker wire. I use 14 guage from Home Depot myself (about $0.40/ft I think), and it sounds the same to me.
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htmIncludes the quote:
"...So what do our fifty hours of testing, scoring and listening to speaker cables amount to? Only that 16-gauge lamp cord and Monster cable are indistinguishable from each other with music..."
Just to think how many times that link has been in an Axiom post!!
Thanks to everyone. i will keep my axiom cables, will this connector be ok?
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=091-350
Sure. You could use just about any banana plug, whatever floats your boat. I use ones from monoprice, Home Depot, and Blue Jeans myself. Doesn't matter--it's just a chunk of metal that touches two other chunks of metal (the cable end and the binding post end.)
I am looking at the monoprice, banana plug screw-in
http://www.monoprice.com/products/produc...&seq=1&format=2Sorry for my ignorance, but how do you screw this thing? it seems to run perpendicular to the plug, instead of connecting on the back.
You insert the cable through the hole and tighten them down.
I bought the axiom banana plugs and they work great, a little more pricey but the wire gets clamped down just like the speaker binding posts.
Did anyone see "The Fifth Estate" last week. It is an extremely well respected Canadian investigative reporting show that is famous for unearthing scandals and investigating interesting topics you might not see on the news.
They did a half hour bit on big box stores pushing overpriced HT accessories. Monster Cable was prime on their hit list.
Along with 3rd party visual inspections, they pretty much proved that a $200 dollar monster HDMI cable performed Exactly the same as a $20 dollar name brand. Because HDMI data is digital, they had a lab run both cables through a computer device that analyzed, bit for bit, the Hi Def data that was passing through them.
While not a single bit of data was lost or changed in the Monster cable, not a single bit of data was changed or lost in the twenty dollar version either.
Not getting into quality requirements for long lengths and such, this solidly proved that there is absolutely no reason to expect 'glorified' picture quality from a Monster HDMI cable, despite what the sales folks will tell you.
Also very interesting to hear the sales managers try to weasel out of whole thing when approached with the data from these tests.
I know what I'ma gon' say!
"BAM!!! Whattaya say now, mother#$@&ers!?!!"