looking to wire my new house for theater and whole house audio, I like monster cable but is there as good or better cable for less $$, I know they make good coax and speaker wire.looking at the 14-4 inwall and rg-6 let me know what you guys think

Canare, Parts Express, etc.

Try bluejeanscable.com.

IT, the only thing special about Monster Cable is that it's overpriced. You can get speaker wire that's just as good for significantly less. Just for example, if you want 14/4, Parts Express has some here for about 1/3rd the price of the essentially identical Monster. Locally, Home Depot would have about the same. If you really need to also run some coaxial, the same sources have that available, but RG-59 would be plenty, rather than RG-6.

I have Liberty cable. It has a very thick jacket. I payed about $.70 ft for 12/4 and $.50 ft. for the 12/2. If it matters, it's also THX certified. I wired most of my home with Canare (video and interconnects), I have all the tools from past installs. Canare or Belden make great cable. I purchased the Liberty out of convienence.

You might check your local code to see if the in wall wire runs need to be rated for "in wall" or "CL-3".

Good Luck!

Tom

Just ordered more of the Canare 4S11 cable from markertek.com. Lowest price I've seen anywhere - $.69/ft. They do stick you with a 'handling' fee on top of the shipping charge.

Thought I'd chime in on the coax topic - I wouldn't put anything other than RG-6 Quad Shield (0.25 a ft. at Home Depot)in the walls. I used to work at Home Depot and there were a lot of people who had RG-59 that were replacing it because of noise problems. One of the local cable companies did some "upgrades" to their system and started pointing to RG-59 as a source of noise issues that people were seeing. Also, do all home-runs to a central location. Don't use any splitters in the walls.

Pete

IT, the reason that I suggested that RG-59 would be plenty for any coax that you had to run is that it has losses low enough for even a run of several hundred feet and the slightly lower loss of the thicker RG-6 wouldn't be significant. Shielding against interference is a separate question and depends on the type of shielding used, not whether the coax is RG-6 or RG-59 type. Sometimes cable TV companies use inadequately shielded cable, but as this excellent article by the guys at Blue Jeans explains, that has nothing to do with the size of the cable. Their test of cables showed that some RG-59 cables had hum rejection better than some RG-6 cables, if the shielding was better.

That's a good point John. My main intent was to mention the quad-shield aspect. RG-59 vs. RG-6 may not be as relevant, aside from availability. My local Home Depot doesn't have RG-59 quad-shield anymore.

Pete