[coloradan]

And that’s totally stupid. It’s reasonable to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on cable ... when it’s low-loss microwave cable used in the 20 GHz and above frequency range. The idea that 20 kHz or even 100 kHz signals give a damn about conductor geometry, transmission line impedance, the orientation of copper grains, etc, is just so much BS. The frequency is a million times lower, and the audio cables are even more expensive than good microwave coax. It’s like paying $1000 for a bottle of water, because the $100 bottles of water leave you unsatisfied (to say nothing of distilled water, $1.39/gallon at King Soopers).

It’s nothing more than charging ignorant people money for their vanity. (Which, come to think of it, might be a good thing.)

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

A good friend of mine installs high-end custom home theatre systems. He'll be the first to tell you that sometimes the cheap stuff works just as well. But then again sometimes it doesn't. Even his wife, who isn't particularly audiophilic, can sometimes tell the difference.

But he'll tell you that Monster is always crap. That didn't used to be so, but the company got sold and today the brand name is the main asset--not the quality of the product itself.