Do Expensive Cables' Incremental Performance Justify Their Incremental Price Tags? Gizmodo Labs Weighs In
As one who’s regularly criticized so-called ‘premium’ cabling for digital HDMI, analog amplifier-to-transducer, and other source-to-destination interconnects in the past, I’ve been following Gizmodo’s recent back-and-forth with Monster Cable with great interest. The so-far links:
- The Truth About Monster Cable
- Attention Monster Haters: The Giz HDMI Cable Battlemodo Has Begun
- Do You Wall or Table Mount Your Flat TV?
- The Truth About Monster Cable, Part 2 (Verdict: Cheap Cables Keep Up…Usually)
The perhaps-obvious conclusion; if impedance or other variances between inexpensive and premium cabling do exist, in and of itself a questionable stance, they only manifest as quality differences (signal degradation for analog cabling, and more binary behaviour for digital interconnect) at extended cable lengths that aren’t applicable to most consumers’ setups.
This interpretation of the data is only valid, of course, if you trust Gizmodo’s lab skills….which may be yet another questionable stance. I’m not going to ‘ding’ them for running the tests at Monster Cable headquarters, although their non-neutral venue selection does give me pause. However, I don’t necessarily agree with some of their definitive ’fail’ verdicts on the inexpensive cabling, since the ability to discern an admittedly collapsing signal ’eye’ is receiver-dependent (and, of course, the ability to drive a high-quality signal is transmitter-dependent….Gizmodo’s study is clearly not statistically significant). Your thoughts, folks?
Rian commented:
Ali commented:
