Friends don't let friends buy Monster cables

[sara_tanaquil]

One of my recent favorite mini-timewasters has been surfing Gizmodo. It's surprising how much actual useful information I've picked up along with the dross.

I was reading yet another article about how $2 HDMI cables are just as good as $150 cables (I really wish I had known that before I bought my two HDMI cables last year, at least they were on the "low" end of Best Buy's line...), and came across a passing comment:

"Overpriced cables get hilarious reviews on Amazon..."

... with a couple of links. Half an hour later, and I'm sitting here with tears of laughter streaming down my face.

The whole page is made of awesome, but I was particularly fond of:

My cats chewed on this cable and now they can both speak. One of them is gay and the other wants to kill me. I would have rather not known.

(The cable in question lists for $8,450. Yep, you read that right.)

ETA: Don't miss the Tags Customers Associate With This Product.

Comments

Re: Mvrdrk poked me to read this

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

Thank you, anon! Wow, I knew speakers were expensive, but I had no idea that the cables went into the stratosphere.

Audio, except for the loudspeaker and room acoustics, is pretty much a commodity part at this point for the playback side.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this?

I have much to learn, it seems.

Re: Mvrdrk poked me to read this

[(Anonymous)]

What I mean is that what used to be hard (high powered amplifiers, accurate playback) are now easily done for a small number of dollars in cheap consumer hardware. For instance, your average garden-variety home theatre receiver has about 125 watts per channel for every channel. It also costs under 1k$ unless you are buying fancy features. In 1960 this would have cost about 2K per amplifier, now you get 7 of them for 1K including computer processing inside that has more capability than all the computers in the world in 1960. Amplifiers, CD players, etc, in other words, are "solved". While bad equipment does exist, even the middle of the road consumer gear is much better than the best thing you could buy 20 years ago.

Re: Mvrdrk poked me to read this

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

LOL! Engineering speak!

A commodity item means that for the same functions or features, you should be buying by cheapest price.

An example would be eggs. For industrially farmed eggs, all brands are about the same so buy the cheapest ones you find. Unless you are looking for something special like organic, humane, or sparkly, there's no need to pay extra. For HDMI cables or most other audio equipment, as long as you know manufacturers A, B, and C all have decent reliability/quality, buy by lowest price.

Re: Mvrdrk poked me to read this

[(Anonymous)]

Yep.

Audiophile parts.
They really cost quite a lot.
But, are they worth it?

:)