Pricey A/V cables a waste of money

In my Spending Smart newspaper column on Sunday I talked about how it’s usually a waste of money to buy expensive cables to connect your audio and video components. Pricey speaker wire is a waste, as well.

This has been a long-running and controversial topic. Read about it here: Price of audio, video cables bears little on performance.

I’m not a true audiophile or videophile, but I’m pickier than most. And I’ve long held the belief that when you’re dealing with digital stuff, CD players, DVD players, etc., it’s not worth paying more. The pricier digital products get you more and better features, perhaps, but not better quality. Same for cables, which I typically got at Walmart or other discounter. In the future, I think I’ll try the recommendation of Don Lindich of SoundAdviceBlog. He says to go to MonoPrice.com, which has quality cables dirt cheap.

Anybody disagree and think expensive cables, usually Monster brand cables in the big-box electronics stores, are worthwhile?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm and is filed under FITness, Telecommunications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Pricey A/V cables a waste of money”

jim on January 16th, 2008 at 4:27 am

I’m a huge fan of Monoprice.com, I think using expensive cables from the likes of Monster doesn’t guarantee quality. This is especially true when you start talking about digital signals because it either works it or it doesn’t. Analog signals have degredation but not so with digital, a 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0.