Gave in and bought those fancy monster cables for my home setup. $120 mistake.

I finally caved and bought those overpriced gold-plated XLR cables from that booth at the gear expo in San Salvador last month. Spent $120 on three of them thinking they'd make my mixes magically cleaner. Turns out the $20 Monoprice ones I replaced sound exactly the same when I did a blind test with my buddy. Anyone else fall for the 'premium cable' trap or am I the only sucker here?

2 comments

2 Comments

blair_allen2d agoMost Upvoted

So you kept the cheap ones after the test or what?

the_uma2d ago

Wait aren't gold plated XLR cables kinda overkill for a home setup anyway? Like the whole point of balanced audio is that the connectors don't really matter as long as they make good contact. I fell for a similar thing with speaker cables back in 2019, spent like $80 on some brand that claimed to have "cryogenically treated" copper. Did the same blind test with my roommate and we couldn't hear a difference at all. Actually returned them and got the same basic ones from the hardware store for like $15. The placebo effect is real strong with this stuff man.