like none?

Honestly, I don't know why people bother to prop up the rating of this trash by giving it an average or above average mark. Is it because monster or its distributors feel compelled to salvage whatever reputation they have on this piece of disappointment? Trust me they suck. Threw them away on the 2nd month after I used them to tie-up stuff in my system :-) just kidding but they do stunk

none

like everything

I honestly don't know why people even bother to prop up the rating of this trash by giving it an average or above average mark. Is it because monster or its distributors feel compelled to salvage whatever reputation they have for this piece of disappointment? Trust me they suck. Threw them away on the 3rd month.

look nice, are a step above patch cables (small step, but still there)

nothing really, remember they are $10, don't complain

Back when i first got into the hobby i went into Best Buy, and saw a $10 Monster Cable, i bought it, i figured, hey, what could i loose? well, after my whole system has now been upgraded, it comes back to the cables (which i just won a auction on eBay for new Monster Cable interlink 400 MKII) I use the 100 to go from my cdp, and i bought some Radio Shack Gold Series cables to go from tuner (like the FM sounds great to begin with) well, i can't say much for the 100 over patch cords, i noticed alittle better highs, but thats about it, i think i also bought it, just to say i have brand name IC's, (well, thats not the case this time with the new 400) IMO the Radio Shack Gold Seires are $2-$3 cheaper (yippie) and "look" better, if your just going for looks, get those, i have nothing good, or bad to say about the 100, it does its job, gold-plated, and sheilding, and for $10 i am not about to say its cheap, because that would be cheap of me!!! heres my rig (i am a vintage freak) amp= Sony TA-2650 (soon to be Kenwood KR-8010) tuner= Sony ST-3950 cdp= Nakamichi CD Player2 Limited speakers= JBL L100a

Similar Products Used:

Radio Shack Gold Series

Easily available

Lousy

I don't get it. Why do people buy this? Why did I buy it? Because I needed an Interconnect, and that's all the store had. In short, this stuff sucks. It sounds the same as cheap interconnects, but isn't cheap. I've used many other interconnects with good results.

Similar Products Used:

Many

price, appearance

practically everything

Its been a while since I visited this site and I just couldn't help but notice one of the reviews below. I completely agree with the notion that one should not expect a "fillet mignon" if one pays for a cheeseburger, but one should at least expect.... well, a cheeseburger(!), and nothing less. The fact that a less-than-a-dollar cable is able to outperform a higher priced product should be obvious to everybody that this is a poorly designed and/or manufactured product. Simply because one can still find some use for this hardware also doesn't mean that people should buy them. True, people like us are "too cheap" to buy more expensive equipment partly because we could not justify paying for something that is supposed to be worth at less than a tenth of its retail price. Moreover, I believe we could discern the difference between a value-for-money product and virtual scam. Just because a manufacturer retails a product so cheaply doesn't mean it is licensed to rip people off. Nor that simply because something is so cheap means that it should not be compared to other similar products.

But curiously, it is people like us that justifies the existence of shops like radio shack. Or hamburger outlets in every other corner instead of steak restaurants. The point is we are a market segment which have specific demands (ie. low price) but which nonetheless have performance requirements. I am not quite certain though if there really is another market segment that doesn't mind paying the price of a "fillet mignon" steak for a beef jerky. Well, we do!! :-)

Durability and Price

Made for those people who are too cheap to buy what they should.

Ok here is the deal with the $10 monster product, I use it to connect my equipment in my kids room. I hook the rest of my equipment up with the better monster. It cracks me up that some people spend $10 and think that it should sound like they spent $100. These same people probably buy a cheeseburger and get mad because it doesn't taste like filet mingon!

price and appearance

poor sound quality, sound resolution and detail becomes muddled

I was in search for an inexpensive audio interconnects that would at least sound better than the ordinary cables that you buy from hardwares or your regular general electronic stores. The products I came across were quite expensive (Van den Huls, Ixos,etc.). Needless to mention, I had my first "introduction" to the Interlink 100 Monster Interconnect Cable as it stood out (price-wise, that is) from the rest. Presentation is not as flashy as the rest but one can gleam the "seeming" good build of the product from the transparent packaging. This one retails for about $12.50 (converted) and I figured that from the way it looks, it couldn't be worse than your regular less-than-$1.00 run-of-the-mill cable. In fact, I read somewhere in Whathifi? magazine that one of the worse things that you can do is to use the cables that come with your equipment box. Well, in the case of this particular product, I would have to argue that they are wrong! (note: I have to emphasize, for this particular product). When I tried this interconnect, the resolution was conspicously affected, specifically the sound resolution and detail became distorted and muddled. To confirm its shortcomings, I tried the ordinary cable again and much to my surprise, the music was better sounding and one could discern more detail and resolution than what I would get from this product. Sad fact is, most local stores would not allow you to open the cables from the packaging to try them out first and there is no such thing as returning the goods if one is dissatisfied (real caveat emptor situation - ergo, you're stuck with them). The next day I bought a Puresonic 5050, but this time I would say I didn't make any mistake. I'm pretty satisfied with the performance of my Puresonic which is about a little less than twice the price of the "Monster". Nonetheless I'm real sorry for the money I wasted on the Interlink 100 cable. Apparently, I will not recommend them to anybody and have in fact advised a few friends to try other better value-for-money cables - like the less-than-$1.00 interconnects from the hardware store?
If I could give this product a meteor rather than a star, I would.

Similar Products Used:

Puresonic 5050

price, doesn't seem to damage the sound and music in any significant way

compressed soundstage, does not convey fine detail

This review is for the most basic Monster Cable Interlink 100 interconnect. This cable is terrific for the price. It is a massive upgrade over patch cords, and I have no reservations about recommending it for mid-fi home theatre usage.

For HT, it is fairly balanced and retains a satisfactory amount of bass information and detail. If your HT speakers are set up properly, you don't need to worry about the compressed soundstage.

For music, the soundstage is compressed and details that you can hear with better cable are not present. They sound neither warm nor cool. Even still, these cables are sufficiently musical for non-critical listening. Bass, if your equipment is capable, sounds rich and powerful; mids and highs are inoffensive though nothing to write home about.

An excellent value if your still using patch cords and are skeptical that cables matter (they do), look elsewhere for an audiophile experience.

Sonus Faber Concertino speakers
Velodyne VA-1012 II subwoofer
NAD T750 receiver
Cambridge Audio D500SE CD Player

Similar Products Used:

Straightwire Chorus, Homegrown Audio Super Silver II

none

everything

Monster, Inc. should be ashamed for foisting such an inferior product on their customers. I had been using a cheep $10 (well, at least they were gold-plated!!) RCA A/V cable to connect my DVD player to my receiver, with the 75ohm coax portion serving as the digital audio link and the RCA portion as an analog connection. The DAC in my Toshiba DVD player is slightly better for CD music-only reproduction, and it includes an HDCD decoder. I thought I was upgrading....WRONG! The bass just about disappeared, stereo imaging went south, and the overall sound gave the impression that I was using hardware from Yorx or Radio Shack. Switched back to the RCA cables, and all was well again. The other cables higher up in the Monster food chain are better, but for the money I would go with AR cables; they are half the price of Monster's mid-level products, and perform better. If I were to be in the market for higher-end cables I would still avoid Monster, and go with IXOS, or something similar. Unfortunately, the Monster marketing machine has completely infiltrated local retail stores, and that's pretty much all you'll find in the brick-and-mortar chains. The inflated prices probably serve as kickback money to the retailers, so they will continue to sell Monster's crap. A sales droid at Circuit City (a Monster-only retailer) tried to convince me that Monster's $60 Toslink cable was better than the $10 coax cable I was using, and that I would "immediately hear the difference". Yah, right. I attempted to explain the physics behind digital signal transmission (a bit is a bit is a bit; it's either a 1 or a 0), but he continued to babble... I've tried both optical and coaxial i/o on my system, and I've found that the coax setup sounds better; possibly due to the fact that the digital signal does not need to be re-converted to light pulses before being transmitted. I suppose that there can be some timing issues with the conversion, and that could explain the slight difference in imaging and soundstage depth that I noticed. Tonality didn't change much, however a slight reduction in bass did occur with the Toslink. This could be explained by several factors, including the aforementioned degradation in imaging which can muddy up the bass, or differences in output level or input sensitivity. I still say a bit is a bit is a bit... But I digress. The Monster 100 is a poor excuse for an analog interconnect, and you would be better served by a piece of string. A high-definition polypropylene string with proprietary braided shielding and an ultra-density 100% polyethylene-wrapped nylon center conductor mated to machined structural resin split-pin RCA plugs coated with a full 3-mils of PTFE for easy insertion and removal, of course!

Hey, Monster, wanna hire me to write your ad copy? :)

Similar Products Used:

AR Pro series, "RCA" branded A/V cable