I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... About 15 yeard ago, I knew a guy who exclusively bought Monster... well he had two of them, one from the guitar to the pedal board and another from the board to the amp.
But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty. Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.
From what I can tell they got rid of the lifetime warranty around 2018 and have mostly transitioned to licensing their name.
We used them at a student union for a similar reason - lots of students thinking they're a rock star swinging mics around and stuff meant we ended up with a lot of damage. Though IMHO the monster cables didn't actually take the damage any better than real "professional-tier" brands, that "no questions" replacement policy was used heavily by us.
> Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.
Every time I've had a cable fail it was at one of the solder joints on the connector. Stripping it down and re-soldering takes a few minutes, sure, but it saves you from having to drive to a music shop or pay for shipping. For this reason I try to only buy cables that are built to let you do this instead of ones with closed, molded ends.
Back before monoprice was bought by a Chinese company, I had one of their HDMI cables, and yeah - the connector just slipped right off. Buncha thin gold wires sticking out.
I contacted them. They asked for a photo, which I was able to text them directly from my phone (very advanced for 2009). He looked at it, said it was their fault, and to toss it. Another was shipped to me.
I have a Logitech mouse that’s double clicking. One of the 10 (!!!) steps I was supposed to do before they’d accept that it’s broken was to go to a website and click 100 (!!!!!) times.
I sincerely miss the companies that were totally dedicated to customer service.
I have this problem with my Logitech mice too. They work great for two or three years, and then they start registering about one in every 50 clicks or so as double clicks, with the frequency slowly increasing to maybe 1 in 10.
That might just be dust gathering or humidity/temperature weathering. I've fixed most degraded mice by cleaning them, and there's different sprays/lubes you can get that will not only help the hardware but the electrical responsiveness and accuracy.
That and the infinite-scroll wheel bearing fails. I’ve probably gone through 5-10 g502 mice in the past decade. I usually buy them 2-3 at a time when they are on sale.
As an IT professional; It's not even worth my time to substantiate those claims. The user gets a new mouse and I record it as a ticket. I've never had to "cut anyone off" from issuing new equipment, but if there's ever a problematic user I'll have a record of their equipment issues on file.
I hove some Monster cables around, and I bought them knowing that their claims are bogus, but the things are built like a tank.
None of them have broken or developed faulty connections over the years, and that's worth it the price difference in my opinion. In my case, for a couple of them, the price difference was nil, because the store was selling them at a 50% discount to just get them out of their premises.
I definitely got upsold on a Monster cable when I bought my first guitar on the back of that lifetime warranty. Joke's on me, I guess; the cable is almost 20 years old and still working, never had to use the warranty even once. I need to take worse care of my things.
Guitar cable?, ya...noooo
cordless my droogys
prolly cheaper too
did a custom stealth mod to one guitar where the transmitter, plugs into 1/4 jack,under the back cover
nice thing is that its possible to turn an amp up to face peeling loudness, and step back, and not get hurt, got to watch for things vibrating off of shelves though
and are you kidding me?, I know that as a guitarer
there are cumulative cognitive effects, but when a fucking speaker cable outfit starts suing people, something has definitly gone off the rails
but oh ya, there are people in jail for "cheating" on video games, but somehow there are government weed stores
tone is in the hands
I prefer a cable in my active bass, because it's one less set of batteries to think about, and that guy has a pretty hot output. Analog distortion is way better than the sounds you get when you saturate a digital signal path, heh.
I've had a 20' monster cable for at least 15 years now that is showing no signs of slowing down, even after a period of regular practice/shows. If only I was actually able to cash in on the warranty! Other cables from reputable brands haven't lasted this long in less demanding conditions.
A few of my friends did the same. They could easily run to Guitar Center and swap broken cables before a gig. That could easily be worth the added cost.
This is why pro gear doesnt come with a replacement warranty. The seconds/minutes spent finding and swapping a cable during a live show far exceeds any concept of replacement costs. Multiply any failure rate by the hundreds or even thousands of cables at a modern concert and any failure rate is unacceptable. If you care, buy good parts and build the cables yourself by hand. That is the only way to be sure it was done right.
> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables...
Basically, someone asked themselves "how do I port the audiophile scam to the home entertainment space?" And monster cables was born.
When Monster first came out it became a meme.
Their advertisement was laughable and remember joking with tech savvy friends about how all wire was vastly inferior to the alien technology monster used in their oxygen free high purity copper that "allows more music to flow" (actual quote from their shitty packaging.) They sold cables for everything AV and then invaded the musician space with their trash.
Overly aggressive salesmen in electronics stores would push them on every sale. It was tiring. Buying a little TV for the kitchen? "Dont forget the monster HDMI cable and monster coax cable to hook up the cable box! oh and the monster surge strip that purifies the electron essence before the harmonic protuberances make it into your music!" Sure thing chief, lemme spend a hundred bucks on five bucks worth of cable. No wonder they turned into a meme and a lot of people hated them. But there's always a sucker who loves showing off his $80 cables to another sucker.
If you travel back im time you’ll find audio connectors corroded. It was standard practice to use an eraser to polish the jacks. Monster offered gold plated connectors. It really made difference. Any benefits beyond non corrosive is questionable.
Back in the day, Radio Shack offered gold plated connectors on their cables, too (IIRC, there was "Archer" and "Archer Gold"). To this day I always get a little prickly at people who sneer at audiophile cables and specifically rag on gold-plated connectors rather than, I don't know, oxygen-free silver cables or whatever. The gold plating was actually a real valuable thing, and the cables could still actually be pretty cheap (e.g., Radio Shack!).
I actually did have Monster-brand speaker cable many years ago, but it was the original version with no connectors, just a bare spool. I don't remember it being much more expensive than any other 12-gauge speaker wire at the time, and it was both more flexible than some other brands and prettier when exposed -- which is arguably a selling point. I still have a segment of that original cable, actually, and use it for my center channel. Somewhat amusingly given the actual linked article, the rest of the cable I have is from Blue Jeans.
I still have a radio shack 3.5mm cable with gold connectors that my dad and I bought when I was 5. Still works great. One of my favorite cables. Has a lovely soft touch rubber insulation, which has survived all these years
My town has a radio shack still, and I visit them as much as I can, but I have yet to find a cable that nice
The sad part is that, once upon a time, those crazy claims mattered. There were once good and bad cables. But over the last centry all the best practices were universally adopted (twisted pairs, shielding, consistent conductors made of soft copper). Monster now sounds like a car company shouting about seatbelts and crumple zones, things we now just expect but were once important to look for when selecting cable.
Given Monster some credit for at least being a brand. Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search. It will be out of business before your delivery arrives.
>Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search
Well it's not fun because most of them have very painless warranty claims - hammer the product with a 1 star review and applie for replacement, most will just give you full refund, no / barely any questions asked. Anything to keep their top Amazon search positions and reviews. I remember when Amazon was slammed with MPOW bluetooth products, I had minor hinge issue after almost a year on a set of cans and they just shipped me a new one, didn't even need photo evidence of destruction of old device. That's been my experience with multipe "Chinesium" products on Amazon, and essentially why Amazon > Aliexpress for the RMA premium. Buy from a top ranked product where seller doesn't want to compromise position with bad reviews, pay a few bucks extra on Amazon, get faster shipping and no question asked exchanges/refunds because seller already have it built into margins.
> Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search.
I remember seeing someone else raging about how a Chinese company on Amazon had no accountability because the business address field was filled with unintelligible gibberish and there was no way to find the company.
So I looked it up. Not only was it very easy to find the address, it was obviously the address of the owner's personal home. So even if the company did go out of business, odds are good you could make contact and ask for redress.
Yeah, back when I first started playing bass (which would have been around 2008, interestingly enough) I used their cables for a bit because of the unlimited replacements. As a young teen without any income, it honestly was a pretty decent deal; in retrospect, the cables certainly weren't high quality and probably developed issues far more easily than a higher quality cable, but I could also go into any guitar store that sold those cables and then trade them in for fresh ones, no questions asked. It wasn't like I really had that many gigs, so being guaranteed not to ever have to buy new cables was easily worth it even if it meant that I would have to go back to the store any time they failed. Eventually I got old enough that I had more disposable income and would play a bit more often to the point where it would be more inconvenient to have to get a replacement on short notice, so I moved on to buying higher quality ones, but I don't really see the experience I got as a scam. Maybe the were marketed to the point where people who really weren't getting the benefits from their model were still buying them when they would be better served by a different company's cables, but I feel like the model they were trying to do did at least make sense for me at the time, and I think that it's worth making a distinction between "trying to exploit naive customers by selling something no one needs" and "trying to market beyond the actual customer base that is served well by the business model", mostly because I feel like the latter is a spectrum that quite a lot of companies fall on to some degree, and it's not as clear to me where exactly the line should be drawn for how "acceptable" this is. (I'd be fine with literally any instance of this being called out and shamed, but realistically I think this is looked past by most people so much of the time that it's not accurate to claim anyone is actually doing it)
They proved a serious vulnerability to the entire site without causing irreputable damage.
Phreak on.
(and not very important but to be pedantic, I don't know if hn has an sql backend? It used to be all in-memory if I recall, but that was many years ago)
> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables..
Overpriced because you are envious of their marketing or pricing strategy? They were appropriately priced as long as the marketing wasn't more deceptive than products are generally (and noting it's not a food product or medical claim).
> But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty.
Isn't that (along with branding) a valid reason to price a product at a certain level?
Anyone can make a top quality cable in 10 minutes: buy 2 Neutrik connectors, buy as many Cordial cable as you need, four solderings and you have a top guitar cable for life, for maybe 1/4 of the price of a similar Monster.
Don't like to solder? Cordial has also cables with Neutrik connectors ready to use, for half the price of a Monster.
The lifetime warranty clearly was valuable to many people here.
The problem though, is the _misleading_ marketing around "better sound" and similar that is false and does not justify charging more to basic home consumers who don't know any better.
In particular, I'd recommend looking at the full response. While the original article covers the plain-language juicy-sounding excerpts, the full letter to Monster also contains some artful legalese that even I as layman can appreciate:
It starts with several pages worth of requests for information. I'm pretty sure those aren't actually requests for information - they're a threat. If Monster were to actually sue, he'd be entitled to these documents as part of discovery, so he's essentially saying "if you sue me, you'll spend a lot of money on discovery (and be forced to reveal stuff you'd rather not)".
Sprinkled in are some suggestions of ethics violations on the side of Monster's lawyers, a hint at Monster's likely corporate tax evasion scheme (and the requirement to produce the material that proves the tax evasion in discovery), and the threat to break their racket in the last paragraph that kopirgan already pointed out.
All this is even more impressive than the quoted part, and sadly omitted in the original blog post.
For anybody who’s wondering what happened next, this is from the above link:
“Monster's counsel had made a horrible mistake, and probably caused lasting harm to the company, by sending me that ridiculous letter. But he, and Monster, did apparently know the first rule of holes: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." The end, therefore, of the story was a bit anticlimactic. Knowing that I was able to defend myself and knowing that they'd probably be sanctioned for frivolous conduct if they sued me, Monster fell silent. Not a peep was heard again.”
Hadn't seen this before. What a nicely written letter. Explained why they have to do this, outlined a reasonable action step, and even offer to help said action. Moreover, it didn't contain a single threat.
I wish all companies took such an approach. You catch more flies with honey, and all that.
I used to be the webmaster for my parent's HOA[0], and I bought their .com domain name when it became available (a realtor had owned it originally). They eventually hired a firm to run the site, and I pointed the domain at their nameservers, and forgot about it (paying the ~$20/year in renewals, because that's not a lot of money & I have fond memories of living there).
15 years later, I get a registered letter from a law firm – counsel to the HOA – claiming that I was violating their trademark by owning the domain name, demanding that I turn it over to the HOA, etc.
If an actual human had reached out to me, I would have happily transferred the domain. Instead, they paid a lawyer to be a dick about it – so I ignored the letter, they registered the .net, and everyone moved on.
I still keep the domain up, and redirect it to their new URL, because as long as the .com domain works, people will be using it. Which means they will still want it, and I'm not giving it to them. At least not until they ask nicely, and catch me with honey instead of vinegar.
[0]Despite this incident, their HOA is normally perfectly reasonable. It's a few hundred dollars per year to keep up with road repairs, signage, community facilities upkeep, etc.
I totally understand that, but theirs is genuinely not an HOAzilla – they just took a stupid approach to this particular problem. It's honestly the prototypical example of how to run an HOA – low fees (no outside management), providing community features (pool, tennis courts, paved private roads, etc.) basically at-cost, and even hiring folks from the community to help out (teens as lifeguards, retired folks as maintenance, etc.).
Also, my parents still live there, so I didn't want to start any more drama. In fact, they sold their previous home and built a new place in the same community, while it would have been far cheaper to build outside the HOA.
All this to say that, while the internet is full of genuine examples of nightmare HOAs, my parents' HOA is normally run by a few retired folks who mind their own business.
You honestly should have searched to see if they had a trademark. Unlike copyright, trademarks have to exist. I suspect you were probably played. They appeared nice, sure, but they don't appear nice to me. If it were me, I'd have' pointed the domain at a certain picture involving ladies and cups. I've dealt with bullies myself, even in the legal system (IANAL, but do run a few successful small time ventures), and it always blow my mind what people will say.
I recently had a guy from India that claimed I had a security vulnerability, and that I owe him a bounty. I have no bounty and the vulnerability did not exist (I suspect he misunderstood the issue completely...the issue was not an issue at all, it was as designed). When I didn't respond he followed up multiple times, and threatened to sue (I am in the U.S.) He finally gave up. The issue he was referring to was his misunderstanding of modern email standards. It wasn't an actual issue, nor did I ever offer any type of bounty of actual security stuff (I would, but most of my stuff is OOTB, if someone did come to me with an actual issue I'd definitely give them something)
If plaintiffs had to pay the fees for defense prior to settlement or judgement, most of this would disappear. Sadly, nobody has the balls to implement that.
If I cared about HN karma, I'd just post "why not Rust?" on every Go post, and "why not Go?" on every Rust post.
> why wouldn't you just tell the lawyer this or contact the current webmaster
Because the lawyer was trying to scare me with nonsensical legal threats. I'm not interested in helping people who threaten me with legal action.
> your retelling just seems really petty.
It was supposed to – I was replying to someone who wrote, "I wish all companies took such an approach. You catch more flies with honey" – they tried to "catch" me with vinegar, and I don't have a taste for it.
Relatedly, Jack Daniel’s recently won a unanimous Supreme Court decision affirming their right to pursue trademark claims against a dog toy manufacturer.
The toy company claimed their products were parodies, which have heightened protection from such claims, but the Court didn’t buy it.
Weird, when I looked it was showing it as the kindle edition and I could have clicked buy on it. Looking now, if you hit other editions it'll show you the paperback with the old cover but if you click through the editions, eventually it'll only show you the new one for all of them.
This reminds me of the spat between Tekton Design speakers and a Youtube reviewer.
Tekton received such massive and negative feedback, he tried to backpedal the initial threat. But still, the gall. They suffered reputationally not from the [mildly] negative review, but from the fallout from the ill-advised threat of lawsuit.
> My overarching sense is that this whole saga has been largely Mr. Alexander’s fault and it could have been easily avoided.
> Alexander has dropped the Mother Of All Bombs on this situation, displaying disrespect towards the reviewing industry, and regarding reviewers as trivial annoyances that can be easily brushed aside. The outcome of this saga and who will ultimately withstand the fallout remains to be seen, but Mr. Alexander almost certainly looks like an ass at this moment in time, and in my opinion, any negative assessment he receives is largely self-inflicted.
>There’s no doubt in my mind that Eric Alexander of Tekton Design is largely in the right, and in principle, challenging these reviewers was mostly justified.
The next sentence is revealing though:
>The problem, and the reason we’re here now dwelling on it, is how he went about it.
I'm not sure if I understand the first of the quotes, honestly, given the rest of the content. But that seems to be what GP was referencing.
I remember seeing his posts on ASR. Some really fun stuff like how the air coming out of the screw holes for the feet would produce a supersonic boom; in a ported enclosure. Wildly entertaining.
Maybe writing that letter was a bad idea in the first place?
It was good for Blue Jeans and for Monster, as they both avoided expensive litigation, but from a more general perspective, it would have been better if Monster thought Blue Jeans was an easy victim, sued and got its comeuppance.
Is there any way to file a (real) countersuit against someone, just to punish them for having wasted your time and energy with a threat of legal action that never materialized?
The term to search for this is barratry and there are laws against it in some jurisdictions.
Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.
I guess that does address my concrete question as given.
But I think I was less imagining a countersuit that literally just "seeks damages for wasted time and effort"... and more imagining a countersuit that can somehow "rope in" the claims in the original suit, so as to force those claims to be evaluated and case law to be created upon that evaluation — whether the original claimant likes it or not.
Imagine, by analogy, outside the domain of IP law:
1. Party A threatens to sue party B for having violated the terms of some contract they have.
2. Party A then drops this threat.
3. Party B then sues party A with the intent of having a judge still evaluate that same question, but now in the other direction: "would party A have had legal standing to sue party B?" — where in the case that party B wins that judgement, this would not only award damages to party B, but also have the same case-law impact as if party A had really sued party B, and lost.
> As for your requests for information, or for action, directed to me: I
> would remind you that it is you, not I, who are making claims; and it
> is you, not I, who must substantiate those claims. You have not done so.
Which party would bear the burden of proof in step 3? Does it get reversed or stay as if the step 1 threat went to court?
So you basically want to give effect to any claim that isn't brought to court of being brought to Court? How does that make anything better? It's going to mean more lawsuits, a waste of judicial resources, and probably moot cases if it's not even adversarial. I understand this is a layman's perspective but it seems incredibly foresighted. You seem to be of the belief that it's never the case that parties, after investigations, etc, reasonably decide not to sue, and that they didn't prior have a reasonable basis for asserting their claims outside of a lawsuit? That's just naive.
This is wonderful. It’s also true! Even when I was running a very small business and not particularly bothered by what people were doing that could be argued as resembling trademark infringement, I was urged to be vigilant about it because if you don’t defend your trademark, you risk losing it. That’s how the law works!
If that really is the reason you’re threatening action against someone, they may just understand if you’re nice about it!
That said, while it may foster more goodwill towards your company, it probably isn’t as surefire a way to generate the swift response you want as being a dick and making the threats
"There have been numerous times, since my exit from the practice of law and entry into the cable business, when I've been glad that I have a legal background, and this certainly was one of those; it meant that the inevitable surge in adrenalin manifested itself through careful legal review rather than through the intended panic."
Blue Jeans Cables was what I switched to towards the end of my serious audiophile days. Before that, I was set up with StraightWire mostly, but I respected Kimber Kables, though I never ended up getting any of their goods.
Now tonearm cables are a whole different animal, and my pair was a mid-priced custom set though one of the high-end dealers — all substance, no flash => aka, not paying for an advertising budget & fancy packaging.
But in the end did monster actually face any penalty at all? They threatened the guy, the guy said no, end of story. The bully moves on to threaten the next guy. The story insinuates lasting damage but it seems kind of subtle...
Most importantly, it was also popularly published. So the critical but tricky to measure metrics now are "how much sales do we loose because we are now firmly labeled as a bully in peoples minds" and "how much potential licensing revenue have we lost because people know they don't need to fold immediately"
It is hard do say, though, because the market for Monster cables is pretty clearly people who came in off the street, read nothing, and picked the fanciest looking cable. By their nature they are immune to bad press, right?
Lol it is not subtle at all - it basically says you will get pennies if you take us on and win, but if we win, you get screwed big time incl damages for anti-trust.
Guess BJC was content with letting them just go away...but once this was generally known, it does reduce the value of those threats.
Or you could screw up so monumentally that the “case” (it was never actually brought) becomes an actual meme. I give you the case of Arkell vs Pressdram [1]. I have actually seen a response to a business threat which ended with “I refer you to the response in the case of Arkell vs Pressdram”…
Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look better via a more expensive cable.
When wiring up my projector, I needed a 10 or 20 meter HDMI cable. The first one I got produced a snowy image on the screen — it wasn't like analogue static, but it was definitely a poor quality image. I replaced that cable with a more expensive one and the image looked correct. It surprised me that there would be a difference in HDMI cables, because I thought exactly the same way — a digital signal is a digital signal
This is what happens with a damaged or underspecced cable.
The HDMI standard doesn't have a way of telling you that you really need an HDMI 2.2 cable and you actually have an HDMI 1.x cable. It just tries to send the signal, and if the analogue bandwidth of the cable is insufficient, then the error correction will be insufficient and you'll get no signal or snow and blocks.
This is somewhat of a good thing, since many short HDMI 1.x cables will work for standards that require HDMI 2.x.
That's not really what digital implies, but you figured out the important part: When digital signals fail, they do so in a very obvious fashion. A worse cable won’t give you “less saturated blacks” or something else that's subtle, it will give you random bit errors that manifest as snow. If the picture isn't obviously bad, then it is as good as any cable will give you.
This isn’t even true with other common ‘digital’ cables.
Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them.
“All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.
RJ45 is a wiring pin-out standard for that plug [1]. It's also a standard for telephony, not networking -- it carries one phone line. A gross waste of pins if you ask me.
[1] Not quite. An RJ45S plug has a tab on the side that will not insert into an 8P8C jack.
Well, there is now some truth to it. For example, low quality HDMI cable will may be only good enough for low bandwidth, that would limit refresh rate, and/or color fidelity (e.g. chroma subsampling) and/or resolution.
So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better.
I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more expensive cable cable can yield better quality. Or should I say — crappy cable can result in quality degradation
> So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better.
Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests.
Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter.
Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors.
I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecate all older HDMI standards, so that companies like Monster couldn't advertise that their cables provide "better color, higher resolution, better sound", etc. All the cables in the store would be 8k HDMI 2.2 cables, or they wouldn't be allowed to use the HDMI trademark.
Besides interference and lying about specs, cables can be designed for durability or not.
I buy cheap cables from China. They generally work-to-spec out of the...plastic bag, but may not handle frequent plug/unplug cycles or any sort of rough treatment.
You're making me wonder about nuance. Since those ports are exclusively called HDMI, I wonder if you could call your unlicensed cable "HDMI compatible."
If your TV only supports 4k@60 HDMI 2, no need to go buy more expensive cables with specs you can't use. And even then, unless you're playing time-sensitive games, 4k@60 is probably all you need anyway.
Speaking of high quality "Monstrous Cables" and draconian legal remedies: there's K. W. Jeter's Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables:
DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10
I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie.
The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the integrity and title of his original book DADOES by re-issuing it with a reference to the (quite different) movie on the cover, instead of rewriting another book called "Blade Runner" based on the movie based on his own book. (Harrumph!) He would have made a lot more money by selling out that way, but he steadfastly refused to do it.
However, fortunately for us, after his death, his friend and fellow SF writer K. W. Jeter (who also wrote an excellent cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder which Dick loved) sold out on his behalf and wrote those three books based on the movie (which referenced famous lines like "Wake up. Time to die!").
They explore the question of what the fuck happened after they went flying off into the wilderness (that unused footage from The Shining), and whether Decker was a replicant. (Who would have guessed??!)
So even though they're not written by PKD, or directly based on his original all time great book, and not as authentic and mentally twisted as a real PKD book, they are still pretty excellent and twisted in their own right, and well worth reading. They're based on an excellent movie based on an epic book, and written by a friend and author PKD respected, who's written some other excellent books.
And while you're at it, check out Dr. Adder and K. W. Jeter's other books too! Especially Noire, for its hi-fi cables made out of the still-living spinal columns of copyright violators. (I suggest you buy a copy and don't pirate it!)
Jeter's most significant sf may lie in the thematic trilogy comprising Dr Adder (1984) – his first novel (written 1972), long left unpublished because of its sometimes turgid violence – The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987); Alligator Alley (1989) as by Dr Adder with Mink Mole (see Ferret) is a distant outrider to the sequence. Philip K Dick had read Dr Adder in manuscript and for years advocated it; and it is clear why. Though the novel clearly prefigures the under-soil airlessness of the best urban Cyberpunk, it even more clearly serves as a bridge between the defiant reality-testing Paranoia of Dick's characters and the doomed realpolitiking of the surrendered souls who dwell in post-1984 urban sprawls (see Cities). In each of these convoluted tales, set in a devastated Somme-like Near-Future America, Jeter's characters seem to vacillate between the sf traditions of resistance and cyberpunk quietism. In worlds like these, the intermittent flashes of sf imagery or content are unlasting consolations.
[...]
Much of his later work has consisted of Sharecrop contributions to various proprietorial worlds, including Alien Nation, Star Trek, Star Wars [for titles see Checklist]; of some interest in this output are his Ties – they are also in a sense Sequels by Another Hand – to the film Blade Runner (1982), comprising Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996) and Blade Runner 4: Eye & Talon (2000), and making use of some original Philip K Dick material. The sense of ebbing enthusiasm generated by these various Ties is not markedly altered by Jeter's most recent singleton, Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables; the irreality of this concept, and the bad-joke names that proliferate throughout, are somewhat stiffened up by the constant interactive presence of the already dead, a Philip K Dick effect, as filtered through Jeter's own intensely florid sensibility. [JC]
I may as well go off topic from cables (but at least on topic to the post) and mention the excellent Blade Runner video game, which had a compatibility re-release and is currently on sale for a couple bucks.
I still see commenters claiming that better cables yield better digital images even after you made this statement. Digital signals usually have some sort of error correction and it’s an all or nothing deal with digital.
It’s technically not an all or nothing deal with hdmi/dvi. That is to say that bit errors do indeed manifest as image artifacts, though normally imperceptible. I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio, so they naturally assume that video would be the same. But that is not quite true. For one thing there weren’t cheap chips that could do that at gbps data rates when DVI standard was first created. It was not until DisplayPort 1.4 that they added optional FEC. This is required because a bit error in a compressed stream would manifest as an entire macroblock busting, which affects potentially a large pixel area and multiple frames.
All that being said it’s unusual to find a cable that is both clean enough to do the handshake and keep sync but noisy enough to give you visible snow. So it’s still quite true that practically speaking, yes, it’s usually an all or nothing deal. Cable quality can and does matter though. I was a BlueJeans customer for a long time before the brief Monster spat, but it endeared them to me, and I still try to buy from them when I need to buy a cable I need to be absolutely sure of.
> I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio
The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?
Error detection is present in S/PDIF PCM (including when transported on hdmi) and is also an inherent byproduct of most audio codecs when a digital bitstream is being used, which is normally the case today.
FEC and other types of error correction or recovery is ubiquitous in wireless audio and communications applications including phone calls, Bluetooth, VoIP, wireless microphones, and digital radio. Responsibility for the error correction is sometimes part of the underlying transport mechanism and sometimes incorporated directly into the codec. Encryption & privacy requirements for audio also mean that we solved these problems long ago. IIRC that the WWII SIGSALY encrypted telephone between the US and UK required and implemented error correction.
I guess being too close to the DAW-space, I tend not to think about codecs. Digital audio to me is conceptually "pure" PCM (or DSD), and most things that deals with that format do not do error correction that I can think of. S/PDIF is good counter-example, and possibly (for similar reasons) ADAT might be as well.
By contrast, most audio-over-IP formats do not (they rely on the IP-level checks).
Anyway, thanks for pointing out the rather important world filled with codecs that we actually live in.
In your DAW world, AES/EBU transport parity bit corrects most single bit errors as well. It’s a testament to the comprehensive handling of the issue that you as a professional do not need to do much thinking about the problem. Point is still that audio bit errors are historically accounted for due to the obvious consequences of a discontinuity. This persists, often with layers of redundancy, despite that they rarely occur. Video bit errors, not so much
That's not been my experience with hdmi or dvi. Bad cables or bad connections can result in artifacts in the display. Sometimes bad cables can result in difficulty negotiating but a good result if negotiate succeeds. Bad cables can result in frequent dropouts as the signal quality varies around the threshold.
Differences in cable construction may lead to more or less longevity in difficult environments: frequent connection cycles, movement in the cable, heat/humidity/other environmental stuff, tight bends, etc.
Certainly, once you reliably meet the threshold SNR for accurate reception, a better cable doesn't help much.
Does that need oxygen free, cold extruded in zero-g cables? No. But a well made cable is likely to last longer in challenging environments.
So I clicked the first link to read about the actual claim, and I was floored by the author bio at the bottom: "Clint Deboer was terminated from Audioholics for misconduct on April 4th, 2014. He no longer represents Audioholics in any fashion."
Gotta wonder how bad you gotta screw up to have your byline on every article you wrote permanently set to that.
It's really hard to tell without more detail! I tried doing a bit of digging, but he was a really early staffer to join Audioholics, and was editor-in-chief when he was fired. He's editor-in-chief of another site now, which it looks like he founded. You probably have to do something pretty bad to get publicly fired for cause when you were the editor-in-chief, and him having a new site he made himself isn't exactly an assurance of innocence either. Just... kinda a wild random footnote on a link on an article from over a decade ago.
I think the answer is that he set up another site called Audiogurus that was advertising itself as being "Audioholics store". This didn't go over well. Here's an article about that hints at it: https://www.audioholics.com/news/audioholics-e-store-name-ch...
From a bunch of digging it appears that, perhaps, Clint set up/joined some sites that were similar enough to his employers, without telling them, and when they found out they took that as him trying to siphon users off of their site, and fired him.
If this is true, whether that was wrong of Clint to do or not would depend on his contract.
In my head canon Monster Cables pivoted to become Monster Energy and justified it to shareholders as 'we're still in the business of getting people wired'
It was this story that clued me into BJC as an entity in the first place. Gladly shelled out a couple hundred bucks for solidly-built custom speaker interconnects a few years later with them, and have zero regrets.
As far as legal tactics go, I’m very sympathetic to his position and wish more folks would fight to the finish instead of settling for nuisance values.
After working with audio professionally I've developed a strong antipathy towards a lot of the audiophile industry. BJC has good prices and seem very legit in my eyes. The pricing seems to reflect actual production costs and not mumbo jumbo alignment in the copper fields...
That’s my take as well. They used high quality cables from Belden when I bought mine, not some cheap Chinese knockoff. They’re also not focused on nonsense like “ethernet regenerators” for audio signals or “HDMI cleaners” for video.
They’re just good, simple, solidly built cables that fulfill their intended functions. No snake oil, no BS. 10/10 will buy again when I’ve got a home and a rack for a bunch of fixed-length custom cabling.
I remember buying audio gear (think receiver, amplifier, cd player) and being the focus of the upsell for 2-5x more expensive monster cables.
Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there, and seeing the young sales guy pause and then "get it". And I got the (relatively) cheap cables.
Also speaker wire. You can get perfectly good copper cables for less, probably in a thicker gauge wire.
> Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there.
Emphasis mine.
As someone that sold AV equipment, including cables, in the late ‘00s / early ‘10s, nerds that misunderstood the nuances of this were the single worst group of customers to work with.
You could see them coming a mile away. By the time “gold-plated HDMI cables are a scam” gets down to their level of pseudo-intellect, it becomes “all cables with the same physical connectors are the same”. Patently untrue, and 99.9% of the time they won’t have any of it. Some of the most snide, belittling, insulting shit ever sneered at me in a professional context has been from some socks-and-sandals nerd practically accusing me of genocide because I dare suggested that the cheapest HDMI cable on the shelf explicitly doesn’t support whatever insanely expensive TV, blu-ray player, or whatever else, that they’ve purchased.
15+ years later, purchasing the ‘right’ HDMI cable is if anything a more Byzantine process. Made worse by the fact that any conversation on the topic inevitably has at last one person butting in to say “they’re all just cables bro aha”.
Except 99 times out of 100 it was an attempt at an unnecessary, scammy upsell to a high margin cable, when the cheap one would and did do just as well.
People frequently did try to claim you would get deeper reds and better blacks and all sorts of audiophile-grade bullshit by spending that extra hundred dollars on magic cables.
While you feel you might have been knowledgeable and honest in intent, the retail electronics industry as a whole is filled with a heady mix of ignorance and profiteering, to the detriment of customers. They’re almost always better served by grabbing cables from an online vendor after leaving the store.
And that’s if the devices they buy don’t already come with a perfectly good HDMI cable, which most do now.
My side-by-side, A/B comparison of monoprice RCA/coaxial cables and higher-end RCA cables revealed a clearly audible difference. Blew me away. I realize HDMI works differently, though, and there is some preposterous snake oil in the world of cables, which BJC admirably fights, partly through their superb articles.
Let me just clarify that this was really not something outside the range of common sense.
I recall it was merely overpriced but decent $29 cables vs $129 monster cables. This was pre-hdmi probably 2000 or earlier and it was at the Good Guys.
I heard a story about the CEO of Maxim Integrated complaining about Maxim Magazine and wanting to sue them. The lawyer got a box of chips and a magazine, opened to the centerfold, and said "no one's confusing this for that."
What happened? This is reporting on the first round but I can't find a follow-up on how things went. Did Caterpillar back down or did Cat and Cloud lose their apparel trademark?
Yah but it was only the apparel side that Caterpillar threatened, so they may have won or given up and stopped selling clothes. Looking at their online store they don't have anything with Cat printed on it right now.
It's not that they picked the wrong guy to threaten - it's just that this particular one won't work out for Monster. No worries, on to the next. If 1 guy out of 100 fights back, and then you just leave that one alone, you're still a big winner.
Yeah, the title made me assume that he won a countersuit or got the company fined or something.
In reality, he just sent them a slightly-snarky response to their flimsy cease-and-desist, and they decided not to go forward with a lawsuit, which is probably how it would have played out anyway.
I just shared this story with friends, and one of them, a musician, says he will now never again buy monster cables even though they are thought of the best quality. So there is a negative outcome of this to the company.
"Music was much more open with plenty of air around the instruments. Imaging was superb - greatly improved over previous cables that I used. The depth was substantially improved with great instrumental recognition from front to rear. In other words, the speakers managed to disappear and only the performances were remaining."
"I had for the first time, heard tones and instruments that were previously hidden with other cables. Music sounded more alive - had more presence. Brass instruments now had a bite (yet with a rich, non-strident tone) that sounded as if you were there."
"The bass tones improved dramatically, taking on a fuller (tighter with less bloat) than I had remembered with previous cables"
I'd love to see how these people do with a double blind setup.
This kind of hyperbole for the magical powers bestowed by even the smallest (or most dubious) accessories is a source of unending amusement for me, if it wasn't so foolish.
I was once co-head of a tech company that had an "i" in the title. Like a bajillion other companies our logo was basically just the company's name in a particular font and we turned the dot above the "i" into a little circle in a different colour. So far so not very surprising.
A few months in we got a cease-and-desist from a company who claimed (and I'm not making this up) to have a trademark on the idea of making the dot of an "i" into a little circle in a different colour, and said that the trade dress of our logo was infringing because their logo was just their company name in a (different) font with the dot on the "i" being a circle in a different colour.
I wrote back and asked them to clarify that it was their contention that that was a trademark and making it very clear I would fight it and we had no intention of changing anything. They disappeared.
It's really important not to feed this nonsense by caving to the trolls.
Ha, I love that this is about Blue Jeans Cables. I actually just bought some of their stuff this week-- really incredibly well made cables. Their website looks like it hasn't been updated in the 90s, which leads me to believe that cable quality and website quality are inversely correlated.
I removed the numbers and looked up that username to try and figure out what was going on, but it seems to be an empty account from 2010.
I feel sad for the person if they think this is the best use of their time.
Re about "nobody sees these", only registered users with half a brain see them, and they're the ones who can easily filter out people acting like a child with nothing better to do. It's people not logged in who don't have "show dead" enabled that don't see it.
When I worked at Best Buy in the late 90's, we were trained on the virtues of Monster AV cables, which they pushed because they were an accessory with high margins. I recall one time when a sales manager cut open a cheaper version of some cables and discussed how it had less wiring and insulation, which I think he did with Monster cable to show the drastic difference. I think they had like 3 levels of quality, the cheap stuff, the mid-grade stuff and Monster. Even though I worked there I only ever bought the mid-grade because the quality to price ratio was great.
I bought a pair of utterly ludicrous Monster stereo speaker cables off eBay a coyotes of decades ago, when I was putting together a home audio system.
Audio stereophile-wise, I could replace them with zip wire (two conductor, twisted 24-gauge cable). But they wouldn't have the neat nylon braided jacket, or shove things out of the way when I'm moving the speakers.
It was stupid but fun to add them to my setup, and now I'm glad I have them.
I also have some interconnect cables from Blue Jeans Cable, that fellow is awesome.
>> developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle
I got let out of 2-3 months of jury duty on an asbestos case by saying basically the same thing. Voir dire is fun, particularly if you manage to scare the bejezus out of both sides.
I read the letter and it looked like pretty much the first negotiating position of any lawyer. Regardless of what you think, convince the opposition that you are prepared to litigate to the end of time.
Just speaking as someone who's not a lawyer, but who grew up in a family of lawyers: This isn't so much a negotiating position as a rigorous way of thinking about everything. It's also the default position if e.g. your child asks you to buy them a book, let them sleep over at a friend's house, etc. (Something an ex-girlfriend of mine categorized as "child abuse", whereas I think it was a fantastic education). Cross-examination on a subject doesn't mean an automatic "no". It's more like: If you want to use X amount of personal capital here, to achieve your ends, then persuade me that you're right using logic and proof, not threats or acting out. It's kind of a Jedi mind training, and a wonderful shield against both bullying and idiocy in the wider world. Because at the end of the day, it is a superpower to be a lawyer, or even to think like one.
Musicians picked Monster because they were reliable and had an excellent replacement policy not because of brand ego. The Darn Tough of cables at least in terms of policies
Meh. If this was the wrong guy to threaten, then he would have sued to overturn their design patents. Instead he just told them where they could stick it. That's done all the time.
I've been a fan of blue jeans cables for 15+ years, I'm so glad they are the subject of this post. Blue Jeans just makes high quality stuff for solid prices and no BS.
I don't quite understand the point of litigating businesses in civil court if existential threats are excluded from judgement. What is the reasoning behind a fine being sufficient to incentivize following the law when you can make so much more money not following the law? I also don't understand what the point of shareholders and board members are if they can't be personally held liable for their investments violating civil laws.
What is the fucking rationale behind that? Why must we baby shareholders and be cruel to workers despite the latter providing 100% of society's value?
Has a "...what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you." energy to it.
I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables... About 15 yeard ago, I knew a guy who exclusively bought Monster... well he had two of them, one from the guitar to the pedal board and another from the board to the amp.
But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty. Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.
From what I can tell they got rid of the lifetime warranty around 2018 and have mostly transitioned to licensing their name.
We used them at a student union for a similar reason - lots of students thinking they're a rock star swinging mics around and stuff meant we ended up with a lot of damage. Though IMHO the monster cables didn't actually take the damage any better than real "professional-tier" brands, that "no questions" replacement policy was used heavily by us.
> Dude had bought two monster 1/4inch cables and gotten them replaced "for free" like 5 times.
Every time I've had a cable fail it was at one of the solder joints on the connector. Stripping it down and re-soldering takes a few minutes, sure, but it saves you from having to drive to a music shop or pay for shipping. For this reason I try to only buy cables that are built to let you do this instead of ones with closed, molded ends.
Back before monoprice was bought by a Chinese company, I had one of their HDMI cables, and yeah - the connector just slipped right off. Buncha thin gold wires sticking out.
I contacted them. They asked for a photo, which I was able to text them directly from my phone (very advanced for 2009). He looked at it, said it was their fault, and to toss it. Another was shipped to me.
I have a Logitech mouse that’s double clicking. One of the 10 (!!!) steps I was supposed to do before they’d accept that it’s broken was to go to a website and click 100 (!!!!!) times.
I sincerely miss the companies that were totally dedicated to customer service.
I have this problem with my Logitech mice too. They work great for two or three years, and then they start registering about one in every 50 clicks or so as double clicks, with the frequency slowly increasing to maybe 1 in 10.
That might just be dust gathering or humidity/temperature weathering. I've fixed most degraded mice by cleaning them, and there's different sprays/lubes you can get that will not only help the hardware but the electrical responsiveness and accuracy.
That and the infinite-scroll wheel bearing fails. I’ve probably gone through 5-10 g502 mice in the past decade. I usually buy them 2-3 at a time when they are on sale.
Sounds like it's working out for them
Yes, unfortunately there are no other mice that have the infinite scroll wheel and I’ve come to love it for office work.
They’re generally pretty good about warrantying them, but life is short so I don't always bother.
That stupid scroll wheel is so great I hate it. I also can’t give it up. Sometimes I want smooth, sometimes I don’t.
As an IT professional; It's not even worth my time to substantiate those claims. The user gets a new mouse and I record it as a ticket. I've never had to "cut anyone off" from issuing new equipment, but if there's ever a problematic user I'll have a record of their equipment issues on file.
Sounds like all electronics shops got bought by a Chinese company (Newegg is another example). Are there any left? BestBuy maybe?
I’m fortunate enough to live near a Microcenter. Highly recommend them. They do have an online store as well.
Jameco?
"Ok, I clicked 100 times, but I just did it with the mouse pointer on my desktop."
"Did I stutter?"
> go to a website and click 100 (!!!!!) times.
Captchas are craaaaazy nowadays
/s
I hove some Monster cables around, and I bought them knowing that their claims are bogus, but the things are built like a tank.
None of them have broken or developed faulty connections over the years, and that's worth it the price difference in my opinion. In my case, for a couple of them, the price difference was nil, because the store was selling them at a 50% discount to just get them out of their premises.
Switchcraft + Belden or Canare and you’ll have cables to pass to your grandchildren.
I definitely got upsold on a Monster cable when I bought my first guitar on the back of that lifetime warranty. Joke's on me, I guess; the cable is almost 20 years old and still working, never had to use the warranty even once. I need to take worse care of my things.
My bass cable is a Monster Cable and is ~45 years old. Bought it when I was 15.
Guitar cable?, ya...noooo cordless my droogys prolly cheaper too did a custom stealth mod to one guitar where the transmitter, plugs into 1/4 jack,under the back cover nice thing is that its possible to turn an amp up to face peeling loudness, and step back, and not get hurt, got to watch for things vibrating off of shelves though and are you kidding me?, I know that as a guitarer there are cumulative cognitive effects, but when a fucking speaker cable outfit starts suing people, something has definitly gone off the rails but oh ya, there are people in jail for "cheating" on video games, but somehow there are government weed stores tone is in the hands
I prefer a cable in my active bass, because it's one less set of batteries to think about, and that guy has a pretty hot output. Analog distortion is way better than the sounds you get when you saturate a digital signal path, heh.
Some dressing to go with that salad, man?
shredding some words, but maybe I should join the chorus and try a little echo ;) mang
I've had a 20' monster cable for at least 15 years now that is showing no signs of slowing down, even after a period of regular practice/shows. If only I was actually able to cash in on the warranty! Other cables from reputable brands haven't lasted this long in less demanding conditions.
A few of my friends did the same. They could easily run to Guitar Center and swap broken cables before a gig. That could easily be worth the added cost.
It’s why Snap-On sells so many tools. They will send someone to you with the new tool if one breaks.
This is why pro gear doesnt come with a replacement warranty. The seconds/minutes spent finding and swapping a cable during a live show far exceeds any concept of replacement costs. Multiply any failure rate by the hundreds or even thousands of cables at a modern concert and any failure rate is unacceptable. If you care, buy good parts and build the cables yourself by hand. That is the only way to be sure it was done right.
> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables...
Basically, someone asked themselves "how do I port the audiophile scam to the home entertainment space?" And monster cables was born.
When Monster first came out it became a meme.
Their advertisement was laughable and remember joking with tech savvy friends about how all wire was vastly inferior to the alien technology monster used in their oxygen free high purity copper that "allows more music to flow" (actual quote from their shitty packaging.) They sold cables for everything AV and then invaded the musician space with their trash.
Overly aggressive salesmen in electronics stores would push them on every sale. It was tiring. Buying a little TV for the kitchen? "Dont forget the monster HDMI cable and monster coax cable to hook up the cable box! oh and the monster surge strip that purifies the electron essence before the harmonic protuberances make it into your music!" Sure thing chief, lemme spend a hundred bucks on five bucks worth of cable. No wonder they turned into a meme and a lot of people hated them. But there's always a sucker who loves showing off his $80 cables to another sucker.
If you travel back im time you’ll find audio connectors corroded. It was standard practice to use an eraser to polish the jacks. Monster offered gold plated connectors. It really made difference. Any benefits beyond non corrosive is questionable.
Back in the day, Radio Shack offered gold plated connectors on their cables, too (IIRC, there was "Archer" and "Archer Gold"). To this day I always get a little prickly at people who sneer at audiophile cables and specifically rag on gold-plated connectors rather than, I don't know, oxygen-free silver cables or whatever. The gold plating was actually a real valuable thing, and the cables could still actually be pretty cheap (e.g., Radio Shack!).
I actually did have Monster-brand speaker cable many years ago, but it was the original version with no connectors, just a bare spool. I don't remember it being much more expensive than any other 12-gauge speaker wire at the time, and it was both more flexible than some other brands and prettier when exposed -- which is arguably a selling point. I still have a segment of that original cable, actually, and use it for my center channel. Somewhat amusingly given the actual linked article, the rest of the cable I have is from Blue Jeans.
I still have a radio shack 3.5mm cable with gold connectors that my dad and I bought when I was 5. Still works great. One of my favorite cables. Has a lovely soft touch rubber insulation, which has survived all these years
My town has a radio shack still, and I visit them as much as I can, but I have yet to find a cable that nice
And now they sell gold-plated optical connectors.
And it so totally rugged against tarnished contacts, unlike copper or brass contact.
Would recommend.
The sad part is that, once upon a time, those crazy claims mattered. There were once good and bad cables. But over the last centry all the best practices were universally adopted (twisted pairs, shielding, consistent conductors made of soft copper). Monster now sounds like a car company shouting about seatbelts and crumple zones, things we now just expect but were once important to look for when selecting cable.
Given Monster some credit for at least being a brand. Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search. It will be out of business before your delivery arrives.
>Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search
Well it's not fun because most of them have very painless warranty claims - hammer the product with a 1 star review and applie for replacement, most will just give you full refund, no / barely any questions asked. Anything to keep their top Amazon search positions and reviews. I remember when Amazon was slammed with MPOW bluetooth products, I had minor hinge issue after almost a year on a set of cans and they just shipped me a new one, didn't even need photo evidence of destruction of old device. That's been my experience with multipe "Chinesium" products on Amazon, and essentially why Amazon > Aliexpress for the RMA premium. Buy from a top ranked product where seller doesn't want to compromise position with bad reviews, pay a few bucks extra on Amazon, get faster shipping and no question asked exchanges/refunds because seller already have it built into margins.
> Have fun trying to reclaim a warranty from the discount chinese numbered company that tops your amazon search.
I remember seeing someone else raging about how a Chinese company on Amazon had no accountability because the business address field was filled with unintelligible gibberish and there was no way to find the company.
So I looked it up. Not only was it very easy to find the address, it was obviously the address of the owner's personal home. So even if the company did go out of business, odds are good you could make contact and ask for redress.
People will assume anything.
Yeah, 1979 was totally the biggest year in meme history.
What if we bring the idea into 2025 and sell subscription-based cables?
Yeah, back when I first started playing bass (which would have been around 2008, interestingly enough) I used their cables for a bit because of the unlimited replacements. As a young teen without any income, it honestly was a pretty decent deal; in retrospect, the cables certainly weren't high quality and probably developed issues far more easily than a higher quality cable, but I could also go into any guitar store that sold those cables and then trade them in for fresh ones, no questions asked. It wasn't like I really had that many gigs, so being guaranteed not to ever have to buy new cables was easily worth it even if it meant that I would have to go back to the store any time they failed. Eventually I got old enough that I had more disposable income and would play a bit more often to the point where it would be more inconvenient to have to get a replacement on short notice, so I moved on to buying higher quality ones, but I don't really see the experience I got as a scam. Maybe the were marketed to the point where people who really weren't getting the benefits from their model were still buying them when they would be better served by a different company's cables, but I feel like the model they were trying to do did at least make sense for me at the time, and I think that it's worth making a distinction between "trying to exploit naive customers by selling something no one needs" and "trying to market beyond the actual customer base that is served well by the business model", mostly because I feel like the latter is a spectrum that quite a lot of companies fall on to some degree, and it's not as clear to me where exactly the line should be drawn for how "acceptable" this is. (I'd be fine with literally any instance of this being called out and shamed, but realistically I think this is looked past by most people so much of the time that it's not accurate to claim anyone is actually doing it)
if anyone wants to block the annoying troll spammer that invaded hackernews today, please put this rule on your personal filters on ublock origin:
##.comtr.athing:has-text('bschmidt')
Seems someone thinks they're being super clever when really they're just childish and annoying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
most hacker thing I've seen here in years
The website is almost 20 years old and they are no many to throw a tantrum like this.
And it can all be cleaned with a DELETE WHERE LIKE sql statement.
They proved a serious vulnerability to the entire site without causing irreputable damage.
Phreak on.
(and not very important but to be pedantic, I don't know if hn has an sql backend? It used to be all in-memory if I recall, but that was many years ago)
[flagged]
> I had no idea Monster sold anything other than over priced guitar cables..
Overpriced because you are envious of their marketing or pricing strategy? They were appropriately priced as long as the marketing wasn't more deceptive than products are generally (and noting it's not a food product or medical claim).
> But it wasn't because of their alleged improved sound quality or whatever, it was because they had a lifetime warranty.
Isn't that (along with branding) a valid reason to price a product at a certain level?
Anyone can make a top quality cable in 10 minutes: buy 2 Neutrik connectors, buy as many Cordial cable as you need, four solderings and you have a top guitar cable for life, for maybe 1/4 of the price of a similar Monster.
Don't like to solder? Cordial has also cables with Neutrik connectors ready to use, for half the price of a Monster.
The lifetime warranty clearly was valuable to many people here.
The problem though, is the _misleading_ marketing around "better sound" and similar that is false and does not justify charging more to basic home consumers who don't know any better.
The complete story: https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm
In particular, I'd recommend looking at the full response. While the original article covers the plain-language juicy-sounding excerpts, the full letter to Monster also contains some artful legalese that even I as layman can appreciate:
It starts with several pages worth of requests for information. I'm pretty sure those aren't actually requests for information - they're a threat. If Monster were to actually sue, he'd be entitled to these documents as part of discovery, so he's essentially saying "if you sue me, you'll spend a lot of money on discovery (and be forced to reveal stuff you'd rather not)".
Sprinkled in are some suggestions of ethics violations on the side of Monster's lawyers, a hint at Monster's likely corporate tax evasion scheme (and the requirement to produce the material that proves the tax evasion in discovery), and the threat to break their racket in the last paragraph that kopirgan already pointed out.
All this is even more impressive than the quoted part, and sadly omitted in the original blog post.
[dead]
For anybody who’s wondering what happened next, this is from the above link:
“Monster's counsel had made a horrible mistake, and probably caused lasting harm to the company, by sending me that ridiculous letter. But he, and Monster, did apparently know the first rule of holes: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." The end, therefore, of the story was a bit anticlimactic. Knowing that I was able to defend myself and knowing that they'd probably be sanctioned for frivolous conduct if they sued me, Monster fell silent. Not a peep was heard again.”
> Monster's counsel had made a horrible mistake, and probably caused lasting harm to the company, by sending me that ridiculous letter
This sort of thing always reminds of the Jack Daniels cease and desist letter[0], which, at least for me, had the exact opposite effect.
0. https://brokenpianoforpresident.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/jac...
Hadn't seen this before. What a nicely written letter. Explained why they have to do this, outlined a reasonable action step, and even offer to help said action. Moreover, it didn't contain a single threat.
I wish all companies took such an approach. You catch more flies with honey, and all that.
I used to be the webmaster for my parent's HOA[0], and I bought their .com domain name when it became available (a realtor had owned it originally). They eventually hired a firm to run the site, and I pointed the domain at their nameservers, and forgot about it (paying the ~$20/year in renewals, because that's not a lot of money & I have fond memories of living there).
15 years later, I get a registered letter from a law firm – counsel to the HOA – claiming that I was violating their trademark by owning the domain name, demanding that I turn it over to the HOA, etc.
If an actual human had reached out to me, I would have happily transferred the domain. Instead, they paid a lawyer to be a dick about it – so I ignored the letter, they registered the .net, and everyone moved on.
I still keep the domain up, and redirect it to their new URL, because as long as the .com domain works, people will be using it. Which means they will still want it, and I'm not giving it to them. At least not until they ask nicely, and catch me with honey instead of vinegar.
[0]Despite this incident, their HOA is normally perfectly reasonable. It's a few hundred dollars per year to keep up with road repairs, signage, community facilities upkeep, etc.
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I’m disappointed you didn’t end up extracting a couple thousand dollars from the HOA.
Then again, maybe there’s less hate for HOA’s here than in other spaces. This is typical HOA behavior!
I totally understand that, but theirs is genuinely not an HOAzilla – they just took a stupid approach to this particular problem. It's honestly the prototypical example of how to run an HOA – low fees (no outside management), providing community features (pool, tennis courts, paved private roads, etc.) basically at-cost, and even hiring folks from the community to help out (teens as lifeguards, retired folks as maintenance, etc.).
Also, my parents still live there, so I didn't want to start any more drama. In fact, they sold their previous home and built a new place in the same community, while it would have been far cheaper to build outside the HOA.
All this to say that, while the internet is full of genuine examples of nightmare HOAs, my parents' HOA is normally run by a few retired folks who mind their own business.
You honestly should have searched to see if they had a trademark. Unlike copyright, trademarks have to exist. I suspect you were probably played. They appeared nice, sure, but they don't appear nice to me. If it were me, I'd have' pointed the domain at a certain picture involving ladies and cups. I've dealt with bullies myself, even in the legal system (IANAL, but do run a few successful small time ventures), and it always blow my mind what people will say. I recently had a guy from India that claimed I had a security vulnerability, and that I owe him a bounty. I have no bounty and the vulnerability did not exist (I suspect he misunderstood the issue completely...the issue was not an issue at all, it was as designed). When I didn't respond he followed up multiple times, and threatened to sue (I am in the U.S.) He finally gave up. The issue he was referring to was his misunderstanding of modern email standards. It wasn't an actual issue, nor did I ever offer any type of bounty of actual security stuff (I would, but most of my stuff is OOTB, if someone did come to me with an actual issue I'd definitely give them something)
If plaintiffs had to pay the fees for defense prior to settlement or judgement, most of this would disappear. Sadly, nobody has the balls to implement that.
[flagged]
> If you are willing to type this up for karma
If I cared about HN karma, I'd just post "why not Rust?" on every Go post, and "why not Go?" on every Rust post.
> why wouldn't you just tell the lawyer this or contact the current webmaster
Because the lawyer was trying to scare me with nonsensical legal threats. I'm not interested in helping people who threaten me with legal action.
> your retelling just seems really petty.
It was supposed to – I was replying to someone who wrote, "I wish all companies took such an approach. You catch more flies with honey" – they tried to "catch" me with vinegar, and I don't have a taste for it.
I, personally, thank you for sharing. I come here for news and anecdotes from smart and interesting people, as I perceive HN crowd.
Your story entertained me in my Saturday morning and I’m grateful you decided to do so.
Wow, thanks! As someone about to go to sleep on a Friday, I'm looking forward to seeing what is posted here on my Saturday morning :)
I genuinely laughed out loud from “why not Rust?”. Thank you. That cult give Haskell snobs a run for their money.
Because humans are petty, and if they feel slighted, they will go out of their way to take revenge, even if it provides them no material benefit.
This may seem illogical, but is actually crucial to make society function, because it punishes non-cooperative behaviors.
>This may seem illogical, but is actually crucial to make society function, because it punishes non-cooperative behaviors.
Good observation. Peer pressure is along similar lines.
It's funny how HN/forums seem to turn everybody to Dutch directness mode :p
At this time of day, every other person on here is Dutch.
Relatedly, Jack Daniel’s recently won a unanimous Supreme Court decision affirming their right to pursue trademark claims against a dog toy manufacturer.
The toy company claimed their products were parodies, which have heightened protection from such claims, but the Court didn’t buy it.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-148
Fun oral argument for an extended dog walk; you get to hear the justices argue about scatological jokes and whiskey bottle shapes.
JD’s advocate, Lisa Blatt, is also reliably a hoot.
Wow pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve read a nice polite legal letter shared that wasn’t threatening.
Right? Monster is lucky they didn't have to square up against the venerable and vicious Leonard "J" Crabs*.
* The "J" stands for "Good Work!"
The Netflix Cease and Desist (https://www.eicoff.com/drtv-blog/netflix-cease-and-desist) for a Stranger Things themed pop-up bar also comes to mind.
Seems like he's still using their design on the ebook on amazon all these years later.
It seems that are used books
This is the new design: https://www.amazon.com/-/de/gp/aw/d/1621050521/
Weird, when I looked it was showing it as the kindle edition and I could have clicked buy on it. Looking now, if you hit other editions it'll show you the paperback with the old cover but if you click through the editions, eventually it'll only show you the new one for all of them.
It now resembles a different bottle (with the blessing of the manufacturer): https://mashable.com/archive/jack-daniels-rejection-letter-g...
This is probably one of the best lawyer notices I've ever read.
That is like the most polite legal letter I’ve seen!
This reminds me of the spat between Tekton Design speakers and a Youtube reviewer.
Tekton received such massive and negative feedback, he tried to backpedal the initial threat. But still, the gall. They suffered reputationally not from the [mildly] negative review, but from the fallout from the ill-advised threat of lawsuit.
https://www.audioresurgence.com/2024/04/tekton-speakers-revi...
[more neutral] https://musictech.com/news/gear/tekton-audio-allegedly-threa...
It's amazing to me that the writer of that piece walked away with the conclusion that Eric Alexander was in the right.
I don't think you read the piece?
> My overarching sense is that this whole saga has been largely Mr. Alexander’s fault and it could have been easily avoided.
> Alexander has dropped the Mother Of All Bombs on this situation, displaying disrespect towards the reviewing industry, and regarding reviewers as trivial annoyances that can be easily brushed aside. The outcome of this saga and who will ultimately withstand the fallout remains to be seen, but Mr. Alexander almost certainly looks like an ass at this moment in time, and in my opinion, any negative assessment he receives is largely self-inflicted.
I believe they're referring to this bit:
>There’s no doubt in my mind that Eric Alexander of Tekton Design is largely in the right, and in principle, challenging these reviewers was mostly justified.
The next sentence is revealing though:
>The problem, and the reason we’re here now dwelling on it, is how he went about it.
I'm not sure if I understand the first of the quotes, honestly, given the rest of the content. But that seems to be what GP was referencing.
Just about everyone on YT as well as online sided with the reviewer because Tekton were being ridiculous.
I remember seeing his posts on ASR. Some really fun stuff like how the air coming out of the screw holes for the feet would produce a supersonic boom; in a ported enclosure. Wildly entertaining.
Maybe writing that letter was a bad idea in the first place?
It was good for Blue Jeans and for Monster, as they both avoided expensive litigation, but from a more general perspective, it would have been better if Monster thought Blue Jeans was an easy victim, sued and got its comeuppance.
Is there any way to file a (real) countersuit against someone, just to punish them for having wasted your time and energy with a threat of legal action that never materialized?
The term to search for this is barratry and there are laws against it in some jurisdictions.
Realistically, you will not win a judgment on this to compensate you for your time dealing with a single cease and desist letter. If someone shows a really excessive pattern of it, perhaps a judge or a bar association could be convinced to make an example of them.
I guess that does address my concrete question as given.
But I think I was less imagining a countersuit that literally just "seeks damages for wasted time and effort"... and more imagining a countersuit that can somehow "rope in" the claims in the original suit, so as to force those claims to be evaluated and case law to be created upon that evaluation — whether the original claimant likes it or not.
Imagine, by analogy, outside the domain of IP law:
1. Party A threatens to sue party B for having violated the terms of some contract they have.
2. Party A then drops this threat.
3. Party B then sues party A with the intent of having a judge still evaluate that same question, but now in the other direction: "would party A have had legal standing to sue party B?" — where in the case that party B wins that judgement, this would not only award damages to party B, but also have the same case-law impact as if party A had really sued party B, and lost.
In Kurt Denke's response he writes:
Which party would bear the burden of proof in step 3? Does it get reversed or stay as if the step 1 threat went to court?So you basically want to give effect to any claim that isn't brought to court of being brought to Court? How does that make anything better? It's going to mean more lawsuits, a waste of judicial resources, and probably moot cases if it's not even adversarial. I understand this is a layman's perspective but it seems incredibly foresighted. You seem to be of the belief that it's never the case that parties, after investigations, etc, reasonably decide not to sue, and that they didn't prior have a reasonable basis for asserting their claims outside of a lawsuit? That's just naive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratory_judgment
If someone threatens to sue you, you can sue them to establish that their suit is groundless.
This is wonderful. It’s also true! Even when I was running a very small business and not particularly bothered by what people were doing that could be argued as resembling trademark infringement, I was urged to be vigilant about it because if you don’t defend your trademark, you risk losing it. That’s how the law works!
If that really is the reason you’re threatening action against someone, they may just understand if you’re nice about it!
That said, while it may foster more goodwill towards your company, it probably isn’t as surefire a way to generate the swift response you want as being a dick and making the threats
"There have been numerous times, since my exit from the practice of law and entry into the cable business, when I've been glad that I have a legal background, and this certainly was one of those; it meant that the inevitable surge in adrenalin manifested itself through careful legal review rather than through the intended panic."
Channel your energy in the right direction ..
Blue Jeans Cables was what I switched to towards the end of my serious audiophile days. Before that, I was set up with StraightWire mostly, but I respected Kimber Kables, though I never ended up getting any of their goods.
Now tonearm cables are a whole different animal, and my pair was a mid-priced custom set though one of the high-end dealers — all substance, no flash => aka, not paying for an advertising budget & fancy packaging.
The last paragraph with upside downside comments are legendary
Plus the threat to impose even bigger costs with anti trust violation claims!
Need to imagine the face of the in-house counsel reading it.
But in the end did monster actually face any penalty at all? They threatened the guy, the guy said no, end of story. The bully moves on to threaten the next guy. The story insinuates lasting damage but it seems kind of subtle...
Most importantly, it was also popularly published. So the critical but tricky to measure metrics now are "how much sales do we loose because we are now firmly labeled as a bully in peoples minds" and "how much potential licensing revenue have we lost because people know they don't need to fold immediately"
It is hard do say, though, because the market for Monster cables is pretty clearly people who came in off the street, read nothing, and picked the fanciest looking cable. By their nature they are immune to bad press, right?
Lol it is not subtle at all - it basically says you will get pennies if you take us on and win, but if we win, you get screwed big time incl damages for anti-trust.
Guess BJC was content with letting them just go away...but once this was generally known, it does reduce the value of those threats.
Thanks! I actually did not like that OP did not include the full story, but rather a small part of it. I love reading stuff like this.
Thank you! The original blog post sets up a story and then gives no ending.
Or you could screw up so monumentally that the “case” (it was never actually brought) becomes an actual meme. I give you the case of Arkell vs Pressdram [1]. I have actually seen a response to a business threat which ended with “I refer you to the response in the case of Arkell vs Pressdram”…
1: https://proftomcrick.com/2014/04/29/arkell-v-pressdram-1971/
I've used it against a frivolous parking charge. It's fairly well known in the UK and I've always enjoyed Private Eye
Monster Cables is a name I hadn't thought about in ages... I mostly remember them as the company that tried to convince people that digital images would look better via a more expensive cable.
When wiring up my projector, I needed a 10 or 20 meter HDMI cable. The first one I got produced a snowy image on the screen — it wasn't like analogue static, but it was definitely a poor quality image. I replaced that cable with a more expensive one and the image looked correct. It surprised me that there would be a difference in HDMI cables, because I thought exactly the same way — a digital signal is a digital signal
This is what happens with a damaged or underspecced cable.
The HDMI standard doesn't have a way of telling you that you really need an HDMI 2.2 cable and you actually have an HDMI 1.x cable. It just tries to send the signal, and if the analogue bandwidth of the cable is insufficient, then the error correction will be insufficient and you'll get no signal or snow and blocks.
This is somewhat of a good thing, since many short HDMI 1.x cables will work for standards that require HDMI 2.x.
That's not really what digital implies, but you figured out the important part: When digital signals fail, they do so in a very obvious fashion. A worse cable won’t give you “less saturated blacks” or something else that's subtle, it will give you random bit errors that manifest as snow. If the picture isn't obviously bad, then it is as good as any cable will give you.
This isn’t even true with other common ‘digital’ cables.
Not all ‘Ethernet’ cables are the same. Someone will give you 100mbit. Some will give you a gigabit. Some will give you even more. They’ve all got RJ45 on them.
“All HDMI cables are the same” is an almost-baseless corruption of a very valid critique of Monster et al.
RJ45 is just the plug. Ethernet cables are labeled with category 5, 5e, 6 etc.
8P8C is the plug.
RJ45 is a wiring pin-out standard for that plug [1]. It's also a standard for telephony, not networking -- it carries one phone line. A gross waste of pins if you ask me.
[1] Not quite. An RJ45S plug has a tab on the side that will not insert into an 8P8C jack.
Calculations change at 10+ meters. Most cables are not rated past 15.
Not as bad as this HDMI cable claiming it has "anti-virus protection to reduce virus noises".
https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-xbox-hdmi-cable-has-anti-...
https://www.gamesmen.com.au/cable-xb3-hdmi-lx-swivel
Well, there is now some truth to it. For example, low quality HDMI cable will may be only good enough for low bandwidth, that would limit refresh rate, and/or color fidelity (e.g. chroma subsampling) and/or resolution.
So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better.
I understand that monster takes this to the next level of bullshit — but in principle, yes, more expensive cable cable can yield better quality. Or should I say — crappy cable can result in quality degradation
> So yea, “digital” cables are not immune to signal integrity issues, and better cables do perform better.
Better cables perform better, but not at all in the way that Monster suggests.
Gold plating and oxygen-free copper doesn't matter.
Any certified HDMI cable will operate at least to its certification, whether or not it is gold plated with triple shielded conductors.
I wish the HDMI forum would officially deprecate all older HDMI standards, so that companies like Monster couldn't advertise that their cables provide "better color, higher resolution, better sound", etc. All the cables in the store would be 8k HDMI 2.2 cables, or they wouldn't be allowed to use the HDMI trademark.
Nah, cables oftenly can lie about it's certification, especially when it comes to resistance to interference. This is how you get "bad cable".
Besides interference and lying about specs, cables can be designed for durability or not.
I buy cheap cables from China. They generally work-to-spec out of the...plastic bag, but may not handle frequent plug/unplug cycles or any sort of rough treatment.
You're making me wonder about nuance. Since those ports are exclusively called HDMI, I wonder if you could call your unlicensed cable "HDMI compatible."
If your TV only supports 4k@60 HDMI 2, no need to go buy more expensive cables with specs you can't use. And even then, unless you're playing time-sensitive games, 4k@60 is probably all you need anyway.
Speaking of high quality "Monstrous Cables" and draconian legal remedies: there's K. W. Jeter's Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668069
DonHopkins on Nov 10, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10
I deserve to be downvoted by the literature snobs, but if you liked Blade Runner the movie (and who in their right mind doesn't?), then you may very well enjoy K. W. Jeter's three written sequels to the MOVIE Blade Runner (not the BOOK DADOES), "Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human", "Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night", and "Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon". There is no book "Blade Runner 1" -- that's the movie.
The irony is that Philip K Dick was offered a whole lot of money to write another book entitled "Blade Runner" based on the screenplay of the movie, but he insisted on maintaining the integrity and title of his original book DADOES by re-issuing it with a reference to the (quite different) movie on the cover, instead of rewriting another book called "Blade Runner" based on the movie based on his own book. (Harrumph!) He would have made a lot more money by selling out that way, but he steadfastly refused to do it.
However, fortunately for us, after his death, his friend and fellow SF writer K. W. Jeter (who also wrote an excellent cyberpunk novel Dr. Adder which Dick loved) sold out on his behalf and wrote those three books based on the movie (which referenced famous lines like "Wake up. Time to die!").
They explore the question of what the fuck happened after they went flying off into the wilderness (that unused footage from The Shining), and whether Decker was a replicant. (Who would have guessed??!)
So even though they're not written by PKD, or directly based on his original all time great book, and not as authentic and mentally twisted as a real PKD book, they are still pretty excellent and twisted in their own right, and well worth reading. They're based on an excellent movie based on an epic book, and written by a friend and author PKD respected, who's written some other excellent books.
And while you're at it, check out Dr. Adder and K. W. Jeter's other books too! Especially Noire, for its hi-fi cables made out of the still-living spinal columns of copyright violators. (I suggest you buy a copy and don't pirate it!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Hu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Nigh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._W._Jeter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Adder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_(novel)
http://www.indiewire.com/2015/12/watch-u-s-theatrical-ending...
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jeter_k_w
Jeter's most significant sf may lie in the thematic trilogy comprising Dr Adder (1984) – his first novel (written 1972), long left unpublished because of its sometimes turgid violence – The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987); Alligator Alley (1989) as by Dr Adder with Mink Mole (see Ferret) is a distant outrider to the sequence. Philip K Dick had read Dr Adder in manuscript and for years advocated it; and it is clear why. Though the novel clearly prefigures the under-soil airlessness of the best urban Cyberpunk, it even more clearly serves as a bridge between the defiant reality-testing Paranoia of Dick's characters and the doomed realpolitiking of the surrendered souls who dwell in post-1984 urban sprawls (see Cities). In each of these convoluted tales, set in a devastated Somme-like Near-Future America, Jeter's characters seem to vacillate between the sf traditions of resistance and cyberpunk quietism. In worlds like these, the intermittent flashes of sf imagery or content are unlasting consolations.
[...]
Much of his later work has consisted of Sharecrop contributions to various proprietorial worlds, including Alien Nation, Star Trek, Star Wars [for titles see Checklist]; of some interest in this output are his Ties – they are also in a sense Sequels by Another Hand – to the film Blade Runner (1982), comprising Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996) and Blade Runner 4: Eye & Talon (2000), and making use of some original Philip K Dick material. The sense of ebbing enthusiasm generated by these various Ties is not markedly altered by Jeter's most recent singleton, Noir (1998), a Cyberpunk novel whose detective protagonist's main job is killing copyright violators so that their still-living spinal cords may be incorporated into hi-fi system cables; the irreality of this concept, and the bad-joke names that proliferate throughout, are somewhat stiffened up by the constant interactive presence of the already dead, a Philip K Dick effect, as filtered through Jeter's own intensely florid sensibility. [JC]
I may as well go off topic from cables (but at least on topic to the post) and mention the excellent Blade Runner video game, which had a compatibility re-release and is currently on sale for a couple bucks.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678420/Blade_Runner_Enha...
A slightly odd review: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vAmXzVuFEoA
I still see commenters claiming that better cables yield better digital images even after you made this statement. Digital signals usually have some sort of error correction and it’s an all or nothing deal with digital.
It’s technically not an all or nothing deal with hdmi/dvi. That is to say that bit errors do indeed manifest as image artifacts, though normally imperceptible. I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio, so they naturally assume that video would be the same. But that is not quite true. For one thing there weren’t cheap chips that could do that at gbps data rates when DVI standard was first created. It was not until DisplayPort 1.4 that they added optional FEC. This is required because a bit error in a compressed stream would manifest as an entire macroblock busting, which affects potentially a large pixel area and multiple frames.
All that being said it’s unusual to find a cable that is both clean enough to do the handshake and keep sync but noisy enough to give you visible snow. So it’s still quite true that practically speaking, yes, it’s usually an all or nothing deal. Cable quality can and does matter though. I was a BlueJeans customer for a long time before the brief Monster spat, but it endeared them to me, and I still try to buy from them when I need to buy a cable I need to be absolutely sure of.
> I think some people understand that error correction is normally present in digital audio
The only such error correction I'm aware of is when reading data from a CD, which at this point is a tiny part of digital audio. Is there something I'm missing?
most digital signaling has error correction. pcie,SSDs, Ethernet etc
Not much of which is directly connected to digital audio as a specific thing, however.
Error detection is present in S/PDIF PCM (including when transported on hdmi) and is also an inherent byproduct of most audio codecs when a digital bitstream is being used, which is normally the case today.
FEC and other types of error correction or recovery is ubiquitous in wireless audio and communications applications including phone calls, Bluetooth, VoIP, wireless microphones, and digital radio. Responsibility for the error correction is sometimes part of the underlying transport mechanism and sometimes incorporated directly into the codec. Encryption & privacy requirements for audio also mean that we solved these problems long ago. IIRC that the WWII SIGSALY encrypted telephone between the US and UK required and implemented error correction.
I guess being too close to the DAW-space, I tend not to think about codecs. Digital audio to me is conceptually "pure" PCM (or DSD), and most things that deals with that format do not do error correction that I can think of. S/PDIF is good counter-example, and possibly (for similar reasons) ADAT might be as well.
By contrast, most audio-over-IP formats do not (they rely on the IP-level checks).
Anyway, thanks for pointing out the rather important world filled with codecs that we actually live in.
In your DAW world, AES/EBU transport parity bit corrects most single bit errors as well. It’s a testament to the comprehensive handling of the issue that you as a professional do not need to do much thinking about the problem. Point is still that audio bit errors are historically accounted for due to the obvious consequences of a discontinuity. This persists, often with layers of redundancy, despite that they rarely occur. Video bit errors, not so much
> it’s an all or nothing deal with digital.
That's not been my experience with hdmi or dvi. Bad cables or bad connections can result in artifacts in the display. Sometimes bad cables can result in difficulty negotiating but a good result if negotiate succeeds. Bad cables can result in frequent dropouts as the signal quality varies around the threshold.
Differences in cable construction may lead to more or less longevity in difficult environments: frequent connection cycles, movement in the cable, heat/humidity/other environmental stuff, tight bends, etc.
Certainly, once you reliably meet the threshold SNR for accurate reception, a better cable doesn't help much.
Does that need oxygen free, cold extruded in zero-g cables? No. But a well made cable is likely to last longer in challenging environments.
Just checked and the first item that garbage dump that is Amazon advertises is an HDMI cable that’s faster and provides a better picture than others.
OK, the whole "I am a lawyer" was next-levelled by this closing sentence: "Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."
I always go with the short 1) excitement about going to court and 2) that I don't really care what it costs.
So I clicked the first link to read about the actual claim, and I was floored by the author bio at the bottom: "Clint Deboer was terminated from Audioholics for misconduct on April 4th, 2014. He no longer represents Audioholics in any fashion."
Gotta wonder how bad you gotta screw up to have your byline on every article you wrote permanently set to that.
Sounds like a case of sour grapes, on the part of Audioholics.
He seems to have done fairly well for himself, since then.
It's really hard to tell without more detail! I tried doing a bit of digging, but he was a really early staffer to join Audioholics, and was editor-in-chief when he was fired. He's editor-in-chief of another site now, which it looks like he founded. You probably have to do something pretty bad to get publicly fired for cause when you were the editor-in-chief, and him having a new site he made himself isn't exactly an assurance of innocence either. Just... kinda a wild random footnote on a link on an article from over a decade ago.
I think the answer is that he set up another site called Audiogurus that was advertising itself as being "Audioholics store". This didn't go over well. Here's an article about that hints at it: https://www.audioholics.com/news/audioholics-e-store-name-ch...
And here's a thread about it, which is admittedly hard to read because the "Audioholics" has been replaced the words "Bad Robot": https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/bad-robot.9451...
From a bunch of digging it appears that, perhaps, Clint set up/joined some sites that were similar enough to his employers, without telling them, and when they found out they took that as him trying to siphon users off of their site, and fired him.
If this is true, whether that was wrong of Clint to do or not would depend on his contract.
at least they kept the articles up. I was pleasantly surprised that that ancient link still worked !
Also gotta wonder if he might have sent a cease and desist about that bio.
In my head canon Monster Cables pivoted to become Monster Energy and justified it to shareholders as 'we're still in the business of getting people wired'
It was this story that clued me into BJC as an entity in the first place. Gladly shelled out a couple hundred bucks for solidly-built custom speaker interconnects a few years later with them, and have zero regrets.
As far as legal tactics go, I’m very sympathetic to his position and wish more folks would fight to the finish instead of settling for nuisance values.
After working with audio professionally I've developed a strong antipathy towards a lot of the audiophile industry. BJC has good prices and seem very legit in my eyes. The pricing seems to reflect actual production costs and not mumbo jumbo alignment in the copper fields...
That’s my take as well. They used high quality cables from Belden when I bought mine, not some cheap Chinese knockoff. They’re also not focused on nonsense like “ethernet regenerators” for audio signals or “HDMI cleaners” for video.
They’re just good, simple, solidly built cables that fulfill their intended functions. No snake oil, no BS. 10/10 will buy again when I’ve got a home and a rack for a bunch of fixed-length custom cabling.
I remember buying audio gear (think receiver, amplifier, cd player) and being the focus of the upsell for 2-5x more expensive monster cables.
Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there, and seeing the young sales guy pause and then "get it". And I got the (relatively) cheap cables.
Also speaker wire. You can get perfectly good copper cables for less, probably in a thicker gauge wire.
> Once I patiently explained that a cable shouldn't matter for digital as long as the bits got there.
Emphasis mine.
As someone that sold AV equipment, including cables, in the late ‘00s / early ‘10s, nerds that misunderstood the nuances of this were the single worst group of customers to work with.
You could see them coming a mile away. By the time “gold-plated HDMI cables are a scam” gets down to their level of pseudo-intellect, it becomes “all cables with the same physical connectors are the same”. Patently untrue, and 99.9% of the time they won’t have any of it. Some of the most snide, belittling, insulting shit ever sneered at me in a professional context has been from some socks-and-sandals nerd practically accusing me of genocide because I dare suggested that the cheapest HDMI cable on the shelf explicitly doesn’t support whatever insanely expensive TV, blu-ray player, or whatever else, that they’ve purchased.
15+ years later, purchasing the ‘right’ HDMI cable is if anything a more Byzantine process. Made worse by the fact that any conversation on the topic inevitably has at last one person butting in to say “they’re all just cables bro aha”.
I discovered exactly this the hard way when I got my Blu-ray UltraHD setup.
The included cable wasn't long enough so I bought a new one that I thought looked good, came home and didn't work right.
That's when I discovered not all HDMI cables are the same, and I had to check supported bandwidth.
Sadly the cheapest cable I could find in town that supported my needs were... Monster Cable.
Except 99 times out of 100 it was an attempt at an unnecessary, scammy upsell to a high margin cable, when the cheap one would and did do just as well.
People frequently did try to claim you would get deeper reds and better blacks and all sorts of audiophile-grade bullshit by spending that extra hundred dollars on magic cables.
While you feel you might have been knowledgeable and honest in intent, the retail electronics industry as a whole is filled with a heady mix of ignorance and profiteering, to the detriment of customers. They’re almost always better served by grabbing cables from an online vendor after leaving the store.
And that’s if the devices they buy don’t already come with a perfectly good HDMI cable, which most do now.
My side-by-side, A/B comparison of monoprice RCA/coaxial cables and higher-end RCA cables revealed a clearly audible difference. Blew me away. I realize HDMI works differently, though, and there is some preposterous snake oil in the world of cables, which BJC admirably fights, partly through their superb articles.
I wish HDMI would die as a standard. The TV folk won't that happen though, controlling HDMI allows them to control the ecosystem by extension.
Would be nice if the EU could step in an make DisplayPort the required connection and protocol like they did for the USB-C port for charging.
> Would be nice if the EU could step in an make DisplayPort the required connection and protocol like they did for the USB-C port for charging.
We had it, it was called SCART.
Especially since the HDMI people have made open-source video drivers effectively impossible.
Yes, SDI is far superior
I just fo to monoprice and buy whatever clear bag they sell. Network, usb, dp, HDMI, whatever. It works. Every time.
I even had their HDMI to 2xCat6 cable bridge, that worked fine with, you guessed it, monoprice cat6. Dozens of yards.
Maybe I've just gotten lucky buying cheap commodity cables.
> as long as the bits got there.
Let me just clarify that this was really not something outside the range of common sense.
I recall it was merely overpriced but decent $29 cables vs $129 monster cables. This was pre-hdmi probably 2000 or earlier and it was at the Good Guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Guys_(American_company)
That said, yeah hdmi and say 4k is confusing. Thank goodness for unconfusing standards like USB-C. (kidding!)
Reminds me of when Caterpillar (trucks+tractors) sued Cat and Cloud Coffee (coffee) in Santa Cruz for trademark infringement.
https://www.ksbw.com/article/cat-and-cloud-coffee-in-santa-c...
I heard a story about the CEO of Maxim Integrated complaining about Maxim Magazine and wanting to sue them. The lawyer got a box of chips and a magazine, opened to the centerfold, and said "no one's confusing this for that."
a source here would be amazing
What happened? This is reporting on the first round but I can't find a follow-up on how things went. Did Caterpillar back down or did Cat and Cloud lose their apparel trademark?
A quick google seems to indicate that they are still doing business under that same name.
https://catandcloud.com/
Yah but it was only the apparel side that Caterpillar threatened, so they may have won or given up and stopped selling clothes. Looking at their online store they don't have anything with Cat printed on it right now.
Seems to have just faded away. Their name is the same.
It's not that they picked the wrong guy to threaten - it's just that this particular one won't work out for Monster. No worries, on to the next. If 1 guy out of 100 fights back, and then you just leave that one alone, you're still a big winner.
Yeah, the title made me assume that he won a countersuit or got the company fined or something.
In reality, he just sent them a slightly-snarky response to their flimsy cease-and-desist, and they decided not to go forward with a lawsuit, which is probably how it would have played out anyway.
I just shared this story with friends, and one of them, a musician, says he will now never again buy monster cables even though they are thought of the best quality. So there is a negative outcome of this to the company.
You have to wonder what it is with companies having “monster” in their names that makes them such monsters.
This story reminded me of the multi-year battle by Monster energy going after MonsterFishKeepers.com
https://reefbuilders.com/2016/03/01/monster-fish-keepers-win...
Monster cables went after Monster Mini Golf rather than the categorically obvious option of advertizing on their go-karts or whatever.
Previously, monster cable vs. using a coat hanger for a speaker wire.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&channel=ent...
The reviews on the cables in question (Blue Jeans Cable) are wild. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RYLMXICLLSJWC?ASI...
"Music was much more open with plenty of air around the instruments. Imaging was superb - greatly improved over previous cables that I used. The depth was substantially improved with great instrumental recognition from front to rear. In other words, the speakers managed to disappear and only the performances were remaining."
"I had for the first time, heard tones and instruments that were previously hidden with other cables. Music sounded more alive - had more presence. Brass instruments now had a bite (yet with a rich, non-strident tone) that sounded as if you were there."
"The bass tones improved dramatically, taking on a fuller (tighter with less bloat) than I had remembered with previous cables"
I'd love to see how these people do with a double blind setup.
Say what you want about audiophiles, one of their skills is definitely written expression (at least for a non native).
Welcome to the world of audiophiles.
This kind of hyperbole for the magical powers bestowed by even the smallest (or most dubious) accessories is a source of unending amusement for me, if it wasn't so foolish.
My favorite quote:
Music lovers buy hifi systems to listen to their music.
Audiophiles buy music to listen to their hifi systems.
Do you mean to imply that my quantum rocks (also useful for reiki) are pseudoscience?
to be fair, monster cables do beat coat hangers these days
(the only coat hangers i've seen lately are plastic or wood)
I was once co-head of a tech company that had an "i" in the title. Like a bajillion other companies our logo was basically just the company's name in a particular font and we turned the dot above the "i" into a little circle in a different colour. So far so not very surprising.
A few months in we got a cease-and-desist from a company who claimed (and I'm not making this up) to have a trademark on the idea of making the dot of an "i" into a little circle in a different colour, and said that the trade dress of our logo was infringing because their logo was just their company name in a (different) font with the dot on the "i" being a circle in a different colour.
I wrote back and asked them to clarify that it was their contention that that was a trademark and making it very clear I would fight it and we had no intention of changing anything. They disappeared.
It's really important not to feed this nonsense by caving to the trolls.
Blue Jeans Cable is outstanding, and an oasis of sanity and competence in an audiophile market saturated with snake oil peddlers.
Ha, I love that this is about Blue Jeans Cables. I actually just bought some of their stuff this week-- really incredibly well made cables. Their website looks like it hasn't been updated in the 90s, which leads me to believe that cable quality and website quality are inversely correlated.
All bullies are cowards.
Agreed.
Bschmidt###... who hurt you? Why is this your life?
I removed the numbers and looked up that username to try and figure out what was going on, but it seems to be an empty account from 2010.
I feel sad for the person if they think this is the best use of their time.
Re about "nobody sees these", only registered users with half a brain see them, and they're the ones who can easily filter out people acting like a child with nothing better to do. It's people not logged in who don't have "show dead" enabled that don't see it.
Nice dig at the supreme court on their payments page. Kurt hasn't lost his mojo.
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/paymentinfo.htm
When I worked at Best Buy in the late 90's, we were trained on the virtues of Monster AV cables, which they pushed because they were an accessory with high margins. I recall one time when a sales manager cut open a cheaper version of some cables and discussed how it had less wiring and insulation, which I think he did with Monster cable to show the drastic difference. I think they had like 3 levels of quality, the cheap stuff, the mid-grade stuff and Monster. Even though I worked there I only ever bought the mid-grade because the quality to price ratio was great.
I bought a pair of utterly ludicrous Monster stereo speaker cables off eBay a coyotes of decades ago, when I was putting together a home audio system.
Audio stereophile-wise, I could replace them with zip wire (two conductor, twisted 24-gauge cable). But they wouldn't have the neat nylon braided jacket, or shove things out of the way when I'm moving the speakers.
It was stupid but fun to add them to my setup, and now I'm glad I have them.
I also have some interconnect cables from Blue Jeans Cable, that fellow is awesome.
If Monster is suing him, may they burn in court.
>> developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle
I got let out of 2-3 months of jury duty on an asbestos case by saying basically the same thing. Voir dire is fun, particularly if you manage to scare the bejezus out of both sides.
I'm thinking, what are the odds that the president of some boutique audio cable company would be a litigator.
Clearly, 100%
Aw man, how the heck did I miss this back in 2008? I bought some monster cables that year and had I of know about this, I would have declined.
seeing this pugnacious lawyer write an excellent response has me considering buying from blue jeans.
I read the letter and it looked like pretty much the first negotiating position of any lawyer. Regardless of what you think, convince the opposition that you are prepared to litigate to the end of time.
Just speaking as someone who's not a lawyer, but who grew up in a family of lawyers: This isn't so much a negotiating position as a rigorous way of thinking about everything. It's also the default position if e.g. your child asks you to buy them a book, let them sleep over at a friend's house, etc. (Something an ex-girlfriend of mine categorized as "child abuse", whereas I think it was a fantastic education). Cross-examination on a subject doesn't mean an automatic "no". It's more like: If you want to use X amount of personal capital here, to achieve your ends, then persuade me that you're right using logic and proof, not threats or acting out. It's kind of a Jedi mind training, and a wonderful shield against both bullying and idiocy in the wider world. Because at the end of the day, it is a superpower to be a lawyer, or even to think like one.
“You’re increasing the volume of your voice but not the logic of your argument.”
Musicians picked Monster because they were reliable and had an excellent replacement policy not because of brand ego. The Darn Tough of cables at least in terms of policies
So he’s going to aggressively not let them land any punches? Sometimes a bully needs an ass kicking.
I want to be this man when I grow up
Perhaps the coolest way I've ever seen someone say "I'd love to see you try."
Some followup available at https://web.archive.org/web/20080503164740/www.freesoftwarem...
*edit to fix link; in the future, maybe tell me it broke instead of reflexively downvoting
Meh. If this was the wrong guy to threaten, then he would have sued to overturn their design patents. Instead he just told them where they could stick it. That's done all the time.
I've been a fan of blue jeans cables for 15+ years, I'm so glad they are the subject of this post. Blue Jeans just makes high quality stuff for solid prices and no BS.
Good lawyers are expensive because they're worth it.
I don't quite understand the point of litigating businesses in civil court if existential threats are excluded from judgement. What is the reasoning behind a fine being sufficient to incentivize following the law when you can make so much more money not following the law? I also don't understand what the point of shareholders and board members are if they can't be personally held liable for their investments violating civil laws.
What is the fucking rationale behind that? Why must we baby shareholders and be cruel to workers despite the latter providing 100% of society's value?
Is this a rhetorical question? Cause capitalism, everybody loves capitalism.
Has a "...what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you." energy to it.
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What does this add to the conversation?
Noise.
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