Speaker Cables: Monster/Blue Jeans (or) any other? Need your suggestion.

Friends,

This is my first post on this forum.Recently I came to know about this forum and I am really happy about this.

I am seeking your help to buy a good speaker & sub woofer cables.I am in USA now.I have gone thru so many reviews and identified Kimber,Audioquest are one of the finest speaker cables.But I feel the price is exceeding my budget.So I talked to Circuit city and Best Buy people. They recommened me Monster cables and also one of my American friend suggested me Blue jeans cable. I am in dilemmo between Monster and Blue Jeans.I want your opinions on these two and also

1.I want to know wheather this cables are available in India for the same (or) +25% margin Indian price?.
(OR)
2.Can we get similar quality cables in Indian local market?...

Please kindly provide me your experience and ideas.

(My budget is $250 for cables)

I am coming back to India on August 1st week.So, before July end I have to come for a decision.

The following are the details of my future Home Theater.

POLK RM6880 Speakers (5.1 system)
Onkyo TX-SR674 Receiver
Oppo DV-980H DVD Player
(I may buy Sony/Samsung 32 Inch HDTV after coming back to India)

Looking forward to your suggestions.

Thanks
Pandiyan

Hi
Welcome to the forum. If you have not already realised by now (from your search on various forums), there is no magic formula for evaluation of cables. Without you trying it out in your system its very hard to say that one is going to be better (for you) than the other. Cables more than most other components have a lot to do with amp, speaker synergy. Monster (by far), Kimber and Audioquest are large cable companies, dont know if I would call them the best.
If I had to take a guess I would go with Blue Jean. I dont know if its available here. Other budget cables in the US are bettercables. A simple search on the web shows me that your speaker system is $500/-. I think $250 is way too much to spend on cables. You would be better off buying regular speaker cable in radio shack, best buy, etc or you could buy it in India too for pretty much the same price. You could spend that additional $200 or so on a better receiver or speaker package.
We will soon be carrying the Audio Art cable line (samples should be here this week), you can check out the reviews on their website. Our price will be well within 25% of US pricing. We will be glad to sell it to you , however you would be better off spending your money on some other component.

cheers
Sridhar@arnsystems.com

Monster cables are pretty expensive. Since ur in US suggesting you to visit monoprice.com. They are the OEM's for most of the cable companies. You can get good quality cables in cheap prices. I hardly find any difference when i replaced my Monster 1000HD HDMi cable with a cable which i brought from monoprice. Their build quality is very good.

Still if u r so particular about monster cables rpam around in bestbuy, circuitcity, radioshack. You can find lot of open items in cables... Still i recommed cables from monoprice....

+1 for Blue Jeans, else monoprice. Monster should not be even mentioned in the same sentence as the others...

You should be able to get 20-30% off on US retail for most speaker cables.
Since you're in the US, I would recommend you check audiogon.com for deals. You can also try usedcable.com (speak with Mr. Robert Stein) - they have an extensive cable library and you can get some great deals on preowned/certified cables.

I think the decent cheap MX Gold cables should do for that setup. No point in spending any more.

keep the cables under 15% of the total cost of your system. Normally 10% is adequate.
Imagine installing state of the art alloy rims on a Ambassador car. Neither will they increase the top speed nor will they improve the handling to a great deal. think about it!!!

Friends ,

Thx a lot for your wonderful replies.After seeing all your replies I have decided to go for Monoprice cables.I also gone thru their website and saw the feedbacks from various peoples.It looks very impressive.

I need another suggestion from you guys.Oppo 980 model does not have DTS decoder.It has only Dolby Digital Surround EX decoding.

Will it be a problem for hearing DTS sound track from DVD's?..What should I do to get DTS decoder?..(or) Can I go for Oppo 981?..it also have a drawback..It doesn't have component output.

For me Sound is very Important then picture.I am little bit confused about this..your Suggestions are very welcome..

Thanks..
Pandiyan

thank god you din't buy monster.....Heard and read good things about both Bluejeans and monoprice either should do fine....

... Only a Bose Customer should buy monster since both these companies work on the same principle of ripping off end users.

Kams:

The Onkyo 674 does DTS decoding. So if you output the sound in Raw format from the Opp0 980 to the Onkyo, you should be fine. Use an HDMI or optical fibre cable for this.

If you have not already purchased the speaker cables, I would suggest you look at DAC cables in India. They have won awards and you can get a 50 meter speaker cable at about 100$.