Side by Side Comparison
Leon Therimin from Starke, FL
Used to work at Reliable Temps in Starke, Florida. Got called in to do clean-up at Union Cor. Inst. Turns out it was double execution. CO’s had set up two electric chairs, side by side. Wired one with Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket, the other with regular economy duplex outlet. Chairs were set up on parallel circuit. When the warden threw the switch, the lights dimmed, and prisoner A with the economy duplex outlet jerked against the leather straps, broke his leg strap, and died in a cloud of smoke. Inmate B, with Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket, got pushed back in his chair, while his eyes, teeth, one lung, and a lot of blood went in the other direction. The proof is in the pudding. Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket rocks!!!!!
True power fidelity
Spellman Powers from Edison, New Jersey
Excellent value for the money. I paid almost twice as much for two single channel outlets with monophonic power. Now I can get true dual channel stereo power out of ANY line cord with a full 60 Hz per channel. My only complaint is the leakage current in horizontal mode. Without a good set of power corks you can drain all the current out of your wires in a couple of hours. So mount the outlet vertically or if you absolutely need horizontal audio, get yourself a good sponge capacitor and mount between the ground plug and ALL! the speaker magnets.
Wow, there are a bunch of nutty reviews for the product. There is even one which is the old Nigerian Scam.
I really don’t understand why anyone would pay $140 for a receptacle. By looking at those reviews, I think others feel the same way.
#1, you don’t know about audiophools, do you?
It’s like they say … a Phool and his Money are soon parted. The funniest are the folks who spend $$$ on a hi-fi but don’t fix the room, which is like serving a fine wine in a plastic cup. The gear they use in recording studios – to record the music in the first place – is not that expensive these days, but it works because you manage the acoustics of the room as part of the installation.
Cindy McCain swears by this. Bill O’Really comes in clear and near zero spin.
Sounds just as effective as those gold-plated Monster cables. I am sure they do the job of 3-prong electrical outlets, but just do it at 55 times the price. I’ve wired things like this.
I would probably use the orange isolated ground outlets for audiophile quality stuff. Those can be had at less than ten times the price of these special outlets.
Sponge for me too!
The big thing with Monster is that they are mostly correct, there is a difference between a shitty cable and a decent one. It’s easy to demo, all you need is to compare the wire that came out of the box and a set of any decent aftermarket cable.
Where Monster makes their money is that some people will follow the logic “if a $50 cable sounds that much better, a $500 cable has to sound better!” (A similar argument can be made for basic power-conditioning products) Combine that line of argument with cables that look gorgeous and match the expensive gear the person has and you have the basis of a multimillion-dollar business. There’s a reason Noel Lee collects supercars.
Real phlogiston generators are things like Shun Mook pucks that supposedly direct the gear’s ‘Chi’ or some shit like that.
I love this review the outlet is the cheap part.
“Upon initial installation I found, much to my chagrin, that my home and utility company used predominantly sub-par copper wiring, defeating the entire purpose of the gold connections of the 381 unit.
Fortunately for me (but perhaps not all readers), during the recent economic downturn, I invested heavily in Gold Bars, and through substantial effort, have been able to convert these ingots into wire for my home. In addition, I tirelessly (yet successfully) lobbied my congressman and had an additional golden wire tapped deep into the core of my local nuclear reactor.”
Don’t get me wrong there is difference between cheap crap $1 outlets and the industrial grade $6 to $10. But all this oxygen free copper wire gold plated stuff is mostly crap. I just use Lamp cord instead of that Monster cable speaker wire.
My favorite is the $100 Monster HDMI cable. Better not let that digital signal degrade…
It appears they have removed the spoofed reviews. There are only 3 reviews posted now. One of the three is a spoof, which I think will be killed shortly.
There are ways to isolate Electrical to areas in the HOME, at the POWER BOX/Breaker BOX..which are ALLOT cheaper then this.
AS well as a Good UPS with FM cleaning and full spike protection are ALLOT better then this.
Can some explain to me why they always use gold plating on fancy cables? If I remember my high school chemistry/physics correctly, silver is a better conductor than gold.
I wonder if those are gold tabs where they screw into the outlet box?
#12. My guess is it’s because silver tarnishes more quickly than gold does. And oxides aren’t so good conductors as metals are.
So silver solder is OK because the working bit, inside the silver, is never exposed to air.
Almost everyone uses gold against corrosion, and also because it looks really nice.
#12…It’s because gold is more expensive than silver. You don’t see guys going around with 50 lbs. of silver hanging off their necks either.
It is true that gold doesn’t tarnish like silver or copper. But anyone paying $140 for a wall socket doesn’t have a clue about anything science related in the first place, so if you are hustling them, you gotta play up the bling.
#9 tcm, look here:
http://monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10240&cs_id=1024004&p_id=3662&seq=1&format=2
Still gold plated and less than $12 for a six foot HDMI cable.
The Monster cable HDMi is $70 for a four foot. Rip off.
The people that buy these live in a different world than you in the sea of white iPod earbuds. To someone who spends more money on their stereo than their car, $140 is peanuts.
Believe it or not, there are people still out there that actually care about quality music. Who are you to insult their hobby?
#18
i don’t think anyone is insulting audiophiles. i’m a low budget audiphile. i don’t need to get the newest headphones or the best amp but i wait and watch amazon for the one i want. i think what is being insulted are the people that decide one day “i’m gonna be an audiophile” and go out with $30k to bestbuy and tell the salesman to help them spend their money.
#18, Better to spend the money on audio equipment than cabling. I did buy decent earphones for my iPod because I can’t stand iPod earbuds.
Believe it or not, there are people still out there that actually care about quality music. Who are you to insult their hobby?
I don’t think anybody is insulting their hobby, just their lack of intelligence. I’m not convinced that Stereophile is not basically a humor magazine, either.
Their reviews can be very amusing.
“I’m sure even Libertarians would favor the government buying them for every homeowner in the country.”
You don’t actually know any Libertarians, do you?
#20: What you said, especially regarding the intelligence/gullibility of people who swear that tube amplifiers sound soooo much better than amps and receivers built with modern, low noise transistors and ICs. However, if they really want tube amps, it’s a free country.
Getting back to the original subject: gold flashed connectors work very well, but gold is soft, and the gold flashing eventually wears away. Silver also conducts very well, but is harder than gold, and so lasts longer. However, the stereos I had were made with cadmium plated connectors, mostly. The only cables I “upgraded” on were zip cord with thicker multistrand wires than usual. I bought those at an electronic parts store, for much less than Monster cables of the same gauge.
The only rule of thumb is to not buy anything made in communist china.
Leviton brand wall outlets are all chinese, so don’t expect quality or reliability.
Stick to Pass & Seymour american made outlets for example. They may cost you $2.00 each vs. $1.00 each for chinese made but they are quality.