Jamz3k

Can anyone recommend to me a place were I can buy reasonablely cheap but semi-decent cables such as HDMI's/Opticals/Co-axials preferablely in small quantities.

I do know a few local companies but I doubt my current job would last long if my boss found me going to his suppliers and buying direct from them.

corradoboy

http://www.kenable.co.uk/

Dr Hu

Videk.....

or i've bought AV cables in the past from eBay stores.... all been ok.

Also CPC (who are actually Farnell in disguise) are good too.
But be prepared to be bombarded with sales catalogues every sat morning for 12 months if you buy off CPC.

Don't you work in a Hi-Fi store?.... are you looking to go 'sssshh... don't buy these overpriced Monster cables....(opens jacket) take a look at these beauty's at half the price and twice the length'

Jamz3k

Yes I do work in a HiFi shop but at the moment I've been doing quite a few home setups for customers in my own time. 9 times out of 10 I will need a random cable or 3 due to the customer pulling a blu-ray player/dvd recorder out of their *** that they didn't tell me needed fitting when i ask them if they have all the required cables. Having my own cables that I cream off a good bit of profit for would help with a few bills.

Cables during installs is pretty much a license to print money and I as of yet don't have that license!

Cheers guys will check out those sites

mickywrx

iTrader: (29)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280689753728#ht_1111wt_1139

Bought that 5m HDMI cable from the above, cost £3.25 delivered. Quality is spot on in my opinion, you may think otherwise.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Amazon?


I've seen how much 'Cambridge Audio' cables are in the shop....nearly made me pass out. And quality doesn't seem that much btter than the 'Monster' cable found at the likes of Currys etc.

Whats the mark up on that stuff?

subaruturbo_18

My lecturer at Uni (i study audio engineering) had a £300 1 metre long cable made by monster. I cannot remember what type of cable it was, i want to say XLR.

He also had a cable which was home made, and when i say home made, he wanted to makesure it was 'badly made' so he taught his mum how to solder in 5 minutes and had her make the cable.

They were both compared, in a professional studio (owned by my lecturer) and fully tested, and only if really pushed could they tell a slight difference, but that was debatable and that was with sound engineers hearing. Interesting how many people will go and buy ridiculously overpriced cables when they make basically no difference!

corradoboy

In the days of analogue and RF cabling then there was a benefit to be found. In my old Cyrus/Mission system I could easily tell the difference between different interconnects and speaker cables. You could still bag a bargain, with Tandy 'Gold Audio Patch Cord' at £6 being a superb interconnect for the money, and used on all my less important sources (tuner, tape deck). However, my Audioquest Quartz Hyperlitz III between my CDP and amp was outstanding, and my Mission solid core bi-wire is still in service after 20 years, along with my 764i speakers.

Now we have digital cabling, there is no benefit to having expensive wires. I use £1 HDMI's in my current AV set-up and having tested a couple of these Monster cables that mates have been suckered into, remain smug in the knowledge that I didn't get conned.

Jaybird-UK

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech.../tests/4235717

I bought some nice HDMI cables off Amazon, I think it's still worth avoiding the £1.99 nasty cables just for build quality of the plugs.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The thing is, if you dissect the average monster branded cable, you will find the garde of metal and crimp quality no better than a cheapo lead.

That's the problem with moulded plugs...you can't pop off the cover as see how well the 15yr old Chinese factory worker has crimped it. Nor see how good the shielding is, or the thickness of the conductors. And the shielding on some alleged high quality branded cable is really terrible.

But of course because it has nice silicone/braided insulation and goldplated connectors (or just zinc passified gold coloured anodising) and put in a nice box with a big price tag, people are duped into thinking its good quality stuff, when its just mutton dressed as lamb.

I had a 'mare sorting out some real decent quality satelite coax cable (long cable run in a weak signal area for the 2D transponder). Basically most of the cable I could get said it conformed, but when stripping back the ends, the quality just wasn't there (wafer thin foil, not much braid, aluminium instead of copper etc). In the end I actually bought a whole 250metre drum off a wholesaler. The brand was unknown to me (Bieffe), but it did have the data sheets confirming the signal loss over a 100metre cable run exceed that set out by the CAI for WF100 type cable, and as it was designed for underground installation, its quality/durability was far better than anything I could get from a retail outlet or electrical trade counter (CEF etc).

Myles

iTrader: (40)

I like Mark Grant cables,http://markgrantcables.co.uk/shop/ in the scheme of things they are not expensive. Depends on your pocket money really. As Ali-B said, its nice to be able to split the plugs to see the quality of the work.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Isnt a HDMI cable digital and either works or doesnt, i.e. either loses data or doesnt ?

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

No quite J4CKO: It can lose 'some data' but if its one bit lost in say, every million bits per second, you wouldn't notice and the AV equipment will self correct as they have a degree of error correction ability.

Its like digital terrestrial TV; My kitchen picks up TV on a coat hanger, on analogue teh picture is grainy, buzzy, shadows, basically a mess. But on digital the quality is nigh on perfect, even though the signal is utter rubbish, due to the inferior aerial. One could compare the home made aerial to that of a poor quality cable. The bad signal puts more pressure on the equipments's ability to clean up and correct a bad signal. Its only when it gets really bad does it stop working entirely.

The more lost bits will cause more extrapolation of the lost/corrupted data. So yes they can affect quality to a degree. But its very dependant on the quality of the equipment used, as some are better at sorting out things out. (and thats not really brand specific; either...Some Panny and Sonys have model a bit of wobbly over HDMI with a bad cable whereas LG and Samsung seem OK, but sometimes its the other way round). Just like I could plug in another telly into my kitchen and find it won't work at all. I've had this with using Sky boxes in Spain to get British TV (weak signal area).

Most problems I think stem from crosstalk from poor sheilding and equipment grounding etc. Certainly this was often the case with regards to picture quality on Scart leads (causing banding etc).

Although I have got background hiss via PCM audio on a defective fibre optic lead. God knows what was going on there.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Ok, makes sense but even a cheapo hdmi produces a superb picture for a quid, the law of diminishing returns applies here like in no other circumstance, a £40 cable wont be 40 times better, in fact I cant see any difference.

Jamz3k

Proves nothing more than Monster make over priced, ****e cables. You don't need a studio, I could have told you that in the first place.

If your lecturer can't find a difference in analogue audio cables, his professional studio must be seriously ****.

Rapid17

Have a read of this article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-100-ones.html

Geoff.

Jamz3k

I really think we're going off on a tangent here, I asked for somewhere to get cheap cables. Not peoples opinions of cables. There are plenty of threads already about this argument and I'm sick of reading links to stories with no credibility or fact behind them.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

I have bought some good quality cables from ebay for pennies compared to other companies. Just make sure if your after hdmi you get 1.4a so you know it will do good quality. I tend to get the ones around about £10 and they are really good quality

I recently paid £9 for a 10m 1.4a hdmi cable and its as good as quality as a £30 cable I bought from Maplins which was only 5m long and all the optical cables i seem to buy are far better quality than say a £50 cable from comet

mickywrx

iTrader: (29)

Post number 5.

Although, you being in the trade, you should know where to get things cheaper.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

This is the shop I bought my last cable from, I'm going to buy a few more from them soom as I need three optical cables and three hdmi ones

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Strata-Medi...=p4634.c0.m322

Jamz3k

As pointed out, I do know where to get cheap ones. I just can't use them.

mickywrx

iTrader: (29)

Well then, just use bloody Ebay!