Monster16 AWG Speaker Wire: Advanced Performance XP Speaker Cable 50 FT Spool with Oxygen Free Audio Wire Construction (OFC) - Easy to Strip & Install Speaker Cables

Been using monster cables for years. Always a great product. Five stars

Glad Monster is still in business...matches wire I bought 15 years ago. Works great.

I've been using Monster cables and the speaker wire since 2002. The Monster XP 16 awg wire is functionally almost unchanged. The copper looks identical with the same strand size, insulation core and thickness as wire I still have from back then. the color of the insulation sleeve is redder and the inner sleeve is much more slick and comes freely from the insulation layer than that of the wires before. So cutting and stripping is a little easier, but it can shift the entire wire inside of short runs if not careful. The 2 wires are shaped in square and triangular wire so you can tell the difference along with only one side is printed on. Makes for easy positive/negative identification.Is the value there? It is for guaranteed ratings and consistent quality. Sadly Monster no long makes their in wall rated wire since marks for rating, gauge and certification are important for housing inspections and meeting code. I've seen many complain about the AB wiring not having the ratings printed so they don't meet the inspection standards. But if that isn't important there is less expensive pure copper wire out there, but I haven't seen a lot of long lasting brands out there holding the same record and consistency so I am willing to pay a little extra to know what I'm getting.

The cable had this plastic stuff around so I couldn't even use it. Waste of money for sure

Gone are the days of ridiculously overpriced Monster cable products accompanied by ridiculous performance claims. In contrast this cable is reasonably priced and in line even with some of the bargain brands for its quality. The shielding is nice and not janky, wire lays flat, color is nice too.. About the only thing I could demerit is that it is somewhat difficult to strip the ends with the inner collar. As for sound, unless you cable is really poor or just is too small to carry the current required the distance you need you should be fine. If you are doing 1000w RMS and over 20ft runs maybe this cable is too high gauged, in any normal audiophile system this cable terminated with decent banana plugs will suit nearly anyone..

Speaker wire isn’t the most exciting thing to review. With that, I’ll give it a try. This wire works well and does the job. It’s easy to work with and seems durable. I haven’t noticed a difference in sound quality vs other wire brands, but I like the color of this and the copper seems to be of decent quality. I’m using this to power a couple of outdoor speakers, running off a small 80 watt amp. I am ALSO using these to power dual 10” shallow subs in my truck, running off a 1000 watt A class amplifier as well. So hey, both ends of the spectrum

Normally I hate writing bad reviews but I was actually looking forward to writing this one for all the anger and stress this speaker wire put me though.Normally Monster brand audio accessories are highly rated and even higher priced. I've never been one to buy the hype in some accessories but do typically find that you more often get what you pay for. With that said this is actually a good price point for a Monster brand spool of speaker wire. Once it is all hooked up they provide good sound. I won't say great sound because there are SO MANY different things that can influence sound and I by no means have a super expensive audiophile setup. I am using this wire to connect two Polk Audio bookshelf speakers to a Sony 2.1 stereo receiver hooked up to a turn table. I can't imagine this speak wire provided any better sound than a cheaper -- easier to use -- spool of wire.Speaking of ease of use, you won't find that here! This wire caused me so much anger and frustration I can barely contain myself in explaining how hot I was trying to strip this wire. Setting up two speakers should have taken me all of 15 minutes but I sat an the floor for over an hour cursing Monster and this horrible wire! The semi transparent red wire is thick but does separate easily. There is no indication whatsoever of positive or negative print on the wire at all. Usually you see a bunch of positive plus signs printed every few inches so you can be sure you're hooking up the wires properly, but that is not the case here. There is some sort of extremely feint white writing on one of the wires but it is incredibly difficult to see and is printed so infrequently it's ridiculous.I have no idea what a "magnetic flux tube" is but I call it an "annoying piece of plastic that makes twisting wire difficult". Guess that wasn't as cool sounding. I have no idea what it is or what it is supposed to do but what it actually does is make twisting the wire in your fingers very difficult as it gets caught up in the stranded wire.The biggest problem is the internal sheathing inside the red plastic sheathing. It makes stripping the wire excruciatingly difficult. It is a very thick plastic and does NOT split or separate easily and I'm using quality wire strippers. This is 16AWG but I had to end up using the 18 or even 20 stranded stripping holes just to cut through the plastic! I used a total of three different wire strippers so it is not my strippers. When you try to just use the stripper as usual it grips the internal sheathing and pulls and pulls and pulls. It is so difficult to cut! It pulls so hard that it actually pulls the wire through the red sheathing causing you to end up with way too much wire on one end and negative wire on the opposite end. To combat this I tried holding the wire with one pair of strippers and stripping with another pair but that just split the whole thing and caused exposed wire. Not good. I was not able to get any consistency when stripping this wire. Not once was it every easy to strip but every time resulted in split wire, cut wires, exposed wire, destroyed sheathing, bent or crimped wires, and so much frustration. I ended up throwing away so much speaker wire it is insane. I was left with a pile full of tiny split ends, snipped plastic tubing, torn and blown wire, tiny invisible strands of wire all over the floor surrounded by pliers, wire strippers, and sweat! Well over an hour to hook up two speakers?!?!At the time of this writing there are only two other reviews and they both rated this 5-stars. I would sure love to see those other two reviewers strip their wires because I have no idea what they did, or what I may be doing wrong. Not much science to stripping wires and I have worked with electrical and audio wiring all my life; this is by no means my first time doing this. I absolutely cannot recommend this to you unless you're looking for a means to get so frustrated and angry that you take your aggression out in a workout or something. Just a horrible time consuming frustrating waste of my time working with this speaker wire.