Home > Consumer Reviews > Monster MP HTS 1600 8-Outlet Stage 2 Home Theater Reference PowerCenter

For an explanation, do a Google Search for "Ten Biggest Lies In Audio" or visit this link: www dot theaudiocritic dot com/downloads/article_1.pdf and scroll to the part where he talks about fancy cables and about power conditioners.

Having surge protection is indeed important, and you can find a decent surge protector with multiple outlets for wire management well under a hundred bucks, with power backup...Belkin makes very good ones with a far more reasonable price to performance ratio, as does TrippLite and American Power Conversion (APC). More like forty to eighty bucks, really. And more than adequate to cover expensive HD TVs and components...don't let those silly salespeople at big-box chains scare you into thinking that you need anything more!

What is complete and shameless SNAKE OIL though, is any claim that a so-called "power conditioner" is somehow going to give you better audio and video quality. Unless you are living in some 200 year old house with 100 year old wiring in the middle of nowhere, there is ZERO scientific basis for these claims: just total sales BS.

My boss got this Monster "PowerCenter" and while it does look kind of cool on his shelf with all the flashing lights and LED numbers, we did an audio and video comparison with a cheap $30 surge protector (no backup power supply) and guess what? Identical sound and video. He kept the Monster unit though, since he's filthy rich and likes cool-looking gadgets. But he had to admit that I was dead right.

Also, the instruction booklet that comes with this unit is entirely useless. It's basically an advertising brochure telling you how great Monster is as a company, as a way of getting you to buy more Monster products. It doesn't bother to even tell you simple things like should you keep this unit turned on all the time, or turn it on only when you're using your HT system. It also doesn't explain the different groups of power outlets on the back, i.e. why there are even different groupings at all and what each grouping actually does differently.

Monster seems to work on the same marketing principle as Bose: produce sleek-looking products of dubious quality that are ridiculously overpriced and overhyped, counting on the average Joe to naively believe that he's getting what he's paying up the nose for, and invest tons of money on saturation advertising in order to establish name-brand recognition.

In general, don't get snookered by the whole Monster scam. Same with their fancy cables which big-box electronics stores love to push---generic cables from Walmart and Home Depot will do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost. Spend the savings on better electronics (again, other than the TVs, you can find much better components buying online and especially from Internet-direct manufacturers) and actual DVDs and CDs.

Great places to do your research and get advice would be online discussion groups like AVS Forum, Ecoustics, and hometheaterforum dot com. Oh, and the other rule of thumb: never, ever buy Bose. Do your homework and you'll find out why very quickly and clearly.

here is an easy way to test to see if the filter actually works.

take a noise detector, plug it in to your 19.99 walmart surge protector

then do the same on the monster power unit. it will throw you back.

people are talking bout how they dont see a picture or sound quality difference.

i'll give you another way to test this too.

take a CD and put it in your DVD or CD player, turn up the sound and wait for the tracks to change. during the switch from one track to the next there will be silent moment that is actually not silent. static noises. buzzing noises. yeh.. if your equipment was plugged into a monster power center with the clean power, it will be silent. the way its supposed to be.

common sense is. fluctuations/noise in your power source is bad for your equipments, decreased life span of products and more chances of small surges going through your system without you even knowing about it.

if you decide to keep the 19.99 wal-mart powerstrip on your 5000 dollar system. you go right ahead. but for those smart people out there with common sense. get a proper powercenter with proper amount of joules for your equipments

I went back and forth deciding whether the monster power 1600 was worth the money. I researched the pros and cons for over a month and was glad I purchased it to protect my new Samsung lcd flat screen. I definitely noticed a cleaner clearer picture when I ran the cable line through the component. The price on Amazon made it a worthwhile investment.

I bought this unit just as a piece of mind. I have over $10k in electronic devices connected to this Power Center. So far, I have not noticed an improvement in sound or video, but it sure looks cool!

I got this as a Christmas gift a full year ago from my girlfriend - I told her it would protect my components & make them perform better, and always be a reminder of her : ) It cleaned up some static through the cable line & now that I'm on satellite it performs great isolating the EMI interference the DirecTV & DishNet boxes put into the line. Sound quality is awesome with this in place -no power loss or anything, just performance! Definitely recommended & I would buy again - just this time a bigger one with more outlets (this one has 8) for my growing collection of components. Monster Power is the best!