Help I've been Placebo-ed.

Hate to be the party pooper, but Monster Cables are often times looked down-upon as being the "Bose" of cable-makers. They offer some slight improvement to sound quality and clarity, but for a much steeper price than the competition.

The difference you hear going from the Monsters to other higher quality cables is going to be siginificantly less than the difference between the stock interconnects and the Monsters (in my experience). That's not to say there aren't better cables (there are much better cables than Monster Cable), just that the difference in quality will be much slighter than the difference in quality between Monster Cable and stock cables.

As far as the difficulty in removing them, there is no trick. Monster's cables are notoriously hard to remove. It's really difficult to get them off compared to just about any other cable out there, to the point that you have to be careful not to damage you components' jacks.

One brand that I always like to recommend for good sounding, inexpensive (and expensive) cables is Straight Wire. I really like them and they're sort of my go-to brand, but I have not tried any of the budget offerings people like to discuss on these forums and on other boards. Of course, YMMV, but that would be something to check out at least. I'm sure you'll get other recommendations too. Happy listening!

Edit: Aman beat me to the punch, and I tend to agree with his statements. However, if you compare the Monsters to other cables of the same price reputed to be good performers, I think you'll probably find the difference will be greatly diminished as compared to the initial gain you got by switching to the Monsters. Sure they're not built well and they're way overpriced, but they are much better than stock. Then again, I haven't listened to them all that much, and not in the last year or so, so maybe I just don't remember. Anyway, best to see for yourself.

It varies a lot by the model. There are some which are reputed to be pretty decent though the ones I've tried were absolutely terrible sounding. (They also were the ones I learned later have the worst reputation, D'Oh!) You might have one of the good models, if you're curious do some comparisons.

There was a test of cables in Stereophile, and Monster cables were the ones that made the most noticeable difference in the sound. They are designed to alter the signal. It's not placebo. However the difference you're hearing isn't an improvement, unless your system happens to be imbalanced in a direction complementary to the imbalance of monster cables.

See ya
Steve