XLR interconnects?

Lacee - what you said about Europeans being ahead of US in HDTV having it for years is not exactly true.

First standard program (other than test transmissions) HDTV transmission in Europe happened in January 2004.

I bought my HDTV TV in 2001/2002 and since then I had HDTV only (whole day) broadcast on CH 11-1 (PBS) plus other channels about 50% HDTV. It is more than 3 years before Europe and as I mentioned HDTV is broadcast over the air here.

It has nothing to do with XLR cables - subject of this thread - sorry Darrenmc

I shouldn't have said that the Europeans had HDTV before North America.
What I meant to say was that the European television transmission technology was superior to ours.
The signal was clearer and cleaner in most of the modern Euro countries than what we ever had in North America prior to HDTV.
If you had travelled there you would know what I mean.

And I am old, 60 years old,and I have been in this hobby for almost 40 years, so there are a lot of things that aren't news to me, but I know there is much to be learned also.

I think there are better connectors than XLR,and in my experience the differences in quality of XLRs from Soundcraft to Neutrik to Xhadow is quite evident.

BNC would be better, and sraight soldered connections the best.
How do I know?
Because I direct solder most of the time.

The more connectors you get rid of the better.

By the way, they are re-releasing the original Beatles catalog from the original master mono English tapes.
When they come out have a listen and you'll know what I have been talking about.

I am not a vintage junkie, but some things just haven't really been surpassed.
The Quad 57 mid range,is still something that most modern day speaker designers are trying to emulate.

Some things you don't mess with, like Coca Cola.

Lacee - I'm 56 but most of my experience relates to electronics. Audiogon is an opportunity for me to learn more.

"Because I direct solder most of the time." I agree to get rid of connectors when possible but soldering introduces another metal - AQ micro-welds their cables.

TV in Europe before HDTV was better because Europe was late. They adopted same system but with more horizontal lines (625 I think). When color TV started they improved NTSC (read: Never Twice Same Color) by adopting PAL. PAL never changes color like NTSC does. Now only about 8-10% of households in Europe have HDTV while in US it is 55%.

Our conversation prompted me to learn more about Beatles and recording techniques. First two albums they produced were pretty bad recorded on BTR (British Tape Recorder) - 2 track thing that was remake of German war era recorder. Later they switch to 4 track Studers and later to 8 Tracks.

Not only equipment but also recording techniques improved. At one point Paul was using speaker as a microphone to make his lousy sounding violin bass (Hoffner) sound more punchy. Violin bass is unfortunately very short scale and won't sound punchy - no matter what. For that they had to go to Rickenbacker bass (I thing starting in Paperback Writer).
I'm not sure how much of bad sound is equipment and how much recording but even remastered pieces don't have clarity of best today's efforts. I don't question that sound might be surprisingly good but later Beatles recordings will be proportionally better.