XLR interconnects?

Darrenmc - what about Acoustic Zen Silver Reference II?

No chase - Schrodinger's cat is dead!

Lacee - old recordings sound like shit in comparison to best current recordings. You could even tell by the amount of distortion and noise what decade they come from. To add insult to injury they digitized them long time ago when high quality low jitter clocks were not available. As a result they contain jitter that is impossible to remove.

The fact that certain studio uses long runs of generic cables doesn't bother me. I'm not even interested why they do that - it could be ignorance or lack of money or a believe that we'll buy any crap (it's true - look what they release!). I cannot help it and can only improve things on my end.

Inductance, capacitance, dielectric absorption, metal purity play role in balanced cables the same way as in unbalanced cables. The only difference is external noise immunity and locking connectors to prevent disaster.

"If everything you play thru your system sounds good,then there is something going on that is masking the differences."

Lacee - absolutely agree. I'm not into vinyl for the same reason I'm not into drugs - addictive and expensive. Is vinyl really coming back? - I thought it was dead.

On many occasions memory plays trick on us and we remember good sound of 60s, 70s, etc. People often believe that gear was better. Why would it be? Just look at HDTV. Nobody sane would say that picture was better in sixties.

I often listen to old recording praised by other people on this forum for sound quality and find them less transparent, distorted and often noisy. The good popular example would be The Beatles recordings. If you listen to first ones and the last ones you'll see progress audio recording made. They started playing out on 30W Vox amps that had tons of distortion not because they liked it but because nothing else was available.

Today's technology, like CD, is often a compromise of quality for practicality but is constantly improving. I just read Stereophile review of $17k Meridian 808.2 CD player. John Atkinson says that it's the finest player he ever heard (it should be for $17k).

As for the quality of the recordings, I noticed that while dynamic range of some recordings is preserved, most of recordings have very compressed dynamic range. We represent very small buying power and sales are oriented towards people who listen on boom boxes.

Lacee - Boom box people don't listen to vinyl but they influence recording quality (as well as MP3 people).

I do have The Beatles "Love" but it's remastered CD. It has nothing to do with pressing quality. It just simply means that somebody altered the master tape by cleaning it up (improving). I have no idea what was improved (other than obvious lack of noise) but I can tell they sound much cleaner and more transparent.

If you really think, that there was nothing wrong with original recordings and only pressing was deficient then why CDs made of the same material sound poor (compare to CDs made of later songs) and why early songs were mono? It wasn't Beatles desire to record mono - it was just poor state of recording industry.

I agree that today we often do gimmicks instead of putting money into the process. 200 feet of XLR cable should be of high quality but my 0.5m XLR IC runs above $2k retail and asssuming $1k per foot for the highest quality cable means $200k just for one mentioned 200 feet cable. No studio can survive this. Stereophile "reference" recordings are made with high quality cables (and their names are listed).

Dave - we talkin' correlation here - exceptions always happen.

Lacee - CD might be not as good as LP but judging different period Beatles on CD I can see big difference in quality between early and late Beatles recording. Long time ago I had Beatles on vinyl and it was pretty much the same - early recordings sounded poorly. There is, of course, recording studio/engineer factor but I'm talking average.

What puzzles me is that certain old recordings on CD praised by some as great sounding sound bad on my system. It couldn't be system resolution since I have very modest gear. I'm not a musician and don't have very good/trained hearing but can hear difference clearly.

Abbey road was one of the LPs recorded well, but can you find earlier Beatles recording that sounded better than Abbey Road?

Old recordings "remastered" sound much cleaner than the same recordings on the same media (CD). It is not even noise but clarity/transparency in general. Do you know how they remaster records? Remastering alone proves deficient technology before - I've never heard of remastered new recording.

Lacee - I can only compare CD to CD since, as I mentioned before, I don't do LP. I can tell you by listening to record - popular or jazz what decade they come from. I have remastered Pink Floyd album and it doesn't sound as good as many new CDs (2000 and up). Quality of pressing LPs has nothing to do with it since today releases of old Beatles stuff show noise, distortions - lack of clarity in general. Recording equipment 40-50 years ago cannot even compare to what is available now. Why do you think they were recording mono? - not because they like it. On some older recordings you can even hear copying (I don't know exact name for that) from layer to layer of tape. My friend who works in recording studio said that they had to rewind every tape in storage once a year to minimize copying effect. They tossed expensive analog recorders and replaced them with modern digital 24/192 gear. Studios that already have digital are switching to DSD. I have David Russell one of the latest recordings made in DSD and sound quality is incredible. Progress took place in cables, microphones and even stage gear. Beatles played out on 30W VOX amps with a lot of distortions because nothing else was available no matter how much money you had. Not every modern recording studio uses best microphones or cables but some do and it shows.

What amazes me is that many people still believe that everything was better then - like audio or cars. I don't know much about TT cartridges, for instance, but I suspect that you wouldn't be able to find in 50s or 60s cartridge that is half as good as todays best ones.

I hope you're not claiming that old analog TV was better than HDTV. Why do you think audio was?

Lacee -

Saying things like "you're obviously young" or "you have a lot to learn" is immature and rude.

I don't know what gave you an idea that I'm young. I hope you don't claim to be older just to give more weight to your statements - that would be plain silly.

You keep repeating "based on 50's design" - it does not mean they performed the same. Everything around us is based on some older designs - but most of the time is better. The duty of design engineer is to obsolete existing designs/production.

Somehow you claim that Europeans are "way ahead" in recording and technology. What you fail to understand is that there are valid reasons for everything and HDTV mentioned by you was later in US because of government requirement that proposed standard has to be broadcastable in HDTV by air (not true in Europe). Because of this requirement everybody has free access to digital television. Telephone standards like CDMA (spread spectrum) are ahead of European GSM. Just look where progress of technology happened - University of Chicago alone has over 80 Nobel prize winners with more than half of it in Physics and Chemistry. Look where companies like Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, IBM, Motorola etc are located. When I was young and build my EL34 guitar amps I had to translate things from German language since German companies like Telefunken, Siemens, Grundig were dominating. Today US took over and companies like Telefunken went bankrupt (Vishay bought them). English is dominating in technical field and companies like Siemens have engineering meetings in Germany conducted in English (my friend attends).

As for measurement in inches, feet, and ounces - there is nothing wrong with it - especially now when computers handle everything. UK still uses lbs, ounces, inches and to make it even worse other units like "stone". Show me how does it stop progress of technology.

As for quality of recordings - I listen to Beatles "Love" reissue and it is very well recorded - but still does not compare to new digital recordings.

Yoy're saying that there are many things from the past that are better than today. Can you name a few? - Things that nobody was able to make better (but not TT cartridge since I would have hard time to find modern "mono" cartridge to compare). Maybe some cell phones that were made better in 50's than today? How about better quality laser printers in 50's?

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

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.