When Skoff said
there's no way—other than by listening to it—to determine which direction a piece of wire's "preferred" direction of signal flow may be.
please note geoff he said a piece of "wire" not "cable". Don't conflate the two.
Which you just did again:
The reason the strands are all in the same direction is because the entire process of making wire and making cables is automated and controlled.
While probably true for wire, this is far from true for cables. Ted Denney for example seldom misses an opportunity to remind people his cables are all made by hand in California. There's video tours of him showing who and where they are made. Same for him explaining how when wire comes in before ever making a cable they test the wire for directionality. Not that he's the only one. But he does it. So maybe try and keep straight the difference between a raw piece of wire and a finished cable.
Even in the case of finished cables built and marked for direction there still is no way to determine which is preferred except by listening to it. Otherwise you are assuming not determining.
Personally, I was for many years one of those who assumed and never bothered trying to see if there was anything going on or not. Then one day I hooked up a really good interconnect and was crushed to hear how bad it sounded. Devastated maybe is a better word. I mean it was awful. Spent the better part of a day sick at having thrown away so much money. Then it hit me. Went and had a look. Sure enough. Damn. Switched ends. What a difference! Night and day!
Same thing happened a few months ago with a Blue Quantum Fuse. Immediately felt it sounded better, yet wrong. More dynamic, but also a lot more confused. Hard to explain exactly. Flipped around, hugely obviously better.
So again you guys can argue to the moon about why, just so everyone understands that being unable to say for sure why does nothing in the least to change the fact that wire is indeed directional- and the only way of determining this is by listening.
