Directional speaker cables - switching direction

Anyone want to let me borrow their directional cables?
I will gladly run any signal through them and measure the input vs out put on my scope under any load that person wants. I will then run it backwards and we can see what happens.
Maybe the quality of my scopes measurement cables are good enough to measure the delicacy of an audio frequency. The probe does lose a couple of dB performance at 500Mhz, so it is probably not good enough, so nevermind.

People that think there is some magic in audio cables which are relatively low frequency cables and really not all that high current. There isn't. It can be measured.
Unless you have an amp that is outputting a constant DC signal at above a certain voltage the current is flowing both ways. If you do have an amp like that, you will need to buy new speakers, because speakers don't like DC signals.

So if energy flows in one direction, which direction does it flow?
+ to - or - to + ?

Thanks for quoting me...
Sure cables can sound different. Crappy ones sound different from good ones. There is no magical synergy with a speaker or amp though. The cables purpose to to move the energy (voltage) from the amp to speaker. It's a simple job. Copper, silver, aluminum, any decent conducting metal can do it, but they due it differently. (I'm referring to cables that do not have "networks" on them because that is a different discussion completely)

Electrical energy is NOT in the cable. It is stored in the magnetic field around the cable. This is ampere's law. As the voltage is reversed the electrons move in the opposite direction with the field reversing.

"...while energy flows fast"

Energy does NOT move or flow. Energy cannot move it is just a scalar number (joule). It just exists. Power is a measurement of energy / time, like a watt is a Joule/second. We never say the flow of power it is just 10 watts just like energy.

Power (in watts) = Joules/Second
= (Joules/Coulomb) x (Coulomb/Second)
= volts x amps
= number of Watts

Energy is never gain or lost it is always preserved. Energy is never directional. Thermo 101

Electricity is directional (we usually say + to - but that is a different discussion).

So electricity/ electrons/ current moves back and forth on a AC circuit, and energy does not. How can a cable be directional when the energy is not in the cable and it doesn't move, but the electrons that do move back and forth equally prefer the direction of the cable? How do they know they direction of the cable?

The whole directionality thing really digs at me and does damage to our hobby.

My suspicion is that it started with pro-audio which has directional cables. They are not directional because the crystalline structure of the copper, or the way the jacket was extruded on the copper, but because they were single ended shielded cables. You would connect the shielded ended side wire to the amp side to reduce the chance for EMI.

Probably someone tried these cables on their home system and heard a difference, which happened because of the shielding, and this somehow propagated the belief that directionality is important. A couple of clever marketing guys got in a room and decided that separating their product from another required some advantage. Let's say that they should only go on one way.

I suppose the next logical step would be to say which side is up on a cable, because after all electrons have mass and we only want the good ones at the top of the wire.

Most of the hi-end manufacturers of audio cables use directionality on their products, and some are even using directionality on their network cables which is interesting because TCP broadcast require signal both directions (so is each individual wire in the Cat 6 cable directionalized before assembling the cable?).

I have never seen one IEEE paper or an AES paper on directional cables. Maybe it is a secret art form that only audio cable manufacturers know about? I could be wrong. My lab at work has some pretty long (50ft) high speed (10ghz) BNC cables for measuring EMI and those aren't directional. I think that is crystalline were important, it would be important there.

Jea48,

If the signal is altered from one end of the cable to the other it is absolutely able to measured in a scope. That is what scopes excel at, measuring signals.
So we can measure a bunch of different frequencies and see what happens to the signal, flip the cable, repeat and compare. Or we can use a harmonic distortion analyzer and do the same.
For a cable to sound different in different directions there must be more distortion one direction than the other.

At work we do a lot of measurements well below 10dBmicro, tiny tiny amounts of signal strength, nothing near the level of power that would move a driver.

Kijanki is doing a much better job of voicing my concerns than I am. I appreciate that.

I want to clarify something. I honestly believe that some people hear a difference in the directionality of cables. I just do not feel there is a scientific explanation for this. This a belief thing.
I find that the only evidence that has been submitted is evidence from people that could make money off of cables, like cable manufacturers. Of course it is always good marketing to say, "buy my product because of X Y and Z". My skepticism comes from the lack of 3rd party evidence or ABX comparisons or anything.
I disagree with Kijanki on something. I strongly believe we have the tools to measure these sorts of things. If you can't measure it directly on the cable, but hear a difference, there are certainly mics our there that are much better than my ears.
I have a a mic at work that is capable of 4hz to 100khz +/-3db. If anyone on this forum can hear that well, please call me because I want to take you around the world as a side show. We also have mics that are +/-0.5db for smaller ranges, I certainly can't hear that well, but it is easily measured.

"Mono-crystal", nice marketing term. Are there any electron microscope pictures to prove this?

I can almost guarantee that no one can hear 3 9's vs 100 9's difference. The cables in out speakers aren't that good, nor is the copper on the PCB's of our electronics.

Tara labs have facilities in the US, Vietnam, China and Indonesia. Where do they do their engineering and manufacturing? Also, I would love to see the size of their marketing department vs the size of the engineering department. After all they are a "lab".

Am I the only one that clicked on the link and got 1000's of images of miscellaneous stuff?

Using the same logic, obviously hi-fi does not exist:
more_images

I would really be interested in the study from hi-fi tuning. Can someone point me to a link?

I am willing to concede that, at this moment, not everything in the universe can be measured. But I will not concede that anything in the audio domain cannot be measured. If you can hear a difference there are microphones that measure it with much better accuracy than human ears.

Has anyone done these tests? tests To think a machine cannot out do you on this tests can easily be proven.

Some may disregard laws of physics on this board, but doing so just goes to show that they are clearly not open minded and willing to use evidence to make judgements.

I too believe in Santa Claus because you can't not measure his existence, he just has decided to not give me gifts in several years.

I'm thinking that mono-crystal is the name used because single crystal is a real term and is only used in labs. Single crystal and mono-crystal are probably two different things.

Here is a piece of single crystal copper that is not as pure as Tara Labs claims their copper to be.

http://www.mtixtl.com/Mc-Cu-e-50D10C1.aspx

I'm considering buying some Tara lab cables, and sending them to a lab to see what they really are.

I must say this post is really inspiring me, maybe it is the spirit of the season.

I'm thinking of starting some website that investigates claims of various manufacturers of all types of hi-fi goods. I see too much going back and forth, which is fine. But we should all have data on our sides to make a decision. Maybe a potential site that does measurement of goods, and then measurement of those goods in a fixed system. In addition to that, outside labs can give feedback. I think I am on to something here.

I would really enjoy this and I think it would bring clarity and openness to this hobby. Hopefully it would propel things forward in the positive way.

It is true that some audiophiles believe in something other than science, which is fine. However, I don't think any of the manufacturers feel that way. I'm sure they don't just stumble upon something and say "hey this sounds great" and sell it. It probably does happen that way but 99.99999% of the time it doesn't.

May some may disagree, but if it sounds different b/w two tweaks or components then the actual sound wave being generated by the speaker is different. If the sound wave is different a high-end transducer (mic) can pick that up and record it. It is that simple.

Magic doesn't exist except on stages in Vegas.

If nothing more than serving my own purpose, I think the data should exist and be available to the public.
People fret on this board about picoseconds of jitter but then ignore other data. It is all very odd to me.

Jea48,

That was a good article. What I picked up from it was that over 40 years ago he heard something on caps and couldn't measure it at that time.

The ability to take measurements and analyze data has improved dramatically over the last 40 years.
Any of us can quickly do a frequency response curve of our system at home that is probably much more accurate than could be done then. The hardware costs very little and the tools to do so are now free.

I think the simplest thing that can be done is simple measurements of signal into a system from a source versus what is being output by a speaker (of course you can measure at any point in the system). If you can hear something you didn't hear before it is probably something that was picked up by a mic during recording and should be able to be picked up by a mic again. With modern computers it is pretty easy to compare these signals and find A X B differences and inaccuracies in the signal.

There may be some not so well understood principles in audio reproduction, but if we can hear it I contend that is can be measured, maybe not understood, but at least measured.

If a manufacturer cannot explain the reasoning behind the arrows on the cable besides "we think it sounds better" then you are clearly buying a product from a company that has no business putting arrows on cables.