@jeffbij 

Does that mean if Jimmy Page plays a cord on his guitar in LA that they can't hear it in NYC.   

No, he is in London. 

@jea48

I believe that’s why Teflon, for one, is used instead of cheap PVC insulation.

Other than a vacuum, the best dielectric is air: Check out the construction of Inakustik and their very transparent communications regarding audio cable construction. They even have webinars to signup for free to further people’s understanding.

https://in-akustik.com/blog/how-to-improve-hifi-sound-quality

Scroll down to see their video explanation on directionality:

https://in-akustik.com/cosmos/know-how/faqs-hifi-cables/

@jea48

Ok, I was just pointing out that Inakustik essentially do not use a dielectric on their wire.

I watched the video on cable directionality. The guy thinks the signal travels back and forth in the wire. It doesn’t. If it did then cheap PVC insulation would be all that is needed for the dielectric used to cover the bare wire.

I don’t know exactly where to go with that, but:

We do know the electromagnetic wave is carried from amplifier to speaker via an alternating current. If this energy wave is what we call the "signal" does it not change directions 120 times per second, otherwise known as 60Hz in North America? It is also more recently been hypothesized (proven?) that the actual electrons only travel a few centimetres.

For my own curiosity wondering how far the "signal" would go: From what I gather this "signal" travels in this medium at a rate of 0.7c, or about 195,000 km per second, so at 60Hz every 0.0167 seconds the energy wave can travel 3250 kilometres before changing directions. Obviously our speaker cables are not that long, and there are huge losses over such distances, but ignoring this, here is a question that just popped into my head: If the speakers were 3251 kilometres away would there be no signal- would the energy simply stop and turn back the other direction, and one would hear no sound from the speaker?

@jea48

The Energy travels from the source >>> to the load (in one direction)

Okay, I got a simpler question, what if the load is disconnected before the energy gets there, what happens to that energy?

What happens when you flip off a light switch? Light goes off immediately.

I would interpret "immediately" to mean small fractions of a second after flipping the switch, after the energy in the lines has completely been absorbed by the load.

Just questioning the "one way direction" of energy in an alternating current conductor, but that’s fine.

Much simpler to try both directions yourself than to try to understand the elusive reasons why

Absolutely @kennyc

Some of us just like to hurt our brains every once in a while.

I recall reading that Jay, the proprietor of Audio Bacon website, was reviewing the Snake River Audio Boomslang digital cable a few years back. After talking with the cable’s designer for follow-up information he found out that he actually had it in backwards- he didn’t know it was directional- and he definitely heard a difference putting it in the "right" direction, but he actually preferred the sound of it "backwards".

Okay, I was kinda done with this thread, but in response to this:

Can’t happen... The energy travels at near the speed of light. It’s at the light bulb the instant the contact closure completes the circuit... It’s that Fast!

Ponder this: You are watching a particular star on a clear night with your telescope, and suddenly you don’t see it anymore, you keep looking, perhaps it was blocked by a plane or some other object, or bent by some other huge object in a distant galaxy, but then after some length of time you are convinced that it must no longer be there, and how cool is that! You just witnessed a star burning out! You witnessed a star that had been burning for perhaps billions of years suddenly die! But in fact it "burned out" thousands of years before you were born- it just took that long for that last bit of light to reach your eyes.

@jea48 

 I was in charge of wiring the power to feed MRI Rooms, Cat Scan rooms, Countless numbers of X-Ray Rooms.

I believe that is more in lines with roughing in the electrical to the rooms, but more in line with this thread, I am curious if were able to see the power cords connecting those machines; any directionality on them? 

I don't know if you are aware, but Shunyata claims to have some of its power cables in some hospitals as the filters and shielding reduce noise on the heart monitors and enable the doctors to better read the data from them. Not sure if any have made their way to MRI's etc. 

....and checked the equipment ground contact of the outlet for a minimum of 4 ounces of contact pull out holding contact pressure. They had a device they plugged into the outlet that had a mechanical pointer that indicated the pulling out resistance in ounces. I can’t remember how often they tested the outlets. ... Next words out of the guys mouth we started testing the outlets on one of the floors and outlets are failing the test.

@jea48 It seems really odd to me that nobody has invented a simple locking mechanism for hospital outlets, or simply use some sort of L14 30R plug like they have on generators to ensure it remains where it should. It is not about contact pressure for "better signal", it is about the likelihood of a plug to become dislodged.  How much money would hospitals save by doing this, instead of the frequent inspections which must add up to some serious coin.