Directional wires/cables

I might of missed reading a post on this thread but wanted to put in my two cents, just in case:)

I have made all my interconnects for around 40 years now. In the last 25+ I have only used Conare Star Quad which is dual twisted pair high grade microphone cable. One pair to the center contact, one pair to ground. Braided shield to ground on the input end, cut off and tucked carefully under the jacket at the receiving end. Silver solder, good connectors.

I have also used it for balanced cables.

Either way they are superb and I have never felt the need to go to any more costly cables even in what would be in today's dollars close to a $40k in gear alone for my highest end car audio competition build. ZERO noise, totally black background, very dynamic and ran as high as 20v balanced signals through them, 4+ volts single ended.

Rick.

Well, I sure didn't mean to stir up such a hornet's nest but there has been a good amount of discussion and information to be read. 

I watched a video with Gene DellaSala and John Siau and what their thoughts were on the subject. They put far less importance on it than many others seem to. In the big picture, it does seem to be way down the line from other factors. I think this is fair as well. Once a person has every other aspect covered from TT (cartridge and all), DAC, CD player, whatever source you listen to, your ultimate power source, preamp, amp, down to the speakers, then maybe it's time to start tweaking with better wiring, power supplies etc. There is always something we can do to improve our system, so it seems. They don't suggest that you go out and buy the cheapest wire and cables that you can find either and I don't. 

Anyway, I'm moving on. Many thanks for all the insight. 

Bill

My thinking is a cable can only be directional if it uses a floating ground.  The floating end should be connected to the receiving component.

It is a type of rf shield.

@stevencason Agreed. A floating shield is usually totally floating ie. not grounded at either end (just a terminolgy/interpretation thing I guess), and in this case I can’t see why direction of installation would matter.

A single-end-grounded cable might sound different if installed a different way round because of where any RFI noise picked up by the shield drains to. To my mind and in my experience, this is the only directionality which matters. I’ve never understood or experienced directionality in the conductors themselves.

jeffbij +1

Glad to see a rational, informed posting here. I mean, "sentiency"??

Yes, I’m sure you’re absolutely correct in stating that grain structure has a lot to do with directionality. I once had a long conversation on the topic with a figure no less formidable than Garth Powell (the brilliant enginner who designed Audioquest’s Niagara power-conditioning line, among other things) and he went into the physics of grain directionality in great depth. I have a degree in Physics myself, so this was far from an exercise in hand-waving. Garth made sense, and although there’s no way to measure the effect quantitatively in a particular cable product, the physical phenomenon undoubtedly does exist in cables that have certain manufacturing steps -- like Audioquest's directional cables. I walked away from that discussion thoroughly convinced -- and I’m not an easy person to bamboozle when it comes to voodoo engineering.

Related: Someday, maybe I’ll post a thread about my experience deciphering the design details of Synergistic’s HFT products, those bizarre little shirt-button-sized bits of metal that, when pasted around your listening room, are supposed to improve transparency and imaging. Now, THAT’s an interesting story.