I am not 100% sure if cables can be directional or not, but if the manufacturer suggested a direction to install it in, I'd go with that.
Directional wires/cables
Is there any reason to support the idea that cables, interconnects or any other kind of wiring can be considered directional? It seems that the theory is that carrying current will alter the molecular structure of the wire. I can't find anything that supports this other than in the case of extreme temperature variation. Cryo seems to be a common treatment for wire nowadays. Extreme heat would do something as well, just nothing favorable. No idea if cryo treatment works but who knows. Back to the question, can using the wires in one direction or another actually affect it's performance? Thanks for any thoughts. I do abide by the arrows when I have them. I "mostly" follow directions but I have pondered over this one every time I hook up a pair.
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I’d like to say another thing. For the last 1,000 years, science has always been about challenging ideas, old and new. Science can give you some answers but rarely its entirety, There are 2 more questions for every answers that’s been made. That is Science. If you think what you know is absolute, you are betraying Science on a fundamental level. | |
@jea48 - +1 I didn't bother responding to the total nonsense above, knowing that the uneducated poster/poser would completely miss the implications/ramifications, were I to mention/post anything, as regards Poynting Vectors*. *ie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector I'm certain: you do! Happy listening!
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And then: there are those* with no PhD (or anything close), which are worthy of nothing but disregard/disdain. *ie: Dunning-Kruger exemplars, Denyin'tologists and Naysayer Church adherents, that ignore the science and experiments that have given us the many modern conveniences, medical devices and SS equipment they so love. Happy listening! | |
"As soon as electrons become sentient and can discern differences in metal, then directional cables may be a thing. Until then, even a basic understanding of electricity would tell you it’s 100% marketing and makes 0% difference in the sound you hear." This is 21st century science in a nutshell. "My basic understanding of science is more than enough to start making claims". | |
Well, this has been interesting, if a bit cranky at times. Discussions on these and other forums always seem to come down to "my Phd is bigger than your Phd" or something similar. Interesting, nonetheless. Many of the explanations are well above my understanding. I'm still struggling with how and why the current has to travel backwards as much as forward in my circuitry and how it must get to where it's going in the first place. I'm just glad that it does. My understanding of electricity and it's properties are pretty basic. It has a pretty good bite to it when it escapes and I'm able to turn it on and off with a switch. I enjoy many of it's wonderful properties without understanding it like an EE does. I'm good with that. As to my original question about non-directional interconnects and whether they can develop a memory, I'm still a bit puzzled because there is so much disagreement on the subject. Ultimately, I will let my ears decide and see which camp I land in or if I will just keep scratching my head. I do appreciate any and all who spoke up. Thanks guys. Bill | |
@dlevi67 said:
Thank you... I will have to watch the Video again a couple times. I watched his first video. I didn’t see this one before. I first learned how electricity works here on Agon in 2010. Oddly the thread was titled "directional cables?". A member started posting about how an electrical signal actually travels down a wire. I thought what Planet is this guy from?... I would appreciate your thoughts on this white paper from the Late Ralph Morrison.
Ralph Morrison What is Electronics I admit the math is over my head... . I like this statement of Morrison’s.
. So the signal travels in the space, dielectric, insulating material, between the current carrying conductors in one direction from the source >>> to the load at near the speed of light in a vacuum. Correct? If not please reword how it should be stated. If Teflon is used for the insulation covering the conductors and the signal travels through the Teflon insulation it makes it easier to understand, imo, why the type of dielectric material used matters and can have an impact on signal, and how it affects the sound we hear from the speakers. Also it would explain burn-in, break-in, settle-in, what ever you want to call it of, say, interconnects, and speaker cables. After the break-in process doesn’t the cable become directional? If reversed wouldn’t the process have to start all over? I believe in directionality of all solid core wire. Especially solid silver core wire. Just asking is the type dielectric insulating material used at play in directionality? Thanks again for responding to my earlier post. And hopefully this post as well, in advance.
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As I mentioned: and: Once again: my posts are meant for those with a sincere desire to actually expand their understanding of our universe, to the available degree. The obtuse/willfully ignorant, need not apply. Happy listening!
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Sorry, but this forum is open to all, even to those like you who claim to be a "victim" of the conversation here.
If you have a complaint about a user here, take it to the moderators. You can use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of every page.
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To anyone ACTUALLY INTERESTED in expanding their understanding of this idea/theory, as regards electricity/electromagnetism, I repost: There are simply too many variables and unknowns (95-96%) in our universe, that disallow the categorical propositions, presented by the ignorant/uneducated.
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Derek discusses DC, while our conversation hinges around AC*, whether in our power cables, or- signal wires, which carry waveforms (either 50/60Hz or musical), the propagation speed(s) of which, depends on factors like frequency(s) and dielectric absorption of the dielectric involved. *Mentioned before my first link, in my first post. | |
@thecarpathian Thanks for the info. I'm glad to know I'm not the only victim of random ramblings. 😉 Best wishes! | |
@jea48 Honestly, one of the best and easiest-to-follow physics-level (rather than engineering-level) explanation of how an electric signal travels through a cable is the one by Veritasium that I linked above. Here it is again. Derek discusses the case of a very simple circuit (a battery, a switch and a ’load’ which could be a lightbulb), but it’s easy to see how the exact same physical mechanisms are acting on a complex, variable signal (’music’), and why lumped element models are used to simplify the representation... to the point where they can over-simplify it! To keep things more or less on topic (directionality of cables), to my mind this also shows why - in the absence of asymmetries in cable construction - the argument for cable directionality with quasi-periodic, alternating signals is a very hard one to support scientifically. | |
@dlevi67 , You've not been on here long enough to know that those incredibly long winded repetitive posts are his standard go to whenever this subject comes up.
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The cargo cultist is still posting - that is you, @rodman99999
This seems to be the situation indeed. You keep posting things that you don’t understand, and no matter how much I or others try to explain to you that things aren’t how you think they are, you simply cannot understand.#
That would be you, again. Ad hominem does not make you smarter or even seem smarter. Please - inform yourself before digging yourself further into the solid rock that you have reached 5 posts ago. I will no longer reply to your nonsense posts, here or anywhere else on this forum. Take care. | |
HILARIOUS! This Dunning-Kruger exemplar doesn't even know the difference, between picturing/modeling an electron cloud and actually viewing an electron. https://www.universetoday.com/38282/electron-cloud-model/ AND: Well: that WOULD be hilarious, were it NOT so pathetic!
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WELL: the Cargo Cult's still building runways. Time for another repost:
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Yep. And you aren't saying anything that is out of kilter with a "moderately up-to-date" understanding of electromagnetism, unlike others on this thread. 😉 | |
Yes, that’s changed in "recent years" (very much in quotes). I graduated in 1990, I have kept myself professionally up-to-date since (unlike you, clearly), and none of the stuff from the late 19th century that you keep thinking is what people are taught, because you were taught it, is current now. My children, who are going through university now, are not taught that, and real images of atoms (electron clouds) are commonplace since the early 2000s. Wake up and smell the roses - you are out of date and out of order.
Inescapable fact: we understand pretty well how electricity works, otherwise we would not be having this conversation on devices that use electricity on scales that range from quantum effects to human scale observables. None of the unresolved conflicts between GR and QM is applicable to computers or audio equipment. The story you keep telling yourself that ’nobody understands electricity’ is completely false - and funnily enough, it was Feynman that with QED (Nobel in 1965) added the last pieces to the puzzle. You quote, but you don’t read or understand.
Very loud laugh from me. Keep digging. Incidentally - nobody here is saying that different cables do not sound different, or that asymmetrically constructed cables do not exhibit directionality in terms of their susceptibility to noise. Neither of those two observations requires any of the woo-woo that you are spouting about the lack of understanding of electricity (or your incorrect use of the word 'theory' in a scientific context; it doesn't mean what you think it means. A dictionary would be of help - as would a guide to typing. Multiple spaces to align text went out of fashion with typewriters, circa 1985). | |
@billpete In the end, the correct answer is to try your cable both ways. The way that sounds best to YOUR ears, is the correct direction. Regardless of how the cables are marked. Everything else is meaningless. | |
@bimmerlover , Kimber Silver Streak isn't shielded and I get the impression that there is a suggested direction for it to be used in. | |
What a coincidence! Just saying these guys also have a science background. - - - Bybee Technologies – Founded by Jack Bybee – Physicist Jack Bybee’s first commercial products emerged from Cold War-era military-industrial research. The stealthy shadow contest of nuclear submarine detection, location and evasion demanded ever-quieter circuits, lower electronic noise and greater signal-to-noise ratios. Practitioners summed up the problem as: “reducing 1/f noise, from DC to 2000hz”. Bybee’s technology involves exotic blends of rare-earth metals or their isotopes to reduce electronic noise in circuits. In the mid-1990s, Bybee’s AC filtering was among the first of its kind to use exotic doped materials instead of transformers or balanced power, which made it a novel concept at the time. Jack’s science and physicist background gave him the understanding about negative effects of quantum noise. Link here.
Purist Audio Design – Founded by Jim Aud – EE & Physicist From there, I earned my Electronics Engineering degree at Brescia University, and would later study Computer Science for almost two years at Westinghouse. Then I came to South Texas Nuclear, and studied what they’d call today nuclear physics. Link here.
Shunyata Research – Founded by Caelin Gabriel – Research Scientist
Caelin Gabriel is a former US military research scientist with a background in research and design of ultra-sensitive data acquisition systems. These systems were designed to detect extremely low-level signals otherwise obscured by random noise, requiring years of intensive research into the sources and effects of signal and power-line noise interference. Link here.
Silversmith Audio – Founded by Jeffrey Smith – Engineer CEO/Designer Jeffrey Smith is a Wyoming native and graduate of the United States Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in General Engineering. He also earned a Master of Science Degree, With Distinction, in Defense and Strategic Studies. Link here.
MIT Cables – Founded by Bruce Brisson – awarded 20 USPTO engineering patents. MIT Cables founder Bruce Brisson began purposely designing audio cables in the 1970’s after encountering the sonic problems inherent in cables typical of the day. Link here.
Audioquest – Garth Powell - Sr. Director of Engineering Formerly with Furman Power for 12 years.
Iconoclast Cables – Galen Gareis – Belden Engineering Center, retired. Galen Gareis, a now-retired product development engineer working at the Belden Engineering Center in Richmond, Indiana, has decades of experience in designing practical precision cabling for a wide variety of professional applications - but at the same time is a high-end audio enthusiast. Link here. | |
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872) "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon," (Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873) "The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." (Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University) "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." (Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923) "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." (Dr. Lee DeForest, Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television) "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible!" (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895) "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." (Admiral William Leahy, re: US Atomic Bomb Project) When the steam locomotive came on the scene; the best (scientific) minds proclaimed, "The human body cannot survive speeds in excess of 35MPH." Until recently (21st Century); and the advent of the relatively new science of Fluid Dynamics, the best (scientific) minds involved in Aerodynamics, could not fathom how a bumblebee stays aloft. Often; Science has to catch up with the facts/phenomena of Nature and/or, "reality" (our universe). I haven't been in school since the 60's, but- at Case Institute of Technology; the Physics Prof always emphasized what we were studying was, "Electrical THEORY." He strongly made a point of the fact that no one had yet actually observed electrons (how they behave on the quantum level) and that only some things can really be called, "LAWS." (ie: Ohm, Kirchoff, Faraday) PERHAPS: that's changed in recent years and I missed it? | |
Inescapable FACT: No one understands exactly how electricity works. That’s why there’s so much Electrical THEORY. The number of Wiki-Scientists on these pages, attempting to win the IG-Nobel Prize in Pseudo-Physics, is always amusing. Whenever some highly educated person actually does discover exactly how electricity functions, they’ll be lauded by the scientific community, will have solved some of the disparities between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, receive a Nobel and we’ll hear about it. Newton’s THEORIES were largely superseded by Einstein and Bohr's. Then came Feynman’s. For now; none of you can absolutely prove your statements (theories), regarding electricity, FUSES, wires, or anything else, as regards our systems. The following articles, read in sequence, illustrate my point: https://www.steamnews.org/ then: and: | |
No, they won't - there is no "direction" to an AC signal that would change the material to conduct preferentially in one sense rather than the other - and if there were, it would be a cause of significant distortion. Either the cable is manufactured asymmetrically (with different shielding or cable geometry) or it isn't - the asymmetry may cause differences in sound when the cable is plugged in one way rather than the other, but the asymmetry would not change because a signal is sent (from a human "teleological" perspective) from A to B instead of from B to A. | |
1) Your first statement above is completely incorrect. A fuse (to take your example) does not carry a voltage (whatever that means, since it is a meaningless statement in the first place). The idea of ’source’ and ’load’ are irrelevant in electrical theory; you can represent any part of a (linear-ized) circuit as a ’source’ with an ’impedance’ that is connected to the rest of the circuit ("load"). The fact that we as humans interested in hearing sound being reproduced interpret one component as a source and another as a load has nothing to do with the way in which electrical circuits behave. 2) All the parameters of an RLC representation of a real component will be influenced by the properties of the materials they are made and surrounded by. Not just capacitance. 3) The fact that a drawn wire will show a grain orientation does not imply your (or anybody else’s) opinion that there is any "directionality" or asymmetry in the way in which a non-DC waveform is transmitted through it. 4) Your "stated above" is not fact; it’s a mixture of poorly understood electrical theory/physics, and opinions. As is your idea that because materials with a high dielectric constant take longer to polarise therefore this justifies the phenomenon of burn-in. 5) Very little of what you have posted has anything to do with the topic of this thread, which is about the directionality of cables to audio signals. Before continuing, kindly get a degree in electrical engineering (which I happen to have), rather than posting nonsense under the flag of "it’s new theory". No, it isn’t. The idea that electrical currents move as ping-pong balls in a tube is not based on "old theories"; it’s a (bad) analogy used today with high school students who start learning about electricity without having the mathematical background to understand different and more correct/complete representations. It’s neither more nor less than second grade students being told "you cannot do 2 minus 3" as they have not been introduced to negative numbers. | |
A rewind:
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An electric current IS the flow of electrons (through a wire e.g.) from the -ve source, through the destination and then back to the +ve terminal of the source.
See this article
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Seems confusing. I bought some higher quality cat6 cable to my system and read that they should be oriented from the source to the sound, or words to that effect. So, from the wall is “source”… to a switch. The next short run is to a Roon and a second run to a DAC. Think of a letter Y. I was not sure with my short, fancy and fairly pricy cables which way to put them in to the Roon and the DAC; after all, that Roon signal is bidirectional. I ended up placing the DAC connection as going from the switch to the DAC. But I’m still not sure what to do with the Roon. If all Systems worked in series it’s be easy. But if the signal is bidirectional - who knows? | |
I respect the directionality of my cables whether it does anything or not. Just makes me feel better. I did buy some amazing Kimber 8PR (Their "bottom" line, improved from previous model, sound astonishingly good and a serious bargain) speaker cable last year and they're NOT directional it seems. Allegedly they develop directionality later...to keep 'em honest, spades on the speaker end and bananas to the amp using their "special" solder sent with the connectors. | |
Interesting reading. Thanks for all the participation. It is clear that at least some cables should be used the way they were intended, simply by how they were made. As I said, I have always followed the arrows but always thought that it meant they should point away from the source. I may have misunderstood that but it always seemed logical to me. What about ones that do not have directionality in mind? Will they "learn" to be better in one direction than the other? This would mean that they physically changed over time. This is the part that I struggle with the most. Thanks, Bill | |
In an audio system the electrons are not flowing from the source to the destination component. The signals are AC - though a bit asymmetric -so about half the time they are flowing one way and about half the time the other way. Although, I guess there could be some DC coupled SS pre or DAC (no capacitor on the output) where the signal is a modulated DC voltage. Has anyone ever measured a DC offset on a source component's output? For shielded cables where, except for balanced connections, the shield is connected to SIGNAL ground (the outside of an RCA plug) so it is probably true that the source end should be grounded. | |
@jeffbij Would OCC cable not render the directional question moot, as most cable lengths we use would, in theory anyway, be one single elongated grain? | |
@jeffbij Not to continue the war, but while the existence of crystalline grains affecting electron flow may have a base in physics, it still does not support the idea of cables being directional. A musical signal alternates - potentially imperfectly at times, and an AC current (power) alternates rather perfectly, even if potentially distorted from a pure sine wave. Also, note that what is typically called ’electrical current’ is not the motion of electrons, but the variation in electromagnetic field, which is not the same thing at all (see e.g. Veritasium’s video on electricity). I’ll accept that asymmetrically terminated cables (e.g. with shielding connected at one end only) may transmit signal differently if plugged in A --> B vs. B --> A, however I would also point out that it’s not ’the material in the cable’ being directional as such, but the effectiveness of the shielding in two different points of the EM field. This said, if people believe that they hear differences, I’m not getting in their way. | |
