I inadvertently reinstalled the digital cable between my transport and DAC once and my system literally sounded broken. That was a miserable 5 minutes until I figured out what I did wrong, and once the cable was installed back correctly all was well again. I have another digital cable with no arrows and the guy who designed it (Chris Sommovigo, RIP) told me it didn’t matter what direction it was installed and he was right — I couldn’t hear any difference installed one way or the other. Bottom line is, and as others have said, it seems to be very cable specific.
