A French audio journalist named Jean Hiraga wrote the paper that proposed using 2 identical twisted wires with a shield that was only connected at one end as a way to assure the waveform being conducted was treated with the same impedance for both positive and negative polarities. This idea was picked up by Noel Lee and his team at Monster Cable and marketed as “Balanced Bandwidth”. They added the prescription that the cables were directional based on which end the shield was attached, and put arrows on the cable. This approach has become entrenched and is accepted as received wisdom by many cable manufacturers today…but not all. Prior to this, virtually all RCA interconnects were coaxial…meaning a center conductor was wrapped with a shield of braided copper separated by a foam dielectric.
I’m not claiming to pontificate on the validity of this article of faith!
What's better, one conductor or two conductors for an RCA interconnect?
I have a somewhat nice RCA analogue interconnect with one conductor, referred to as a coaxial Cable I guess. But I see higher end RCA cables with two conductors and ground wire. Which is better?
Is better detail provided when connections are made with two conductors?