Directional interconnect cables


I see several big-name interconnect vendors mark directional arrows on the outer jacket of the cables.

How is it that a wire can be directional? It's a simple electrical conductor, how is it possible for it to be directional, to sound "better" when connected in one direction vs. the other? This does not make sense to me, perhaps someone here can explain how this can possibly be so...
lupinthe3rd
By running the wires in air. This was achieved with some difficulty of course, but nevertheless achieved. No shield and no dielectric apart from air. The two components were faced back to back, the wire connecting the RCAs was very high purity silver, 24AWG on cold and 26AWG on hot, and then tensioned so that the wires ran in parallel througn the air with no insulation used. With the wire concerned, once it had been burned in, reversing it resulted in a change in sound, most particularly a loss of openness in the treble, and loss of firmness in the bass; a sound very similar to what an identical set that had not been burned in sounded like.
Did you burn them in each time that you changed direction? What about the charge in the insulation (it's a dielectric)? I suspect that if you burn them in after each directional change, then you will have reversed directionality.

Dave
The experiments used bare wire, the only insulation being air. Yes, the cables could be burned in after a while in the changed direction. People find it easier to ascribe directionality to the dielectric, and I have not attempted to prove or disprove that the dielectric is part of the issue, yet. But I have proved to myself that when wire burns in then it gets some form of directional quality to it. I don't know why this should be, and that would be a very interesting thing to know, but I don't have access to the kinds of research funds to find out. At the level I work I am happy to just accept it as an insight and work with it, and I was able to afford the funds to buy an Audiodharma cooker. One of the things I can say from experiments conducted is that high conductor purity diminishes the burn in issue and directionality issue markedly. High purity alloys of suitable metals are also fine. It is when metals are contaminated with oxides, sulphides etc that directionality and burn in issues are most severe.
Shadorne - wires are diodes. some impurities in the wire might create semiconductor junctions. As an example - copper oxide (wire in never 100% oxygen free) behaves like semiconductor. It was used to make rectifiers. Quote from Wikipedia below:

"Copper(I) oxide was the first substance known to behave as a semiconductor. Rectifier diodes based on this material were used industrially as early as 1924, long before silicon became the standard."

What happens inside of the wire is complicated. Electrons are not moving very fast (about 1/2" per second) and with AC signal they will never leave the cable. I would not polarize my cable with DC and loose my expensive electrons I paid for (ha ha).
I am assuming that Kijanki's entire post was intended as a joke, however for those who may take it seriously, the following:
Whether Copper oxide was ever used to make diodes does not support the notion that wires are diodes. The comparision is merely an example of faulty reasoning - "copper oxide can be used to make diodes, wires are made from copper, hence, wires are diodes." Socrates would love that one. The next time a diode goes out in a piece of electronic equipment, don't buy another diode, just grab a piece of glass (silicon) and tape it to the pcb. Diodes don't just magically appear because they are composed of an element that can also be used to make diodes. We are then in the realm of alchemy. The last bit of faulty reasoning I heard on this site as to new and exciting diode manufacturing techniques was that diodes were created by the extrusion process in manufacturing wire, I guess that theory was that the process created a taper and that resulted in a diode - kind of like a funnel I suppose - make up the science as you go along approach. Furthermore, what happens inside a wire is well defined, complicated or not, with regard to the effect the wire has on an electrical signal transduced to sound. Whatever deep quantum mysteries lurk within the realm of the eerie wire are of no significance when it comes to listening to the end result or in measuring the audio frequency signal at the ends of the wires. Surely the remark as to the speed of current flow within a wire was intended as a joke, and if not, even readers with no technical or scientific background will realize that this is an incorrect statement. One thing I have always wondered with the mysteries beyond the realm of science argument is how we are able to repeatedly make reliable complicated electronic equipment if there is so much to chance as a meaningful probability that a wire will act as a diode. Wires are not diodes, diodes are diodes, wires conduct equally well in either direction.