Can cables be directional?

This is classic case of "scientific" arrogance. It goes like this. You develop a theory. You perform tests that you know in advance will confirm the theory. You then rubbish anyone who claims to achieve results that conflict with the theory. This has been the (unfortunate) pattern of scientific "progress" over the millenia.

Not long ago the idea of making ships out of iron was scorned... until it was demonstrated.

Fortunately, the natural world is so much more complex and subtle than we could even imagine...to have the arrogance and lack of humility to preclude in advance any observation almost defies belief....it also underlines the true ignorance and stupidity of the author.

Laurie S

JV’s words about the subject

Arye

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Date: April 17, 1999 05:33 AM
Author: Julian vereker
Subject: direction

Here follows a cut & paste from an earlier post of mine. "I can´t tell
you why cables sound different one way round to the other, but I do
know when the ´directionality´ happens in manufacture.

It doesn´t seem to matter how the bundle (of copper) is drawn, single
direction or mixed direction, but as soon as the insulation is
extruded onto the bundle, the directionality is established. This
means that one can mark the insulation and it will always be the right
way round.

I suspect that the hot plastic insulation anneals the copper in some
way, and this affects the crystaline structure.

But all our attempts, over many years, have failed to find any
measurement to show the directionality or indeed whether one cable
will sound better than another (other than the obvious - resistance,
capacitance and inductance)

Maybe someone out there knows?"

I am not sure about being an ex Physicist, I would have thought ´Once
a Physicist always a Physicist´. However one thing that is often
missed by the ´profesionals´ is that audio electronics design is the
most difficult discipline of all - one has to design for 10 octaves
and 130dB at the same time - a huge envelope, and much larger than any
other area of electronics endeavor.

julian



Date: April 08, 1998 02:02 AM
Author: julian vereker
Subject: cables

[...]

All Naim cables are directional, we don´t know what the mechanism is,
but they are all marked which way to connect them.

julian

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It's a lot of "mumbojumbo" out there in the HiFi-world

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a lot of what we now consider 'science' was once also considered 'mumbojumbo'. Just because you can't measure something doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't exist. Maybe we've been measuring the wrong thing...

It would be easy to objectively prove that cables show audible directionality. Nobody has done it. Nobody has even bothered to prove that electrically equivalent cables sound different.

Prove the phenomena exists and then ask the scientists to explain it.

But it's much more profitable to sell the snake oil.

Paul

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Please give me a good example on what used to be "mumbojumbo" but today is "science".

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The world is round. The earth moves around the sun. Want some more?

quote:

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Originally posted by Tempo:
[QUOTE] ... Please give me a good example on what used to be "mumbojumbo" but today is "science".

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About less than 100 years back, the theory that you can divide an electron to 3 subparts.
Don't remember now the name of the scientist who thought of it, but I do remember very well what did the "on line" scientists did to him.
And there are many more examples.

Arye

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But have there ever been an scientific controlled blind-test with for example some HiFi-journalists to decide if they can hear the difference between cables? Or would they not bother...?

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It's not that hard to try for yourself. Get your partner to do the cable swapping while you're not looking. If you don't notice a difference then you can post and tell us we're all crazy.

That isn't blind enough. But if the differences are as striking as claimed then spotting them in a double blind test should be easy. So why hasn't it been done?

(I'm not sure whether any scientist ever thought the world was flat. Can anyone name one? The world being round and moving around the sun is easy to prove.)

The people claiming that cables have directionality are not offering a theory and cannot expect science to explain their observation. They are claiming an unexpected effect. The burden is on them to prove their effect exists and then challenge science to deal with it. There is no difference between cable directionality and spoon bending or mind reading.

Paul

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(I'm not sure whether any scientist ever thought the world was flat. Can anyone name one? The world being round and moving around the sun is easy to prove.)

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didn't scientists believe that the universe rotated around the earth until Copernicus came along?
As for being easy to prove: most things are 'easy' once you've been shown how to do it.

Has anyone found a single instance of a properly conducted double blind test of hi fi that reported replicable findings?

Hmmm ... I think Paul Ranson's got a point -- why has no-one ever done a double blind test. It's not that easy to do at home, but surely the editors of some hifi mag have nothing better to do?

(OTOH, most engineers still believe that stands *cannot* have a measurable, let alone audible, effect on audio reproduction. However, finite elemente have apparently shown that their stands do. I've witnessed people being confronted with this and then replying, "Well, in that case your gear is broken or badly designed." Get a load of that!)

What really gets my goat is this, though:

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Our hearing memory is very short (I'ver been reading this in a book also )Only a few seconds after we have heard a sound it's very hard for the human mind to exactly know what it sounded like.

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This may be correct with regard to sound, and perhaps it is difficult to remember exactly how pink or how white a noise signal is. But we're talking about music, here. I can bloody well remember if the bass is tight, the kick drum audible, the noise level high, the treble spitty, imaging flat, or whether a bass line progresses from C to G in one or four notes etc.

Thomas

I have two identical psych labs (a bit small, but will do), a bunch of blind experimenters, and teach research methods. If someone wants to supply the kit so we can adhere to ceteris paribus assumptions, I am happy to run the experiment.

I remember some years ago the idea of "audiophile" capacitors being scorned. The majority said that they could not hear the difference. Instruments were then unable to measure any differences. Quite recently, advances in measurement techniques HAVE shown differences. I have certainly heard differences when reversing interconnect cable. With blind testers present, who consistently, correctly identified which direction was in use. The whole presentation of the soundstage altered markedly. Whether or not others believe this is unimportant to me. The fact that I cannot explain it is also unimportant. I am not trying to sell anything.I have observed(heard) the evidence in my system. Others may think(and say) whatever they like.

Laurie S

I've tried to compare the following with some degree of objectivity.
Mains into equipment, phase reversal.
Speaker cable, phase and direction reversal. Bi-wire Vs single.
Interconnects, direction reversal.
This has been with varying, but repeatable results. Mains phase surprised me. I thought it was my imagination that the Radford STA15 I was using sounded better with the mains polarity set one way. I assumed the plug was aysmetric and not fitting properly. However different mains leads had the same effect. I tried it on Quad 2s and the same occurred. With the help of some friends we set up some tests where they swapped leads over. We did this on a range of ampss. These sessions are only anecdotal, but were at least 'blind' and convinced me there must be something happening, although I kept looking for mechanical rather than electrical reasons for the changes. Later I tried this with interconnects and speaker cable.
On some interconnects I could not detect any difference at all. With Naim Snaic you definitely can.
Speaker cable, again the amount of difference varies. On a lot of systems I couldn't hear a difference. On my current system I could.
Noel.

Blind test home work; Reverse the phase of the input to an amp and the output to the speakers.....is it the same?

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didn't scientists believe that the universe rotated around the earth until Copernicus came along?

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I think that was a rather religious driven pov. Rather like some cable differences.... I don't know enough about the older civilisations but I do recall that the ancient Greeks had a good estimate for the size of the earth.

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As for being easy to prove: most things are 'easy' once you've been shown how to do it.

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Ships going below a horizon is a pretty easy demonstration of the round earth.

Paul

As to the original question not if your system is not good enought for you to hear. Mine is and I can hear the difference and have always agreed with the manufaturer, mind you I still can't hear a difference with the cd display on or off, perhaps somethings are in the mind.

I find it very interesting that the man whose opinions spawned this thread (Doug Self) is not just someone with a background in physics but has also spent many years designing audio amplifiers.

Even from a fairly superficial read of his website it's clearly apparent he disagrees fundamentally with many pieces of received wisdom current in the HiFi (flat-earth) world.

Does anybody on the forum actually have any experience of any of the products he designed, which I believe are mainly self-build projects published in Wireless World and elsewhere? If so do the results support the rhetoric?

David

"Opinions are like belly-buttons, everybody's got one"

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There is no difference between cable directionality and spoon bending or mind reading.

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I do spoon bending and mind reading, along with a gaggle of other odd feats, in my act

I've done blind (OK, not double blind) "tests" (OK - we didn't keep statistics over a long series of trials, etc.) with my wife and she spots the differences as I do and we even agree on the magnitude and significance of the differences. Recently, we compared a $125 Transparant interconnect to the supplied-in-the-box cheapie interconnect and a "gold plated" interconnect. We both agreed that the cheapie was the best, followed closely by the gold plated jobbie, then followed a good distance by the Transparant cable (score one for the simplist cable).

Similarly, we agree on our preference for MDF or glass under different components. I have not blind tested this one, but the *difference* is obvious - it affects tonal balance possibly among other things. What is not obvious is which presentation one prefers. But, luckily, we agree

I've read that cable directionality can be *switched* if the cable is played "backwards" long enough. I did have a SNAIC backwards at one point with my 72/hi/140 setup and was not getting along with the sound. Flipping the cable cleaned things up quite a bit. I know, its only anecdotal...

- GregB

Insert Witty Signature Line Here

I've already chimed in on this topic before, so I'll be brief.
Raw speaker cable -- I find it hard to believe that it can be directional.
Terminated cables, especially signal cables -- OK, I'll concede that they could be directional given the mis-match between source and load. However, well designed equipment should be immune to these effects...
OK, here it is:
Physics (sciences in general) is the link between the metaphysical observations and the practical applications, IMhO. Being an engineer, I apply physics to practical applications and the results look like magic (or metaphysics) if you don't understand the physics.
Now, if there IS a difference between the ends of a cable (directionality) and this is sensed rather than measured (metaphysics), then it behooves the practician to find an understanding of this through physics and then -- here's the key -- to OPTIMIZE the factors that make it better so we all benefit.
All this talk about whether they are or aren't different is wasted effort. We should be understanding, even at an "alchemy" level, what makes it better in one direction and then optimizing it!
David

Can we vote to see the number of people who actually experienced the difference and who did not?

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Originally posted by Arye_Gur:
About less than 100 years back, the theory that you can divide an electron to 3 subparts.

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Arye,

I'm guessing this is down to your translation, but the Electron is (apparently) an "elementary" particle, and cannot be sub-divided.

I think you mean that an atom can be divided into three components - electrons, protons & neutrons.

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne at Dial.Pipex.com

First, I fully believe or even know that cables are directional. I did quite a number of listening test especially with people who think they would not hear a difference. I never earned disagreement. The equipment of course must be capable to show sufficiant details.

The second point is the technical explination. I am not sure if this is fully correct, but it reflects my understanding. To my knowledge the three known types of resistance (Ohm resistance, capacitive resistance and inductive resistance) are key. As a consequence of the production process the crystalin structure of the wire is directional. This can be varified with a electron microscope. And this directionality influences the capacitive resistance (not in absolute terms but in the bulid up time). The other types of resistance stay constant. Probably not the final answer, and probably not 100% correct, but for me it is the explination.

Stephen

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I guess something must happen to the conductor material during the heating and drawing process to form the strands of a cable.

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I understand from reading his comments on this that Julian Vereker believed the directionality in the cable was not created during the drawing process but only after the outer insulating sheath had been extruded onto it??

David

Hmmmm! - mysteriouser and mysteriouser

Alice

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Cables are made from crystals. Crystals have interfaces. These can result in rectification - even if a balanced ac signal is input, there is no guarantee that the same thing will come out the other end.

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If this were the explanation it would be measurable.

Part of the problem is that claimed massive differences have had a tendency to disappear under controlled blind testing. A positive repeatable double blind test showing conventionally unmeasurable cable directionality would really throw the cat amongst the pigeons. You might even get James Randi's million dollars.

Doug Self was responsible for the design of some Soundcraft mixing desks. IIRC these have a reputation for good sound. It's worth perusing some of the articles on his site regarding balanced connections, ground loops, noise in mixers, stuff like that, regardless of your views on his views.

(And some of the non-audio material is especially good.)

Paul