Directional speaker cables - switching direction

Al, Kinjanki, Scvan and Jea48 thanks for the references and posts to an interesting subject. I feel I am getting some truthful and pretty much non biased information I can use to consider how to evaluate and what to work with in my system.

Many people believe that we should be able to determine that cables are not directional if they present the same measurement from both sides hence two cables with the same measurements should sound identical. I don't believe this to be true. I seriously doubt that one can measure any difference between oxygen free copper (thousands of crystals) or zero crystal copper that comes from continuous casting process - a slow cooling in heated molds to avoid crystallization. Best instruments wouldn't be able to measure this but many claims it makes a difference. Would I be able to tell the difference chopping off 3' of one of the speaker cables - most likely not but my cables are very neutral sounding. Perhaps audio possesses a little bit of black magic?
12-19-14: Kijanki

I agree.

Existing technology test equipment cannot measure the differences.... That does not mean they do not exist though.
But the trained human ear can hear the differences.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Existing technology.....

Posted by Charles Hansen (M) on January 16, 2010 at 17:26:35
In Reply to: Ping, Charles Hansen posted by jea48 on January 16, 2010 at 15:32:09:

Finally, it should be noted that we *do* orient all of our axial-leaded plastic film capacitors. When the capacitor is wound, one of the leads will be connected to the outside conductor and the other lead will be connected to the inside conductor. Orienting the capacitor in the circuit properly makes a difference in the sound quality.

It took us a while to figure out how, but we built a machine that allows us to tell which end of the capacitor is which. It is a pain, but we sort every single capacitor and mark it for the correct orientation at each point in the circuit. If we had to *listen* to every capacitor to determine the correct polarity, I don't think anybody could afford to buy our products...

>http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/55/558658.html

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Jim

Sorry guys about the bad link in my last post above.
Try this one.

Charles Hansen
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Here is the Link for the Sterophile/transport Delight article I quoted earlier.
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For some strange reason when I paste the link between the [url ]....[/url] brackets the web site is not displayed.

Mike, thanks for your comment.

Getting back to speaker cables, it occurs to me that what I said about connector-related impedance discontinuities in relation to digital cables may have some applicability to speaker cables as well. Speaker cables will to some degree act as antennas, picking up Radio Frequency Interference from various sources, such as nearby cables, power cords, digital components, switching power supplies, light dimmers, fluorescent lights, possibly wifi and even radio stations. That RFI will presumably be at frequencies that are too high, and at amplitudes that are too low, for the speakers to reproduce it and for our ears to hear it. However if the amplifier uses feedback, and if (as I would expect to often be the case) the amplifier's output impedance at RF frequencies is significant, some of that RF energy will be introduced into the feedback loop. Non-linearities and intermodulation effects within the amp may then result in that energy affecting sonics at audible frequencies.

And the magnitude and frequency characteristics of the RFI that is injected into the feedback loop can be expected to vary to some degree depending on the differing impedance discontinuities and mismatches at the two ends of the cable.

The magnitude and frequency characteristics of the RFI that is injected into the feedback loop might even differ significantly depending on the exact physical placement of the spade lug or other termination on the binding post, and/or its positioning relative to nearby metallic surfaces on the amp. As I said early in this thread, when hard to explain and/or seemingly implausible phenomena are being addressed, multiple back and forth comparisons are called for, to be sure that the observation is being attributed to the right variable, as well as to verify that perceived differences are perceived consistently.

Best regards,
-- Al