Directional wires/cables

@billpete  In the end, the correct answer is to try your cable both ways.  The way that sounds best to YOUR ears, is the correct direction.  Regardless of how the cables are marked.  Everything else is meaningless. 

" As I said, I have always followed the arrows but always thought that it meant they should point away from the source. "

Away from the source is the correct way!

@rodman99999

PERHAPS: that’s changed in recent years and I missed it

Yes, that’s changed in "recent years" (very much in quotes). I graduated in 1990, I have kept myself professionally up-to-date since (unlike you, clearly), and none of the stuff from the late 19th century that you keep thinking is what people are taught, because you were taught it, is current now. My children, who are going through university now, are not taught that, and real images of atoms (electron clouds) are commonplace since the early 2000s. Wake up and smell the roses - you are out of date and out of order.

Inescapable FACT: No one understands exactly how electricity works. That’s why there’s so much Electrical THEORY.

Inescapable fact: we understand pretty well how electricity works, otherwise we would not be having this conversation on devices that use electricity on scales that range from quantum effects to human scale observables. None of the unresolved conflicts between GR and QM is applicable to computers or audio equipment. The story you keep telling yourself that ’nobody understands electricity’ is completely false - and funnily enough, it was Feynman that with QED (Nobel in 1965) added the last pieces to the puzzle. You quote, but you don’t read or understand.

Quiet snort of derision

Very loud laugh from me. Keep digging.

Incidentally - nobody here is saying that different cables do not sound different, or that asymmetrically constructed cables do not exhibit directionality in terms of their susceptibility to noise. Neither of those two observations requires any of the woo-woo that you are spouting about the lack of understanding of electricity (or your incorrect use of the word 'theory' in a scientific context; it doesn't mean what you think it means. A dictionary would be of help - as would a guide to typing. Multiple spaces to align text went out of fashion with typewriters, circa 1985).

@retiredaudioguy 

FYI.  In 1965 I got a 1st class honors degree (summa cum laude) in Mathematics, with Physics as a minor.

My dad was a physicist (and a fellow of the Institute of Physics) and my elder brother taught high school students who were going to read physics at University.

Just saying ...

Yep. And you aren't saying anything that is out of kilter with a "moderately up-to-date" understanding of electromagnetism, unlike others on this thread. 😉

@dlevi67, 

Would you please explain in somewhat laymen terms how a signal travels down a cable.

Thanks