It doesn’t make sense that stranded wires are not all in the same direction if the manufacturing process is automated - even without going to the trouble of controlling directionality. Do they dump all the strands in a barrel and pay some guy to grab them one by one? Give me a break! If it doesn’t make sense it’s not true.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to try reversing interconnects, no matter whether they’re stranded, shielded, unshielded, whatever. Besides, there are other reasons why there’s no guarantee that reversing cables will be audible. We all know what those reasons are, don’t we? 😬 The big boys control the whole process from A to Z, so that interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, HDMI cables will be in the correct direction as marked. It’s not rocket science.
Of course, anyone can ignore directionality, it’s no skin off my nose. It’s just one of those small and sometimes irritating things that separates the high end from everybody else. One wonders, how long it will be before people get smart and control directionality for transformers, internal wiring of components and speakers, capacitors, resistors, ribbon connectors, etc.?
