Directionality of wire

Thanks, Herman, for your characteristically excellent input, which like many posts you have made in the past commands a great deal of respect in my book.

To be sure it’s clear, the statement that is quoted near the beginning of your post was made by Geoff. The reference to me which appears just above the quote might give some a different impression. And of course I agree that the quoted statement is incorrect.

Best regards,
-- Al

So, I'm not really hearing things, but actually hearing things? 🤔

So the whole idea of "energy" traveling outside the wire is pretty preposterous.

If that was true then the means we have for determining whether or not a wire is hot by placing a device  near them would not work, like those little gizmos that you put near an AC line that beep when the line is hot. If all energy was contained inside the wire then transformers would not work. Radios would not exist. etcetera

Sorry Al for misattributing the comment, it gets confusing here sometimes. I know I just set myself up for a cheap shot.

herman
Earlier someone gave a flawed analogy about measurements. Stating that since capacitors of the same value and precision sounded different there must be more to this than just measurements. The flaw in that argument is that caps have more parameters than just value and precision. Leakage current, effective series resistance, some amount of inductance causing them to be resonant at some frequency, temperature coefficient, type of dielectric, etc. I propose that if all parameters were exactly the same then they would sound the same which makes the original supposition invalid.

Huh? What I stated is still true. The caps that have the same capacitance and the same precision sound different. Who cares any other characteristics? So you think if they were different colors they would sound different? Feel free to propose anything you want. That does not mean your proposals are true, they might be true. They might not be.

herman
So can wires be directional? If they are not symmetrical it is easy to see why they would be. Ralph gave the example of asymmetry in a cable where the ground is connected on one end only. Cables with termination networks like MIT would surely be directional. If the way the wire is drawn results in an asymmetrical crystal structure I suppose there could be an effect. Now if a cable is perfectly symmetrical it is hard to see how it could be but since the energy always flows from source to load maybe this somehow conditions the wire so maybe, would explain the burn in effect that many adhere to. At the end of the day I am in the camp of just try it. If you hear it then it is real.

Just in case you’re a little late to the game, all wires per se are inherently asymmetrical - physically - when drawn through the final die. This physical asymmetry is the basis for why Audioquest, Anti Cables and others mark their cables with directional arrows. We are talking here, at least I am, about unshielded and otherwise symmetrical cables. Obviously shielding has its own issue regarding direction. So, to be thorough, a manufacturer should have a *process* for controlling and aligning both the shielding directionality with the wire directionality. So the two issues aren’t at odds with each other. Audioquest obviously does have a process in place, probably others as well. Make sense? The same goes for fuses, which appear to be physically symmetrical (aside from lettering or symbols), but contain a wire that is actually physically asymmetrical.

herman,

Thank you for the response.

shadorne5,793 posts08-01-2017 1:22pm@jea48

The speaker transducer moves forward and backward according to EMF acting on the voice coil - see Faraday’s law and Maxwells equations - so both +ve and -ve current direction along the speaker wire causes transducer movement.

A wire with directional properties would be a disaster for reproducing accurate audio. So Audioquest marketing mumbo jumbo is obviously just mumbo jumbo - Otherwise their products would not work .

Please explain how the audio signal electromagnetic wave, that travels down a speaker cable/wire, causes the voice coil of the speaker to move in and out which produces the sound waves we hear. What exactly is happening. How is the signal energy causing the voice coil to move?
Jim