Directionality of wire

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

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?

That is called cherry picking part of the conversation to divert attention from the overall discussion. You did not merely state

The caps that have the same capacitance and the same precision sound different.

you then drew a conclusion that measurements therefore don’t tell us the whole story. You conveniently failed to mention that in your last post.. and that was the whole basis of my comment.

Your conclusion was based on an incomplete analysis of the situation. Simple example.. A 1 watt 1% resistor made of carbon with very low inductance will sound different than a 1 watt 1% wire wound resistor with much higher inductance. The latter will act as a low or high pass filter depending on how it is used. If you ignore the inductance you would conclude there is something that measurements don’t tell you when the fact is you just failed to measure and take into account an important parameter.

Who cares? Those who care about finding what they believe to be the best sounding components without using trial and error. If you are designing RF circuits and fail to take into account the inductance of resistors, the resistance of inductors, the inductance of a capacitor, etc. you aren’t going to get the results you want. If somebody would take the time to measure everything there is to measure about the components a correlation could be made between those measurements and how they function. I am open to the possibility that there may well be things we are unaware of and therefore can’t measure and take into account, but picking 2 matching parameters as proof that no other measurements matter is simply incorrect.

Have you ever once in your life stated "oh, I see, I was wrong" or do you just like to argue for the sake of argument. I’m done with this part of the thread.

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.

I acknowledged that in my post, I said

If the way the wire is drawn results in an asymmetrical crystal structure I suppose there could be an effect.

about this

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.

Again, it has nothing to do with we commonly call "current" which most visualize as electrons flowing back and forth. It simply doesn’t work that way. There is an electro-magnetic wave that transfers energy to the coil of the speaker. If applied to a resistor it creates heat. If applied to an inductor (coil) it creates a constantly changing magnetic field which pushes and pulls against a fixed magnet creating motion. Those stuck in a world of flowing electrons are just that, stuck there. Energy flows, electrons do not.