Directionality of wire

@jea48 

"Just a guess no one has experiment using bare uninsulated wires for ICs or speaker cables."

I have. My ESL's are each powered by a mono block. Each ESL has a step up transformer, which must be resistor tuned. I put the resistor externally; more precisely, I connected mono block to speaker with nichrome wire, uninsulated so that it can dissipate heat. Thus the surrounding air is the dielectric.

For safety, I now cover half of each speaker wire with a loose covering of teflon, so that they cannot arc. Virtually no contact between conductor and dielectric, so no difference in sound.

There’s no (rpt no) real reason to worry about whether the dielectric may or may not be directional. The much larger issue is the directionality of the wire itself. The directionality of wire used in high end cables, at least by the smart manufacturers, is controlled by determining directionality of the wire as it comes off the spool. A simple resistance measurement of a length of wire taken from the spool reveals the proper direction for the entire spool. Then one would only need to mark the spool FORWARD or BACKWARD. Problem solved. This is not rocket science, gentle readers. The much bigger issue - as I have repeatedly pointed out - is that since ALL WIRE IS DIRECTIONAL then all internal wiring in speakers and electronics, all wire in transformers, all wires in capacitors, etc. should also be controlled by all the various manufacturers for best results. And this would be true whether the wire was used in a DC circuit or an AC circuit.

Furthermore, the tiny little wire in all fuses is bare. Air is the best dielectric but air is not directional. And since ALL fuses are directional we can probably conclude it’s the wire itself, not (rpt not) the dielectric material, at least not (rpt not) to any significant degree. This whole wire directionality thing is actually an excellent example of Occam’s razor: Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In the case of two possibile explanations the simpler one is usually the correct or better one. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is.

A simple resistance measurement of a length of wire taken from the spool reveals the proper direction for the entire spool. 

This indicates the simple resistance measurement will show differences in the resistance of the same piece of wire  depending on directionality, correct?  If so, would the manufacturer then orient the wire direction for their cables/fuses so the signal flow is in the direction with the lowest resistance?  Do you have any idea what the delta in directional resistance might be for a typical audio cable, say an 8-foot speaker cable with cross-sectional area of 12 awg?  How about expressed as a percent of the total resistance?  Is resistance the only electrical property affected by wire directionality?

@jea48 

Yes also to IC's.

Further to the above, I forgot that about 20 years ago, when I saw IC costs going stratospheric, I decided to do an experiment.

I built a cabinet for ARC SP10 pre-amp and Nakamichi CR7, which was a Faraday cage. I then noted that, at line levels, capacitance was the enemy, not inductance, so I found some very pure 4 nines silver 24 AWG and had it gold plated. 

I drilled holes in the bulkhead between the ARC and the Nak which were 2" apart and threaded bare wires through them, and then protected the wires with 0.375 teflon tubing, which touched the wires scarcely at all. Thus, compared to conventional co-ax of whatever manufacture, dielectric absorption was near zero, as was capacitance. Cables were 26 inches and terminated with ETI RCA's.

I was then in a position to conduct a single-blind experiment of theoretically optimal cables compared to Canare Starquad. An expert test subject (my long suffering wife) was unable to detect the difference reliably. Of less interest, because I was not a blind subject, I was also unable to hear the difference.

This is NOT definitive because the subject was not required to make many, many repeated observations for statistical analysis. But the point was clear: there ARE things that yield readily detectable differences, like turntables, tonearms, cartridges, SUT's, tubes, pre-amp topology, power supplies, capacitors, resistors, amplifier topology, and speakers.

So the latter is where I spend my money.

So, Jea, just for the record, the test has been done.

 
mitch2
Geoffkait: A simple resistance measurement of a length of wire taken from the spool reveals the proper direction for the entire spool.

This indicates the simple resistance measurement will show differences in the resistance of the same piece of wire depending on directionality, correct?

>>>>Yes

If so, would the manufacturer then orient the wire direction for their cables/fuses so the signal flow is in the direction with the lowest resistance?

>>>>Fuses are not controlled for directivity as far as I know, only cables with directional arrows. That's why fuse manufacturers tell customers to try them both ways. Yes, the lower resistance would be in the direction of toward the speakers.

Do you have any idea what the delta in directional resistance might be for a typical audio cable, say an 8-foot speaker cable with cross-sectional area of 12 awg?

>>>>No

How about expressed as a percent of the total resistance?

>>>>>Dunno.

Is resistance the only electrical property affected by wire directionality?

>>>>Obviously, the reciprocal, conductivity.