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Directionality of wire

I am a fan of Chris Sommovigo's Black Cat and Airwave interconnects. I hope he does not mind me quoting him or naming him on this subject, but Chris does not mark directionality of his IC's. I recently wrote him on the subject and he responded that absent shunting off to ground/dialectric designs, the idea of wire directionality is a complete myth. Same with resistors and fuses. My hunch is that 95% of IC "manufacturers", particularly the one man operations of under $500 IC's mark directionality because they think it lends the appearance of technical sophistication and legitimacy. But even among the "big boys", the myth gets thrown around like so much accepted common knowledge. Thoughts? Someone care to educate me on how a simple IC or PC or speaker cable or fuse without a special shunting scheme can possibly have directionality? It was this comment by Stephen Mejias (then of Audioquest and in the context of Herb Reichert's review of the AQ Niagra 1000) that prompts my question;

Thank you for the excellent question. AudioQuest provided an NRG-10 AC cable for the evaluation. Like all AudioQuest cables, our AC cables use solid conductors that are carefully controlled for low-noise directionality. We see this as a benefit for all applications -- one that becomes especially important when discussing our Niagara units. Because our AC cables use conductors that have been properly controlled for low-noise directionality, they complement the Niagara System’s patented Ground-Noise Dissipation Technology. Other AC cables would work, but may or may not allow the Niagara to reach its full potential. If you'd like more information on our use of directionality to minimize the harmful effects of high-frequency noise, please visit http://www.audioquest.com/directionality-its-all-about-noise/ or the Niagara 1000's owner's manual (available on our website).

Thanks again.

Stephen Mejias
AudioQuest


Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/gramophone-dreams-15-audioquest-niagara-1000-hifiman-he1000-v2-p...


128x128fsonicsmith
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
 
kosst_amojan
@jea48
You’re joking, right? You really want me to post pics of me testing a piece of wire both ways with a DMM so you can see there’s no difference?

>>> Speaking for myself I prefer that uber skeptics and naysayers not (rpt not) test cables or fuses for direction for obvious reasons. 

Folks are selling this jazz like 9/11 truthers with rebranded accusations of cognitive dissonance, defying me to prove a negative.

>>>>Whatever..

Skin effect is subtle, but that CAN be measured.

>>>>>>So can directionality be measured. And very easily, too. Don't you have your listening ears on?

Nobody here has cited a phenomenon that would explain a wire being directional because there isn’t one.

>>>>>Again, you don't have your listening ears on. The phenomenon has been known for at least 20 years. Have you been living in a cave?

If there was a way to build a directional wire, you can bet your ass that you could buy it by the mile.

>>>>actually, you can not (rpt not) build a wire that isn't directional. See the irony?

High speed data buses are forever plagued with termination challenges, specifically, preventing signal reflections from traveling backwards down the bus. If there was any way to form a directional trace or wire, buses for memory and parallel SCSI wouldn’t require meticulous termination. A big reason computer buses have gone serial hub based point-to-point is because terminating them is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper.

>>>>Wire directionality probably would not (rpt not) show up in data communications. I've already addressed this. It's an audiophile thang! 😁

Directionality is pure snake oil. Scour JEDEC and IEEE standards. You won’t find mention of any such phenomenon.

>>>>>I doubt you have actually "scoured" those standards or any standards. Besides there are no standards for sound quality or for audiophile cables. There are no standards for many audiophile issues, actually, like polarity. 

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analogluvr
859 posts
 
What a load of BS!!
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,891 posts
 
A lot of thought went into that one.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
teo_audio
What is that difference? Where does it come from? That the number, the measurement and the math can’t find it is utterly meaningless in the face of the observation. That it cannot be scientifically found, does not make the observation invalid. It makes the claimant of science being above and ruling over the validity of observations, observations made by what is actually moving into being millions of people (over the years) --at fault. Audiophiles and their friends and families have been exposed to the directionality question--so it's into the millions of people exposed to the quandary. To add, we’ve now got this huge group of headphone fanatics who are spending mucho cash in this area and they are also caught up in the directionality question.

You got me there. I was under the assumption there were only around 200 audiophiles, 250 tops.
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