THE ACTUAL PROFESSIONALS .... you know, the ones that make 100GHz cables, that ones that put gigabits through twisted pairs, the ones that developed the HDMI standard, the people who make measurements systems, all the ones where real bits, real SNR, real waveform shape = money, the ones whose customers have sophisticated test and measurement equipment, etc. etc. would never ever claim, except where a directional shield is concerned, or there is an intentional passive element built a cable, that, within the framework of audio, that directionality of an interconnect has any detectable difference in the sound.
The AudioQuest article is meant to SELL cables to people that cannot read what they have written and say "BS - this does not apply at audio frequencies, and this does not apply well, almost ever". You can't say in one sentence, oh, our cables are amazing, due to their fantastic shielding, and then claim a paragraph later ... well ya know, there is directional impedance (is there? ... how much), and ya know, that RF interference will cause things to ring yada yada ... well which is it? Do they shield from noise, or do they cause some strange effect that no one outside the audio "marketing industry" has ever experienced? .... OH, and lets not forget, all signals in audio are AC, AND at analog audio frequencies transmission line effects don't exist and any that would would be swamped by source impedance, load impedance, and cable mismatch ... of which we can guarantee there are. If it is USB, Ethernet, etc., unless it causes data loss, and it won't and it is easily tested with a BERT, it is meaningless. What is the typical USB / wired ethernet data loss in the home? ... effectively 0 for audio, i.e. you may lose bits every once in a while, not at any rate that would impact audio quality. Want to throw timing at me for a electrical SPDIF or similar? .... easily, easily proven, lots of excellent test equipment out there that can measure jitter at the receiver, equipment that actual technical professionals, not marketing professionals use. Easy for any of these company to measure a jitter improvement claim, you know like was done to show the improvements in electrical over optical connections. Of course lets not forget that any competent DAC today buffers and reclocks so that jitter on the input has no correlation to jitter on the DAC.
The AudioQuest article is meant to SELL cables to people that cannot read what they have written and say "BS - this does not apply at audio frequencies, and this does not apply well, almost ever". You can't say in one sentence, oh, our cables are amazing, due to their fantastic shielding, and then claim a paragraph later ... well ya know, there is directional impedance (is there? ... how much), and ya know, that RF interference will cause things to ring yada yada ... well which is it? Do they shield from noise, or do they cause some strange effect that no one outside the audio "marketing industry" has ever experienced? .... OH, and lets not forget, all signals in audio are AC, AND at analog audio frequencies transmission line effects don't exist and any that would would be swamped by source impedance, load impedance, and cable mismatch ... of which we can guarantee there are. If it is USB, Ethernet, etc., unless it causes data loss, and it won't and it is easily tested with a BERT, it is meaningless. What is the typical USB / wired ethernet data loss in the home? ... effectively 0 for audio, i.e. you may lose bits every once in a while, not at any rate that would impact audio quality. Want to throw timing at me for a electrical SPDIF or similar? .... easily, easily proven, lots of excellent test equipment out there that can measure jitter at the receiver, equipment that actual technical professionals, not marketing professionals use. Easy for any of these company to measure a jitter improvement claim, you know like was done to show the improvements in electrical over optical connections. Of course lets not forget that any competent DAC today buffers and reclocks so that jitter on the input has no correlation to jitter on the DAC.