Speaker cable arrows???

Not a meltdown at all Geoffkait just antimythological. Some of us believe an incredible amount of pure fallacy. Some of us use fallacy to steal other people's money. Actually too many of us do that. Sometimes I have to stop and ask myself if that is what I am doing. I think it is built into our programming. In your case I don't think this is the problem.

"In the case the solid wire conductor being pulled through a die the deformation is primarily in 2 dimensions. Hence the directionality."

Primarily maybe, only not. Which makes the explanation not quite strong. Sometimes, your posts are written so authoritatively that I have to look for the word that explains them differently.

This is an apples and oranges thing. This is a digital signal with very fast edge speeds, using RCA jacks. RCA jacks are not impedance controlled, and we have no idea whether any attempt at edge speed control (or termination) was implemented on the transmitting end to reduce reflection due to edge speeds that could have GHz components, unlike the 20Khz (ish) for analog audio.

Al, (almarg), pointed out some where in the article, or a foot note, there is a follow up saying the directionality was due to the differences in the amount of solder used on one RCA connector than the other. Was it the solder? Beats me....

I remember that Stereophile article, and skimming it, remember some glaring errors, like claiming the DTI magically improves the jitter from the DAT deck, a conclusion that cannot be reached, because all the previous tests with the jitter tester showed, is that the jitter with the DAT and the jitter tester was high, which could (and most likely is) an incompatibility between the DAT and the jitter tester (including the cable), not necessarily high jitter in the DAT itself. Low driver level on the DAT output (possibly to be compatible with something else), and a high threshold voltage on the input logic of the jitter tester could have made it overly sensitive to reflections on the cable, which seems sort of self-evident given the significant difference in jitter by changing direction. Definitely some bad stuff going on there, at very high edge rates with non impedance controlled connections (hence the reason to move to BNC).

OK all, I'm officially tired of this thread. I would like to thank jea48 for his gentlemanly responses and his attitude. Jeff, I really wish I could understand which side of a question you are arguing after reading your posts. But I guess that's what keeps this fun and interesting.