The Contour System – Directional Wiring of Audio Parts

@russ69
I must admit I have trouble hearing directional changes. How does that mater on an AC circuit?

Perhaps you need to enable some logic here. Directivity is detected in electrical circuits with AC and no current at all (think of tube grid). Starting from here for a well educated radio engineer there are only two logical moves:
- There is no directivity at all.
- Directivity is a property of conductors that has only an indirect relation to electromagnetism and acoustics. When we listen to music, along with acoustic vibrations, we feel some accompanying vibrations, which, judging by their subjective manifestations stated above, cannot be detected by any measuring devices. It's anything but electricity.

I believe that since quite a lot of people around the world claim that they hear the direction, it does exists. It is also clear that it is not easy for a person to identify this phenomenon against the background of other manifestations of the audio signal from the first time, and sometimes after even many attempts.

If you want to learn how to hear this phenomenon, then I would advise you to build as simple as possible a mono tube amplifier and listen to it through a bare broadband speaker without a housing. Another option is to buy an old tube receiver from the 1930s and use its amp and speaker as a wire tester after removing from it all the parts related to the RF circuits.
On such equipment, the direction can be heard very clearly. Start tests with the speaker cables, listen through them to the music that emotionally affects you the most and at first focus on long tests - more than a minute in one listening session. I am sure that if not immediately, then after a while you will be quite normal to navigate the subtleties of the sound. Many people have come this way, and so have I.

@bluemoodriver
Anton - you set out the pass mark, you’ve done lots of work, so what was the result? Is directionality easy to hear as MC says, to the extent of 80-90% correct identification in blind tests?

I admit this is a difficult question, the percentage of hits depends on many things. First of all, if we are talking about just difference in the sound of the same piece of wire, then here, with all other things being equal, the percentage of hits easily fits into 90% and sometimes 100% . Equal means that we must listen to the same piece of music, connect the test wire to the circuit in the same way (the same contact points of the test wire with the circuit) and hold the wire with our hands in the same way.

The problem is that the wire has a transverse component of directivity, and if during testing you connect the wire in the same longitudinal direction but with different sides, the sound will differ, and sometimes this difference can be close in expression to the longitudinal reversal. Your hands also affect the sound when you hold the test wire in them. If you do not know this, then the repeatability in the tests may disappear altogether.

So we have some difficulties even in simplest case, but in practice, it is impossible to listen to the same piece of music all the time and work with the same wire ceteris paribus. Here you should not just hear the difference, but choose the best direction in terms of the sum of the pros and cons of different wires. Each wire in addition to the direction has its own character (coloration) and different musical potential, it happens that a successful conductor in the opposite direction sounds preferable than an unsuccessful conductor in the right one. All this definitely reduces the percentage of hits in practice.

In short  - to be sure that the percentage of hits in long continuous tests is within 80-90%, the results should be rechecked with a fresh head. In responsible places, I sometimes do it even twice.

@bluemoodriver
Also, as the Audioholics guy is saying just now on his video, the differences between speaker cables measure at below 0.06dB. Utterly impossible for the human ear to detect. If one cable to another has so little effect, will turning the same cable around have the 10x greater effect needed for any audible difference to be heard when blind? Really?

It is not the difference in electricity signal that we hear while reversing wires. I have explained my point of view earlier.

First of all, connecting the shield to one side only creates a great antenna. You can pick up all kinds of signals this way. Second of all wire is in no way shape or form directional. This is a great example of how our minds can trick us. Lay instinct is wrong 90% of the time then, if you want to hear something you will. If you blind yourself and have someone else switch back and forth you will not be able to make out any difference. You have to be honest with yourself and understand just how tricky evaluating by ear only is. The differences have to be pretty severe to be able to notices them reliably by ear only. A lot of these myths were started by dishonest companies trying to separate their gear from the pack appealing to lay instinct. What makes sense frequently does not. 

@mijostyn
wire is in no way shape or form directional. This is a great example of how our minds can trick us. Lay instinct is wrong 90% of the time..

OK, this is your point of view. I believe you are not a layman, then please explain me the following:

For example, I love Glenn Gould, I appreciate every note he has. I open YouTube with a professional remastering made by people with a philosophy identical to yours and hear a poor sound without most of the nuances inherent in Gould’s records. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjEAFWKCymY
Then I take his record, digitize it on my amateur equipment, compress it into mp3 and upload it to the Internet.
https://www.backtomusic.ru/19719

Please note that this is not an experiment, all other things being equal. In this situation, I am at a disadvantage because studio remastering was made from master tapes, and I did it from a vinyl that had already been recorded from such a tape some years ago. The LP sounds much worse than the original master tape (ask studio guys if you don’t believe it).

I wonder why remastering from master tape made by professionals on very expensive audio equipment, sounds less expressive and is so poor in timbres and nuances compared to mine? Maybe their appliances have been broken that time? Then I can give you many similar examples if you want.

Thanks for posting those links - fascinating.
All subjective I know. To my ears the Youtube version sounds like it is the same as the one found on Qobuz labelled as a hi-res remastering. You can find on Qobuz the same piece without that remastering badge and at red book and when I asked my daughter’s young and very musical ears which of these two she preferred she said the standard res version sounded “fuller and richer”.  She also thought the Youtube copy sounded closest to the hi res badged version we found.  (The youtube was airplayed to the system so was red book). 
We then played the same piece from your website. Sorry to say, the two young faces and my old face in the room screwed up - “yuk”. Nobody liked the noise, nor the sound. One comment was “it sounds ancient and like it’s being played through a sock”. 
Only opinions and everyone has their preferences.  My family is not conditioned to the vinyl sound, for sure. 
But the point must be that when differences between youtube, Qobuz, and masterings, and vinyl copies are so large, how can the tiny effects of wire directionality matter much?  No amount of wire fiddling is going to clean that dull and noisy vinyl...