cable directionality

The way they came out of the wire machine is reversed for the two.

This is something the late Bob Crump really extolled; he is the first person I was aware of doing this.

Wire is directional. Making up an IC in this fashion, signal and return running in opposite directions, will give a distinctly differing sound and soundstage height depending on which end is at the source and which is at the load. The correct orientation will have a higher soundstage and more extended HF. Wrong way sounds like there is a ceiling on the soundstage, HF is somewhat MIA, and the bass is overblown. Solid core silver is the easiest to hear the difference with. I myself use this method as do a few other mfg. that I know.

BTW Bill Lowe I believe also makes his cables with directionality of wire in mind, if you go into the tech. part of his site there is a paragraph on it

Chris
Tel Wire

Tvad with most shotgun IC's, the shield is connected at the arrowhead end, which is why if one connected all their source-to-preamp pairs with the arrow pointing to the preamp, all the shields would drain to the preamp's ground, which is what you want because it's the shortest path to ground without any loops; AKA "star grounding" with the preamp being the center of the star. This scheme works of course as long as the preamp is the only component that's connected to panel ground (thru the wall socket) and also if you remember to point the preamp-amp IC's arrows to the preamp also.

I learned of the Purist and Magnan deviations in discussions with Jim Aud of Purist and Dave Magnan. My conversation with David was so long ago, I can't remember what he told me other than that his (single ended) cables had several ground conductors connected at opposite ends (was he foolin' with me? who knows!) Jim Aud simply said that he felt the cable's shield should connect to the "quietest" ground, which to him would necessarily be the component end (a real head scratcher as far as I'm concerned!) and therefore his shielding is connected at the arrowTAIL end of his SE cables. But both of those are exceptions to the rule; and just to confirm your conclusions, I also point my Purist single ended IC's toward the preamp and think it sounds best that way too.

I'm going to have to try all my single ended Purist IC's pointing toward their sources, and I'll let you know.

I use XLR's for the DAC and the preamp/amp connections though, so that only leaves the outboard phono preamp and the old tube tuner that are connected with single ended IC's ;-)