Directional speaker cables - switching direction

I performed the same tests using the low-jitter PS Audio Lambda transport as source. The results were very different. With a good source, cable direction didn't make a difference in the measurable jitter (fig.10). This suggests that the SV-3700—or any poor-quality transmitter—reacts with the cable's impedance to create jitter-inducing reflections in the interface. The directionality was probably caused by differences in the way the two RCA plugs were soldered to the cable; any bumps or discontinuities in the solder or RCA plug will cause a change in the characteristic impedance, which will cause higher-amplitude reflections in one direction than in the other. These reflections set up dynamically changing standing waves in the interface, introducing jitter in the embedded clock. These problems were reduced by the Lambda's higher-quality output circuit. In short, the worse the transport, the more cables—and their direction—affect sound quality.

Many people believe that we should be able to determine that cables are not directional if they present the same measurement from both sides hence two cables with the same measurements should sound identical. I don't believe this to be true. I seriously doubt that one can measure any difference between oxygen free copper (thousands of crystals) or zero crystal copper that comes from continuous casting process - a slow cooling in heated molds to avoid crystallization. Best instruments wouldn't be able to measure this but many claims it makes a difference. Would I be able to tell the difference chopping off 3' of one of the speaker cables - most likely not but my cables are very neutral sounding. Perhaps audio possesses a little bit of black magic?
12-19-14: Kijanki

Posted by Charles Hansen (M) on January 16, 2010 at 17:26:35
In Reply to: Ping, Charles Hansen posted by jea48 on January 16, 2010 at 15:32:09:

Finally, it should be noted that we *do* orient all of our axial-leaded plastic film capacitors. When the capacitor is wound, one of the leads will be connected to the outside conductor and the other lead will be connected to the inside conductor. Orienting the capacitor in the circuit properly makes a difference in the sound quality.

It took us a while to figure out how, but we built a machine that allows us to tell which end of the capacitor is which. It is a pain, but we sort every single capacitor and mark it for the correct orientation at each point in the circuit. If we had to *listen* to every capacitor to determine the correct polarity, I don't think anybody could afford to buy our products...