Directional cables? do you believe?

[Stan Williams]

I try to use good cables when i can, but have also used cheaper cables when i had to, with no problem btw. I'm using oxygen free double shield cable now, which happens to be directional cable. Has anyone used or heard any difference in this kind of cable? I have not. It's available in speaker wire and shielded. What do you think?
Thats it !

[Recording Engineer]

When sonusman and Dragon came to visit, Ed explained the reason for the "one-way cable". Yeah I know it seems like a whole bunch of BS but once he explained the reason, it SO obvious and simple. Know if I could only remember... Ed???!!!

[Stan Williams]

I even use to sell the stuff in a music store, but i can't remember the theory behind it. But ! I still follow the arrows just like i believe in the stuff.

[regebro]

Ooh, yeah, PLEASE! I'd LOVE to hear the explanation for how come AC electricity can be directional. It better be good!

[Recording Engineer]

I told you it was simple and obvious; it's something I did with some cables in my studio. It's just since those cables are perminent, it never even crossed my mind to put 2 'n 2 together.

[regebro]

I didn't even see that it was avaliable as shielded too. Still waiting for the reason for the speaker cable though...

[Stan Williams]

That would make sense about the lifting of the grounds and remembering which end was which. But, what i was talking about was the wire itself having a direction itself, not that i believe it, but lots of home audio guys do. I can't think of a single reason how copper wire could be twisted or configured to have a direction for signal flow. Those home audio guys are really smart or really dummmmb !
Thats it !

[mixmkr]

it's because your mics will sound upside in the mix otherwise.

[Treeline]

And it's not healthy to sing while you're standing on your head.

[skippy]

Stan Williams wrote: "Those home audio guys are really smart or really dummmmb !"

Well, sort of both. My experience has been that many high-end audiophiles are easily pulled into a brinksmanship contest. The one thing that no true-blue audiophile can stand is the idea that somebody else can hear something, and they *can't*. The only thing that approaches that as a motivator for an audiophile is that they all love a good argument...

If you say that a given whoopie-skippy high-zoot wire "unveils the top end", you'll have half of them lining up to agree with you, and half of them lining up to disagree, just for the sheer animal joy of it. Show up with decent measurement equipment and _demonstrate_ that there is no measurable difference, and they'll keep arguing anyway: there is no technical solution possible, because the argument was basically a religious one from the start. This can lead to one hell of a downward spiral. There have been several of these measurethons staged at AES conventions over the years, and the only thing that typically happens is that the audiophiles leave more convinced than ever that measurements are for the birds. They just _know_ thay they're right, just like they _know_ the sun's gonna come up tomorrow.

Companies that make consumer audio gear know this, and their marketers exploit this to the fullest. Take a so-so product, hype the hell out of it as something that does something so esoteric that it can't possibly be measured by our current technology, get three Respected Golden Ears to agree with you (and you can always find a few, because nobody wants to be The One Who Couldn't Hear It), quadruple the price, and rake in the cash.

Now, hear me out before you start pitching tomatoes. I'm the first to admit that there really are certain cables that sound better than others in specific applications. No question about it! However, I depart from the audiophile brigade in one important way: my experience has been that when this happens, it is always due to some very traceable (and _measurable_, and _explainable_!) issues that are present for the setup when one cable is used, and absent for another.

Lower resistance/low-inductance speaker wire can definitely sound better, if it allows the woofer to be controlled more accurately. Fact. This is also entirely dependent on the speaker and amp designs: one size does not fit all. Nothing makes me laugh more than seeing 80 feet of $2/foot cable connecting a 20W Radio Shack amp to a $70 pair of Radio Shack speakers...

Lower capacitance interconnect cable will almost always sound better in a high impedance, single ended setup (simply by reducing the effect of the parasitic lowpass filter created by the driving impedance of the source and the shunt capacitance of the cable). Fact. No news there: the high-zoot guitar cables should all be under 20pf/ft...

Long runs of balanced pairs in 600ohm service may sound better if they are both low-capacitance and low-resistance (low resistance to reduce the series attentuation of the long run, and low capacitance to prevent the load from becoming quite so reactive, which tends to destabilize the output driver). Fact. The telephone company has known this for years, since they tried to drive the first long lines with the earliest vacuum-tube amps, and got uncontrollable oscillations for their troubles: that's a first-year EE circuit design case study.

See? I said it! There absolutely *are* cases where you can hear the wire. But after some point (which happens at a much lower price than the marketers like to admit), you stop being able to measure a difference, and a lot of the high-zoot stuff is way the hell beyond that point. I'm quite convinced that these audiophile guys are hearing the voices of the angels, a bunch of the time.

Directionality of *speaker wire*? Floobydust. Show me the AES paper on it, and how they measured the difference, and the supporting math. I wanna see the peer-reviewed proof. Maxwell's equations don't scare me...

However, even I recognize that I'm getting old and senile. If you can hear the wire, more power to you: far be it from me to tell you that you can't! I've given up, myself. I find that I can't hear it unless it introduces a measurable phase shift, increases distortion measurably, or screws with the frequency response in a measurable way for the system as a whole.

I posted a couple of articles in the thread http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthr...threadid=15482 that kind of touch on my experiences on this, so I'll shut up now.

Really smart or really dumb? Damned if I know: you make the call. Speaking solely for myself, I think that the audiophile community has been identified as easy marks. Caveat freakin' emptor!

[engineear]

SMARTLY STATED!

[Stan Williams]

Thanks for the info Skippy !
Every time i see those arrows on my wire, i start to feel guilty. So what i think i will do is, follow the arrows just in case the wire police show up.GOD DON'T LET ME BE AN AUDIOPHILE !
I feel better now.

[dobro]

skippy - lmao.

"The One Who Couldn't Hear It"

It could be a song.

[regebro]

Thanks Skippy! No your not going senile. Your getting wise.

[Edited by regebro on 10-10-2000 at 00:48]

[engineear]

OK,OK...I'm gonna get my hand slapped here, becuz i'm going to post out of content..... but shouldn't Skippy get extra credit towards obtaining his "junior" merit badge for posting such a meaty informative post? Maybe there should be a "post comittee" whose goal is to ascertain merit to the posts so that someone like Skippy isn't just a newbie. Well, I guess it's better than calling him an audiophile! By the way, I think that lil' green guy with the big teefas should be on the comittee. Does he have a name? Newbie? He IS a little green. I think his name should be spleve. Oh and thanks for letting me add to my post count( stealing from bvaleri's play book!) Cha ching. Not that the size of my post count matters to me. I'd rather read/listen than talk and maybe learn more.

Seriously, thanx Skippy, very educational as were your linked posts.

[regebro]

I think so too. What you really want is possibility to rate posts, like on Slashdot or Perlmonks, and you get credit, not for posting, but for the ratings.

That however, means ripping the whole rating system of the BBS apart, which might be a HUGE job.

Maybe Dragon can let Skippy keep the number of posts but change his title, to "Not really a Newbie"?

[skippy]

Hey, thanks for the kind words! I don't mind the "newbie" moniker, because for most of the topics active in this forum, I really *am* a newbie. Computer recording? Don't have a freakin' clue, as you can tell from the "please help me" article I posted over in the computer recording forum asking about digital I/O cards. Digital editing? Holy shit, Wanda, that mouse is gonna gnaw on my fingers. All this stuff happened since I stopped paying much attention!

Snatching sounds out of the air, and shoving them up a piece of wire through a board to an analog tape machine- that stuff, I'm not a newbie at. Nerdy boring circuit design cruft is what I do for a living. Posting stuff to public Internet forums, I've been doing on and off since 1980- which is why I try to post the background info right up front most of the time. But interacting with folks in this forum on these modern topics? Still got waterfalls coming out from behind my ears. Leave me be as a newbie until I can learn some new tricks here.

Just to support the feeling of cognitive dissonance I've got going here: I'm currently wearing a tatty old tee shirt I picked up at the Ampex ATR-124 (anyone remember _those_?) product introduction at the 1981 AES new york convention. Saw it in the back of the drawer this morning, and it just seemed appropriate. The wording on it is "I have heard the future"...

And to get back on topic: I actually saw a good reason for a guitar cable to be directional in Guitar Satan the other day. Someone (don't remember who) is making cables that feature a connector on one end with a little microswitch that shorts tip to ring when it gets pulled out a little bit. What a great idea! That allows you to change instruments without the huge blast of 60Hz hum you usually get, by shorting the cable before the tip disconnects. In that case, putting the switched connector at the guitar (source) end makes perfect sense, since that's the noisy end when you unplug it. But that's as far as I'm willing to go on that one!

[BigKahuna]

Hey ... I have one of those cables ... I'm not sure who makes it ... it says SOUND/FLEX on the cable and looks like it has Switchcraft connectors.
I bought it for my brother about 10 years ago and then stole it back from him about a month ago when he was here. I know, I'm bad.
It's a cool cord, though ... you can just leave it unplugged ... no noise at all.

Great post, skippy ... you have a way with words.

[Edited by BigKahuna on 10-11-2000 at 22:10]