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In Reply to: RE: My 3 years to the goal of the non-compromise SET and still learning.. posted by aknaydenov on September 13, 2015 at 12:53:04
1) If copper wire has directionality, that would obviously include SPDIF, AES, even USB and Ethernet cables. Electrical signals are electrical signals after all. So is a cable carrying audio as encoded by binary voltages or PWM subject to audible direction effects?2) I can tell you based on my career that major recording studios, MapleShade excluded, broadcast centers, mastering facilities, do not worry about wire direction. So an audio signal could have been through tens of not hundreds of random direction cables? Can the distortion caused by improper directionality be reversed at the end of the playback chain,i.e in your home system? Now keep in mind that audio is mostly in digital form either as discrete AES or even more so today, file based running over ethernet networks so question #1 plays into this.
3) If this new distortion model exists, it still must function under our laws of physics? The same laws that control RLC parameters. We all know the longer a cable gets, the higher the resistance and inductance gets, as well as the capacitance increases. Therefore it would stand to reason that directionality distortion would increase with distance as well. So while directionality may require very gifted hearing and clean amplification to hear with a six foot interconnect, even a cheap AV receiver should then be able to resolve the difference at 50 feet?
Or if this is diode effect, then is it a "once done" type of distortion>
Things to consider if you want to persue this research. And this is hardly an all inclusive list. Just a few things I though of in my hour commute to work today.
Edits: 10/06/15Follow Ups:
1. Maybe so. Although I haven't tried, because my USB cable has an USB-A connector on the one side and USB-B on the other.
2. My personal opinion is that the direction of a cable alters the whole sound signature of an audio system. This same signature can be somewhat altered again by another component in the signal chain, subjectively compensating the "wrong" direction. Much less problematic is to use the "wrong" subjective direction on every system component, but keeping it the same for both stereo channels. Then you agree with the whole signature as the system's and if you don't like it, you start tweaking it with other components.
Much more problematic is to have one stereo channel with "right" cable directions and the other with "wrong" cable directions. Then you will have different sounding channels and there's nothing you can do about it.
I think this phenomenon is mostly problematic for DIY communities, but lesser for commercial, where the later use a big spool of cable and for the most of the time, connect its end always on the same spot of the audio device.
You cannot inverse the direction of PCB tracks. They can be considered a mix of right and wrong directions. They can be considered as a constant. But you can alter the whole system sound signature with your speaker cable or RCA cable.
3. It does function under a law of physics for sure, although I'm not sure exactly which.
"I think this phenomenon is mostly problematic for DIY communities, but lesser for commercial, where the later use a big spool of cable and for the most of the time, connect its end always on the same spot of the audio device."
I can tell you from 30 years of experience, that is hardly the case. First, I have yet to see a roll or box of wire from a standard cable manufacture that has direction markings on it.
Installation wise, there are many different techniques and practices. Sometimes the cable is pulled in place. Other times it is cut and re-spooled. Again in no case has any wiring technician I ever worked with worried about which end is which. Nor has any systems engineer I know ever specified such.
There is one exception. On power cables when installing the connector, there is a correct cable end so the wires spread into the screws properly. If you have the wrong end, two wires will have to cross making assembly more difficult. On multi-conductor cables the same scenario can apply. Of course this practice is strictly mechanical. It makes no difference electrically.
Today a client came and brought his Benchmark 1 DAC to listen to it on our system. We plugged it into an Arcam Delta 70.2 transport.
He wanted to listen to several SPDIF cables on his DAC. So we A-B-A-B "ied" him. Subjectively he preferred some, hated others. When we stopped at the one he preferred the most, my colleague changed its direction without telling him what he was doing. I was listening too and I liked the "B" direction instead of "A", but instead of saying it, I waited for the client to share his opinion first. He told us he liked "this new cable" (B) even more than the previous one and described us what he heard. Then we told him about the direction thing.
Many clients (including me) who were once skeptics, came out non-skeptics and never changed their minds.
"So an audio signal could have been through tens of not hundreds of random direction cables? Can the distortion caused by improper directionality be reversed at the end of the playback chain,i.e in your home system?"
Yes, I was pondering about that also. It seems remarkable how apparently so many evils, like "dead sounding" solid-state amplification, and now also completely random wire directions, on the path from the microphones in the recording studio to the home stereo system, can be "fixed" by remedies available to the listener in his own home. Special power sockets, power cords, crystals on the coffee table, flashing lights, green pens, properly-oriented wires,... All it takes is some faith, money, and probably a large helping of suggestibility too...
Chris
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