I will be able to show you that you can measure the difference when direction is reversed. These stranded, twisted pair cables are twisted in a certain direction, and following the right hand rule, when you put two wires in close proximity, when the twist is in opposite direction, you can change the balance of inductance and capacitance. Also, you will notice when you take these cables apart that the orange, green, brown, blue wires inside have different twists.......
Gary
Is that a solid argument? I am not too sure. in my line of work, I deal with Cat 5, 6, etc and the likes cables and indeed the twist have a direction ... I would however say that if you put reverse the direction of a known cable, the measurements will not change. Of that I am certain. I used to believe in cables ..not anymore: I strongly believe, no I know that the human perceptual appartus has threshold and that beyond those threshold signals are no longer perceived. e.g we don't "see" infrared or UV ... Nor are we able to hear differences between 2 signals that are ..05db apart , I am not even sure we perceive 0.1 dB apart ...
Back in the 80's when I was still in college, I remember how during the week end I would change the oil (Oil was cheap then) and the filters of my car, clean the engine and feel that the car performed so much better ... Such seems to exist inthe world of high End cables ... It remains for example interesting that the most expensive cables are always superior to the least expensive while the objective reasons why these more expensive cables work "better" fall well below human perceptive threshold ...(Nordost Propagation delay figures of 96% of the speed of light for the Valahalla and 98% for the Odin In Physics the propagation delay is the time it takes a signal to travel from one end of a conductor to the another so that would not matter at all .. you would simply hear the music the same since all the music would have been delayed only by 2% of .000000001 sec !!!!)
I am also certain the debate will continue for a while .. There is too much invested in cables from the manufacturers and the Audiophiles alike.. Audiophiles usually prefer to err in the sense of more and this is used by cables manufacturers ... to sell their ware .. .. I suspect that from the audiophiles side it is an emotional issue.. People usually cling to beliefs, beliefs are emotional investments ... And the cable is much an issue of belief and in no small amount of insecurity .. Many have been exposed to the inability to hear differences between cables.. Most haven't rejected the belief ... They have rather chosen to dismiss science of more conveniently the validity of the tests they were subjected to . Believe me, it truly bothers one to discover that one's hearing abilities is not as good as one would like to think .. as I have said somewhere else in this forum or others ... The experience can be humbling, sometime humiliating and over all upsetting .. So beliefs are safer .. And if one can afford it ..really ..Why not play it safe? mmmmhhh? .. After that 100K speaker in my 200 K system a few more dollars in "great" cables here and there make the system more ..organic ..... Right? ....?
On the Pro side using cables, if I were a cable manufacturer and considering the margin on cables, that would have been one of my favorite marketing outlet ... The Pro gets to project more mystique for nothing: a simple endorsement and the cable manufacturer? You already knew ...
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