Can you hear the "directionality" of interconnects and speaker wire? Kevin LaTour can.

My ears aren't near as discerning as many of you, but I can tell when one end of an interconnect or speaker cable is disconnected. There's that.

M. M.

 

LC1 the shield is the return so must be connected at both ends.
To leave the shield floating you must have 2 conductors plus a shield, not a coax.

 

I wired my Videoquest MAC 3-1 75 Ohm coax cable (like Blue Jeans LC-1) with shield connected at source only. These have a foil/braid shield, not foil/foil which Blue Jeans says is better at shielding and tested them (what I feel/am 99.9% certain is their shielding effectiveness) along with my other $100-$150 interconnects on my Kyocera A-910 which has both standard pre out/main in jumpers and a switch that bypasses this and is dead silent (flip back and forth on quiet part with volume cranked). The shielding on the Videoquest was as quiet as that of my most expensive cables at the time, Monster M1000 MK3 with Neutrik Pro Fi connectors and AQ Ruby x3.

 

Errr, that is same as shield connected to both ends. The shield side of an RCA plug is the ground- hello.

 

Feel free to name one.

 

It’s not that it’s non-shielded, it’s that the shield isn’t grounded at both ends. Supposed to prevent ground loops.

Whether or not that renders the shielding less effective isn’t the point.

 

I'll let you know in a day or two. As long as directionality means shielding termination orientation. I looked in 3 mfgs. engineering guidance docs and 2 textbooks, the only reference to 'direction' is to the lay of the strands, how it's wrapped. Not direction of current flow.

I ordered 2 sets (4 cables) of Mogami 'directional' RCA's. 2 conductors with shield.
I will use them on my phono loop.
TT > SOLO > MA6300 line level input.
Total gain 39 dBV x 29 dBV.

On phono at 100% volume (no signal) noise at speaker is 12 mV (2 kHz). At 0% = 0.1 mV, 50% = 0.2, 75% .= 5 mV.
On line input <0.2 mV up to 100%.

So I know it's the phono loop We'll see if the new cables lower it. Back calculated 12 mV = 5 uV at phono input.

 

@chervokas your $.02 is requested re: cabling and shielding here. I feel like maybe I’m not describing this clearly enough?

 

I haven't been following the discussion, not sure what's at issue here, twinax plus shield with shield floating at one end, in an unbalanced audio setting? Yes that can work well and is often used, with the shield typically grounded at the source end to keep noise on the shield from appearing at the load input and to provide the lowest impedance connection to ground for the shield. (Also a normal practice, though not common in unbalanced home hifi would be to connect the shield to ground directly at the source end and through a resistor or an RC network at the load end). Obviously it's not an arrangement that would work with a coax cable, in which shield and return are the same wire. That also works well. Here are some explanatory notes from Rane: Grounding and Shielding Audio Devices

 

Well, we don't have a way to measure perception of soundstage. It may be true that phase coherence, and certainly room acoustic matters like decay times and dispersion and diffusion, impact soundstage as engineers try to capture it and we try to recreate it. But a lot of it ia psychological too. We don't have a bench test for soundstage depth or focus.

 

Wise man, nicely done....

I'll fill you in --- It's a cable thread, and the issue is.... um.... hey, what is the issue again?

Anyway, it's a cable thread.

 

Sound Quality

 

Well, I have nothing against cable threads. And I do think questions about grounding and reducing the presence of noise from leakage current by best grounding practice in unbalance audio is always something worth thinking and learning about. I'm always looking to understand best practices and to lower induced environmental noise and leakage current noise.

 

Good point, I was just having fun with your intro.

I've admittedly become a little jaded on the direction / value cable threads have gone recently (and the number of them) but I've made my point clear and will offer more constructive feedback on the topic moving forward, if I have any.

 

Sound quality isn't really a characteristic of equipment or audio. Judging whether something has better or worse sound quality is a value judgment. It's not a characteristic inherent in the equipment. The equipment has noise, distortion, frequency, phase, separation et al. performance. Whether you thing some combination of those is an example of better or worse quality is really in your head and heart, not the equipment.

 

I know. Like the discussions about how new music sucks and analog vs. digital and streaming, we do seem to find it hard to resist going around in circles on these topics.

 

LOL I have one or two more.... but for now, yeah like that.

 

I seen your post earlier today and for someone who holds them selves with high self esteem as to knowing everything about electronics I had to laugh at your post. I couldn't respond due to work but chervokas did correctly here, now you have a bunch of post in this thread showing you're not as bright as you think.

A Interconnect cable with arrows on it, is for the specific wiring as chervokas just stated.
I'v never heard any signal loss or hum issues with this type of cables, in fact it's design to lower noise.

 

So in other words test equipment can not test for sound quality, that was my point.
But if you think all equipment that test the same sounds the same we would know that's not true at all.

 

SQ is not a thing. It is a perception and unique to and an individual.
But the things that comprise SQ (V and I) can be measured. So can sound in a room.

What you are describing is which is better: blonde or redhead. Subjective. But the fact one IS a redhead and the other blonde IS objective.

As far as equipment that tests the same doesn't sound the same, imo, that is not true for signal carriers and processors.
Transducers are different.
Bob Carver did Avery interesting experiment, he made physical changes to make his amp sound like a high priced one, he did it using a null test, in other words he made the signals/measurements identical.

Interesting regardless of position
The Carver Challenge

 

This needs to be its own thread.

 

This insanely ridiculous thread needs to go away.