directional cables?

I ran across this white paper about a year ago. It may be of interest to you EEs and such.

Smoke and mirrors.

"We have presented a new distortion model that accurately predicts the audible behavior of the various metals in common use for audio applications."

Pretty neat trick given that to date no one has established actual audible differences among cables save for the well known effects of resistance, inductance and capacitance when they're severe enough to cause differences within known thresholds of hearing.

Cables should always be oriented in the same direction as your HiFi tuning fuses

Nice thread-thanks for the responses.

Herman, Then let's see your facts about arrows and cable orientation because every cable I have had experience with in the last couple of decades uses this standard. Maybe you found some fly by night cable company working out of their garage that got their arrows mix up.

Tbromgard, The arrows point in the direction the signal is flowing. If there are no arrows the writing on the cable follows the direction of the signal.

Jea48,

Even though there is no audible difference, I usually recommend that customers hook up the cables so that the signal flows the same direction as the printing. - Brian

This has been recommended by cable manufacturers because the cables break-in to the direction they are installed. If you disconnect the cables and install them in the opposite direction the cables will sound different because you will be breaking them in to the new direction. Once the cables break-in again they will sound fine.