Audioquest HDMI cables
- Thread starter Bruce B
- Start date
Since this is a measurement thread:
Denke opened his explanation by saying that BJC isn’t equipped to test to "category 7" specifications, to which the Vodka cable is labeled as conforming (indeed, there is no universally agreed-upon "category 7" standard for Ethernet cables—it has an ISO spec, but not a TIA type). However, using a $10,000 Fluke network analyzer, Denke tested out the Vodka to category 6a spec. The results were what can best be described as a "marginal pass."
One pic is for the $350 Vodka and another for a ~$12 BJC.
"While the cable did pass 6A patch cord standards it did so within the tester's margin of error—meaning that if it were run on a variety of well-calibrated testers it might sometimes fail," explained Denke in his analysis. "The difficulty, as is typical for Cat 6A, was near-end crosstalk."
Finally, the braided shield inside the cable drew some comments. "There is no continuity from the body of the one connector to the body of the other, indicating that the shield has not been terminated to one or both of the connector," noted Denke. "Our 6A uses an absorptive shield—that is, the cable is shielded but the shield is not terminated at either end. Alien crosstalk is the crosstalk which occurs between cables, as opposed to the internal crosstalk which occurs between the pairs in a cable. This may also be why there are unterminated shields on the Audioquest cable—I’m not really sure what the reason is there, though I had thought that the shields on Cat 7 were required to be tied to ground. It is also possible—I have no handy way to test—that they've tied the shield to one end only, though this would be highly nonstandard for network cabling."
So based the above, based on how they wire XLR's against spec, I'm left wondering what they do with their HDMI cables which geometrically speaking is the trickiest of the cable assemblies to get correct.
Denke opened his explanation by saying that BJC isn’t equipped to test to "category 7" specifications, to which the Vodka cable is labeled as conforming (indeed, there is no universally agreed-upon "category 7" standard for Ethernet cables—it has an ISO spec, but not a TIA type). However, using a $10,000 Fluke network analyzer, Denke tested out the Vodka to category 6a spec. The results were what can best be described as a "marginal pass."
One pic is for the $350 Vodka and another for a ~$12 BJC.
"While the cable did pass 6A patch cord standards it did so within the tester's margin of error—meaning that if it were run on a variety of well-calibrated testers it might sometimes fail," explained Denke in his analysis. "The difficulty, as is typical for Cat 6A, was near-end crosstalk."
Finally, the braided shield inside the cable drew some comments. "There is no continuity from the body of the one connector to the body of the other, indicating that the shield has not been terminated to one or both of the connector," noted Denke. "Our 6A uses an absorptive shield—that is, the cable is shielded but the shield is not terminated at either end. Alien crosstalk is the crosstalk which occurs between cables, as opposed to the internal crosstalk which occurs between the pairs in a cable. This may also be why there are unterminated shields on the Audioquest cable—I’m not really sure what the reason is there, though I had thought that the shields on Cat 7 were required to be tied to ground. It is also possible—I have no handy way to test—that they've tied the shield to one end only, though this would be highly nonstandard for network cabling."
So based the above, based on how they wire XLR's against spec, I'm left wondering what they do with their HDMI cables which geometrically speaking is the trickiest of the cable assemblies to get correct.
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Reading the All about Noise topic on AQ's website it appears the claim is high frequency noise will due to skin effect only travel over the surface of conductors. Since drawing wire through a die alters the molecular shape of the wire surface this high frequency noise will travel between components more easily in one direction vs the other. So wire in one direction will restrict high frequency noise from travelling between components to corrupt the signal more in one direction than the other. Which would essentially require the AC impedance of the wire to be two different values for the two different directions.
Were this effect true, it should be trivial to measure the difference. Does not read like AQ has done such measurements.
Were this effect true, it should be trivial to measure the difference. Does not read like AQ has done such measurements.
I suspect and sincerely hope that they have done many more measurements internally than they reveal externally, which is essentially none. But, you would think if they had good measurements of the phenomena they spend so many words describing, but not proving, in their ads and which they think differentiate their products, they would put the supporting measurements on their website in a white paper or something. Agreed, the measurements may not belong on the back cover of Stereophile, etc.
Rightly or wrongly, it is quite naturally intuitive to conclude from their non-disclosure of routine measurements of the technical phenomena they describe that the measurements do not support their hypothesis, their sell, about improved performance. That may have worked just fine with analog cables, and cable measurements do play a much more imprecise role with analog. But, with digital cables and computer audiophiles, they are dealing with a much tougher crowd for the most part. They do not appear to have recognized that.
I am no marketing genius, but knowing your target market would seem to be elementary in order to achieve success. All I see from them is a continuation of their style and approach from analog to the very different world of digital: business as usual.
Well you now have two company owners that won't participate in a controlled listening evaluation.
So far batting 1000
And just like Alex at UpTone I expect a rather sudden drop of in Mr Low's participation.
Should anyone really purchase from companies who's owners don't even trust their own ears? If they don't why should anyone else.
So far batting 1000
And just like Alex at UpTone I expect a rather sudden drop of in Mr Low's participation.
Should anyone really purchase from companies who's owners don't even trust their own ears? If they don't why should anyone else.
Well you now have two company owners that won't participate in a controlled listening evaluation.
So far batting 1000
And just like Alex at UpTone I expect a rather sudden drop of in Mr Low's participation.
Should anyone really purchase from companies who's owners don't even trust their own ears? If they don't why should anyone else.
Guess this is my swan song -- maybe, because this post is certainly more philosophical than measured, and therefor not appropriate for this sub-forum. Plus, life has too many other offerings to spend time trying to emulate Sisyphus. There aren't even any Pryyhic victories possible in this game.
It will never stop amazing me that people who adamantly declare that they do not hear a difference, ask for any version of proof that others can hear a difference, or to see an externally measured test result which would essentially prove that sometimes what can be measured can't be heard (because they don't hear it). Catering to such people is not the market for AQ or Nordost or UpTone, any more than I am a potential customer for alcohol. For me, any alcohol is immediately like a mild case of the flu. I don't need it to be proven to me that alcohol has any different effect on other people.
We audio manufacturers who make products you find theoretically impossible, do care intensely about our market -- however, our market is not spending time arguing about audio components. This by no means that all audio products are worth anything near their price relative to other products, but all such inferior products do make a difference, do sound different, and because the enjoyment of music is not about how good the equipment is, but really only about how good the music is and the listener's relationship to the music, even the worst hardware and cables will have fans. The Pinto, the Aztec, whatever, had fans because any working car is an astonishing magic carpet ride when one is in the mood.
The punch line -- I and my peers clearly do trust our ears, and our market is people who also trust their perceptions. The only people who don't seem to trust their empirical contact with the world, seem to be the ones who hear nothing, but still want proof that they should hear something -- weird.
Sincerely, Bill Low
Bill,
In all due respect, how can we trust your ears or anyones at AQ?
No one at AQ a year a go could detect a 10db level difference on a youtube video, that a 3rd grader could hear.
In addition, you asked to have the video pulled down without getting a copy. You trusted your ears a year ago, now a blogger makes you change your hearing????
Unbelievable - our new tag line
In all due respect, how can we trust your ears or anyones at AQ?
No one at AQ a year a go could detect a 10db level difference on a youtube video, that a 3rd grader could hear.
In addition, you asked to have the video pulled down without getting a copy. You trusted your ears a year ago, now a blogger makes you change your hearing????
Unbelievable - our new tag line
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Bill your logic is circular and fallible.
On one hand you listen to all the drawn batches for 'directionality' and on the other hand you have a video that you knew about, you let someone else other than yourself vouch for what you are hearing because you weren't sure what you were hearing.
Because if you were sure of what you where hearing you would have pulled the plug on it instantly (well we can fantasize).
So you either knew the video was a forgery and you thought the market gullible or your ears can't cash the check you write with your marketing.
So which is it?
Pyrrhic it's not. I have a thread where you were publicly backed down to a tacit admission you can't hear jack.
And please stop dodging the question:
Why is AQ advertising their Vodka RJE as a CAT7 cable that it can't possibly be? How do you defend the fact that a $12 cable outperformed your $350 marginal offering?
Maybe you need to add some more masking tape to your Ethernet assemblies.
On one hand you listen to all the drawn batches for 'directionality' and on the other hand you have a video that you knew about, you let someone else other than yourself vouch for what you are hearing because you weren't sure what you were hearing.
Because if you were sure of what you where hearing you would have pulled the plug on it instantly (well we can fantasize).
So you either knew the video was a forgery and you thought the market gullible or your ears can't cash the check you write with your marketing.
So which is it?
Pyrrhic it's not. I have a thread where you were publicly backed down to a tacit admission you can't hear jack.
And please stop dodging the question:
Why is AQ advertising their Vodka RJE as a CAT7 cable that it can't possibly be? How do you defend the fact that a $12 cable outperformed your $350 marginal offering?
Maybe you need to add some more masking tape to your Ethernet assemblies.
On conductor directionality and the highlighted part of your post: the former is news to me (and I'll get to that in a bit), the latter I agree 100% - you have to re-terminate the conductor once you flip it. However, the problem I have with this statement is what I actually read in the latest ads in the magazines, e.g. the latest TAS I got; in the back cover it's stated that (and notice the highlighted part there):
Do you see the problem? In your earlier post here you claim that in order to test conductor directionality one has to re-terminate the conductor after flipping THE CONDUCTOR (so that the shield direction is not altered, therefore, affecting only one parameter in the test), but then the ad says simply says go ahead and just slip the entire cable. The two statements contradict each other, and would only agree with each other only if testing unshielded cables, which your cables aren't (they are shielded on one end). Therefore, any differences one might hear would be the result of actually flipping the end at which the shield is connected, not actual "conductor directionality".
Now, back to the alleged "conductor directionality" itself affecting the sound... As I said, this is news to me; the same ad claims it's because of the way the wire is cast and drawn, creating a "chevron-like pattern in the conductor's internal grain structure and a non-symmetrical overlay of grains at the conductor's surface". Don't know about that, maybe it's all true, maybe it isn't. But it raises a couple of questions: a) if it's true that chevron patterns and all the rest exist, well, so what, it says nothing about why this affects how noise is "processed" by the cable in one direction vs the other (recall, the ad's headline says It's All About Noise), or why it wouldn't just affect the signal itself; b) why not just use single-crystal conductors, like OCC, or other manufacturing processes that don't give you the alleged chevron structures et al - there ought to be a better way to build a better conductor, and be done with that argument.
Thoughts?
I am still researching this but landed on this little post by my friend and former colleague, JJ: http://www.aes.org/sections/reports/?ID=1395
"Yes, cables are directional, but at -165dB relative to the input signal. Noise, hum, and the like are a much more real problem. "
"Yes, cables are directional, but at -165dB relative to the input signal. Noise, hum, and the like are a much more real problem. "
Yep, I have one. You just destroyed Mr Low / Audioquest.
Here they are selling cables based on the extrusion / casting process creating grain boundaries that work better in one direction vs another and tell people to try the cable both ways to see and now he (stupidly?) admits in a thread when you do that it's the shield they use that introduces noise.
So AQ has been selling a cable purposefully built to introduce noise because of the shield and not the native properties of the conductors to sound better in one direction vs another.
Great catch.
Thanks for your thoughtful questions -- in delightfully sharp contrast with some later sniping. There's a productive difference between looking and asking vs. being too blind to read.
AQ tests directionality using 2 bare uninsulated conductors (cut from the same conductor, direction being consistent between the conductors) with RCA plugs on each end. Such a cable can be reversed (as could a shielded cable whose shield is not attached at either end). Anyone could take a piece of zip cord or some bell-wire and put RCA plugs on each end, or use it as a speaker cable. Directionality is not an AQ invention.
I suppose the flaw here on AQ's part, my Evil Deceiver mea culpa, is that the ad doesn't specifically say "speaker cable" when suggesting how easy it is to just turn a cable around. Though even then, some cables, such as when a Tara Labs cable has a "TFA Return" (a different genuinely effective noise suppression technique), are not symmetrical. I also wouldn't recommend using a cable with a filter network for directionality testing -- there are some asymmetrical speaker cables, but they are a minority.
As for noise, as I hope is obvious to all who proclaim their expertise, noise in the signal, on the source's output, is signal which is not subject to the impedance variation which we believe accounts for the phenomenon of directionality. It is only noise picked up after the output device which is subject to directionality.
Once viewed from this perspective, the question and the debate should be about whether the incremental reduction in noise fed into the sources's output, and a possible reduction of noise-induced misbehavior of the output circuit as a result of controlling the direction of the conductors, is below or above the threshold of relevance. The existence of the mechanism really isn't debatable -- though I'll be the first to agree that the relevance of the mechanism requires investigation -- and funny enough, the ONLY relevant test instrument is the human listener.
A listener is required in order establish the scale at which any distortion, THD, IM, etc., is relevant. External measuring can provoke questions, and can be used to look for correlation with human perception -- with only the human and not the machine being able to ascribe relevance, and thereby set a testable standard --
Though, watch what you test for. For example: by applying standardized IHF weighted rumble protocols (-6dB/octave), a direct drive turnable could be designed to have double the rumble and yet show 3dB less rumble than a belt drive model (even while the amp's power was sucked up making the woofer visibly move at frequencies it couldn't reproduce). Today, some of the best turntables in the world are direct-drive, the technology is valid -- but as applied in the 1970's, the huge majority of people were sold inferior direct-drive turntables -- because they passed a standardized measurement. As an optimist, I believe that the majority of this forum is populated by people, who once aware of this abuse of specifications, would resort to other means of turntable evaluation. I suspect (only a suspicion), that the cable-haters, as compared to the cable-skeptics, would say no-way, better rumble specs, better speed stability specs (despite the introduction of servo modulation), direct-drive wins, case closed.
Decades ago, I enjoyed an overnight flight to London in the 10 across seats, because half the flight was spent talking with a CalTech professor. He was on the way to Paris to discuss the inner working of nuclear reactors to those who needed to know. Upon learning that I sell audio wire, he was immediately as skeptical as I think would be anyone on this forum -- however, as soon as I mentioned several variables that explained why my cable wouldn't sound the same as Monster Cable, he more or less said, of course, I hadn't considered that. None of us consider anything until we have cause, or it is in direct proximity to something we are considering.
As with so much of the never-ending cable-fight, I posit that instead of denying understandable distortion mechanisms, awareness of these mechanisms should be accepted as an improved perspective to those who hadn't previously considered these variables, who should then by all means be cautious before accepting whether or not the deleterious result of these understood mechanisms is relevant to humans enjoying music.
Your questions and others will soon have helped us improve our directionality explanation. One has to learn the hard way the many ways in which any communication is inadequate and will be misunderstood. As with flight communication rules banning the use of "get ready for take off," because the distorted version "take off" is so dangerous, in somewhat this manner, with all your help, AQ will improve our communication.
If anyone followed the link in post 112, the NBS section that is below Marshall Guthrie's piece about D-Tronics's fraudulent video, is (if authentic) 100% as weird to me as I suspect it is to all of you. I'm often embarrassed by my own industry, in some ways more so than by seeing AQ's name get dragged through the mud for something it didn't do, but appeared it might have done -- Having been able to see the fraudulent video again, thanks both to Amir on this forum, and Mark at HD-audio, I truly do understand how reasonable people's first reaction would be to assume that AQ had produced the video -- but this is the internet age: skepticism shouldn't just apply to blue-pill spam and cable company claims, but to the authenticity of anything prior to credentials being established.
Sincerely, Bill Low
Bill, thank you for participating. You're definitely providing food for thought, although it could be (and is) argued that you are providing the growing medium for that food instead.
You appear to be saying that you decide on the directionality of a bulk reel by listening to a sample. Do you do this sighted, or blind? And do you listen multiple times, not knowing whether the cable has been switched around or not between listening, in order to avoid bias? And is listening all you do, or do you also measure the differences? If you measure the differences, what magnitude of differences do you see? Are the differences smaller, similar, or larger then the differences between two nominally identical test cables cut from the same roll? Are there some types of cable which exhibit greater directionality than others? What about stranded wire? Does the laying up process result in the individual strands running in random directions, negating any directionality? (I need to ask someone like Steve Lampen at Belden about that.) These are the sort of things I would hope to see discussed here in the "measurement based" section of WBF.
This is, in my opinion, not relevant here. There's a name for that sort of appeal to authority, but it escapes me at the moment. The point is that while the CalTech professor may have known a lot about the internals of nuclear reactors, he appears to have known relatively little about cables. I'd give the anecdote more credence if the person you were talking to was from a cable company, on his way to discuss sensor wiring in nuclear reactor vessels.
Ok. So how about this:
Send out some unterminated assembly's. Since anyone can take some zip cord and perform this test at home....
Label each assembly for the directionality that your listening preference indicated. I'll wire one up as you normally would and another up opposite but keeping the shield always oriented correctly.
Let me know if you will be at Axpona. We'll wire up some speakers and swap assemblies. Stereo or Monophonic. Your choice.
Let's swap 15 times with a randomly chosen possible change out.
I would really love to know how the above is simply not acceptable. You're there to show off the superiority of your wares. So let's show them off.
Blinded or sighted?
You are 100% correct. I'm available mid-March to fly out to AQ with client computer, server, managed switch and 4 AQ Vodka RJE's. Just cover my costs if you can't tell the difference. Otherwise I'll eat the costs. We'll be able to set a testable standard.
Interesting that the same thing could be said for properly conducted listener testing. Testing you absolutely speak to on one hand and on the other dismiss it 100%.
So which is it?
Also is AQ going to stop the fraudulent CAT7 advertising around their RJE's?
I'd like to stay on this sentence a bit, and before I elaborate I'll ask again - why not use OCC wire or other manufacturing techniques that produce a better conductor; surely, not all conductors are manufactured the same way.
Now I'd like to drill down to the above... Sure, [assuming a noiseless signal] noise is picked after the output device, but since your interconnects are shielded on one end, the shield should not allow any noise to be picked up in one of the two possible connection directions. Are you saying that somehow the shield is not 100% effective even in the best connection direction wrt shield and with the best possible shield construction (we understand that not all shields are 100% effective, e.g. braided, but a solid-copper shield should be), and thus somehow some noise still seeps into the conductor and from then on, directionality of said conductor affects how this little amount of noise is processed??? Exactly how? Or are you still referring to unshielded cables, like speaker cables? But again, how is the conductor's internal structure processing noise differently in one direction versus the other. You seem to allude that "impedance variation" plays a role in this, which leads me to the next question.
Then, specific to the claim that "noise is ... not subject to the impedance variation" - which impedance variation are we talking about? I suspect you are referring to the the conductor's impedance; but if noise is in the HF, VHF or UHF (isn't it?) then it surely should be subject (to one degree or another depending on the frequency) to the cable's sqrt(L/C) impedance, which is the impedance of said cable at those frequencies, no? Even if noise is not subject to any impedance variation as you claim, then the rest of the statement reads: "impedance variation ... we believe accounts for the phenomenon of directionality" - so impedance variation [please define accurately] is somehow interacting with the conductor and presumably its chevron structures et al, in one direction but not the other... how? Does it "allow" the flow of noise in one direction of the conductor but not the other? That would not make sense, as noise is now part of the signal and it flows the same way as the signal, so if any directionality affects noise "flow" it must affect signal "flow". I really don't get it...
Finally, regarding Amir's link, are we talking about noise levels at -165dB or thereabout???
Thanks
Hi again -- I keep promising not to write more on this forum because it's about measurements -- though I am encouraging those who pursue the measurement frontier to please help develop the necessary methodologies and refinements required for measuring, before then I hope working in a no-expectation-bias manner to possibly correlate what is measured by hardware with what is experienced by humans. Such a lack of bias would mean investigating the flaws in the common practice of using ABX testing for the purpose of trying to prove a negative. The robustness of the evidence that the normal use of ABX hides rather than reveals, means that the testing methodology, while completely valid as part of a larger picture, might be being dogmatically (mis) applied, covering the truth instead of revealing it.
About OCC. The casting process is extremely slow and expensive, and while I haven't checked lately, was never used to create conductors less than 1mm in diameter. With very, very rare exception in the late 1980's, as-cast OCC was never available to the public. However, I have listened to as-cast copper and to as-cast aluminum. The aluminum, due to having considerably higher impedance than copper also has considerably less skin-effect than copper (do superconductors have infinite skin-effect, becoming just a rail guide for wave propagation?), allowing a 1mm AL conductor to not have the unacceptable (due to skin-effect) inductance-induced phase smearing so obvious in a 1mm OD copper conductor.
So, no OCC on the consumer market is as-cast -- it is drawn into smaller conductors through a process Hitachi refined when they developed LC-OFC (Linear Crystal) in the early '80's (very similar to Van den Hull's Mono Crystal process of the same era). Relative to this discussion of directionality, the surface of drawn as-cast is not amorphous, and exhibits asymmetric surface irregularities. As I have mentioned in a previous post, honoring a post about how annealing eliminates grain problems, neither drawn as-cast, or LC, can be annealed without the long grains returning to a lower energy state of multiple grains per centimeter -- and the annealing also never completely eliminates the conductor's asymmetrical components.
As I have written on this forum, the "solution" of using non-directional conductors, such as as-cast amorphous conductors, would not be a "solution" -- because the directional impedance variation is an asset to be deployed. Using amorphous conductors would mean that the system could not be improved by choosing where to direct the noise. The amorphous conductor would in this sense be "wrong" in both directions.
I have written quite a bit, many posts back, trying to explain as clearly as I am capable, and in an ad I partially edited on the back of TAS, that our claim is that, most importantly at the surface of a drawn conductor, due to non-random asymmetrical surface irregularities, that impedance at very high EMI frequencies is incrementally different in one direction vs. the other. Given the law that energy much follow the path of least resistance, noise capacitively coupled from other elements of the cable, or which gets in the ends of the never complete shield attachment of an RCA or XLR, must follow the path of least resistance.
Yes, a cable having 100% shield coverage almost never means a 100% shielded cable. An "F" connector, as used on an RG6 coax, whereby the shield makes continuous 360º contact with the plugs, has a chance of providing complete shield coverage. An RCA or XLR plug really doesn't allow for a similarly effect shielding regime. The many more modern digital plugs have been designed with noise in mind, but their exact manifestation and implementation is variable. As for the inadequate old RJ45 on an Ethernet cable -- equipment using Ethernet protocols was less subject to external EMI back when Ethernet was over coax.
While many aspects of the materials and geometry of an HDMI cable can affect performance, among the multiple factories AQ has or does work with, all the AQ brand models are made by a single facility, which in addition to having the most experience with high-speed data cables and the challenge of geometric precision, we and the factory engineers believe that the most likely reason that their cables as a group consistently outperform supposedly identical cable made by an alternate supplier, is partly due to precision in cable manufacturing -- but mostly due to cast shields and other details of the cable termination. In our current world of wireless communication, EMI can sneak in through the tiniest apertures!
May you and other inquiring minds please take advantage of all that has been learned, and all that is empirically evident, and help invent the frontier, so that I can then employ those technologies in my itty bitty corner of the world. Audio is often the canary in the coal mine, the arena in which some problems are most evident, but audio itself is rarely the frontier. While I have a couple of patents, I don't consider myself an inventor -- my job is to be a professional consumer, relying on others to invent and manufacture (such as with optical cables), the materials and techniques which will allow me to advance the quality of my offerings.
Answers are only pertinent to the extent that the question was good. I've never pretended to have all the answers -- I am I hope one of those who asks questions, and who wrestles with empirical reality as best I can along the way. As I will mention in a reply to Dan Hill's careful questions, it is my challenge to manage available evidence and results as best I can. It is for others to help design the tools and methodologies which might aid that effort -- neither I nor most anyone else needs help noticing directionality (other than exposure to the phenomenon) any more than I need help telling day from night. What I do need help with, is pushing back the frontier of understanding. This self-defined lover of contemporary anthropology finds voluntary-blindness to require acknowledgment as it's as omnipresent as death and taxes. Learning to drop my own blinkers and veils is a life-long ambition, a work-in-progress which will never be finished.
Sorry I rambled well beyond your specific questions, but I think it's all related.
Sincerely, Bill Low
Citations? Dr. Olive and Dr. Toole would disagree.
So you can listen for the truth of the directionality of extruded wire but the same can't be applied to listening to terminated cables.
Also are your Vodka RJE cables CAT7 or CAT6/6a? Are you ok with the fraudulent advertising on your website?
First, about my overnight conversation with a CalTech professor. Neither he nor I pretended to fully understand all the mechanisms whereby audio cables affect performance -- the attempted point in my previous post was that his new starting point, once made aware that many variables are in play besides LCR, was to find the open door stimulating and inviting. He didn't approach this new-for-him subject with a defense of his previous less aware state.
I didn't cite him as a cable authority, but as being of the class of scientists who help move civilization forward. As in the play "Proof", most educated highly competent mathematicians and physicists toil in their ivory trenches, knowing that once they are so much older than were Gauss or Einstein when they burst on the scene, that they are unlikely to ever make comparable contributions, though these valuable toilers hopefully gain some comfort from the fact that the brilliance of those such as Gauss and Einstein is only made possible by the height of the mountain that the geniuses need to and are fortunate enough to be able to stand on, a mountain built and stabilized by both the contributions of previous geniuses, and the thousands of less famous "workers" in the discipline.
As I wrote in my post above, replying to ack, when I jumped the gun on replying to your thoughtful questions. I don't need proof that I can hear differences. That differences due to directionality can be heard, are significant, and that action is required is a given. There is no need for me to continually drop apples in order to see if gravity still applies. The only methodology we need to improve is the technique for listening, so that this obnoxious time-consuming directional-testing process can be done as easily and quickly as possible.
Belden has been mentioned on several forums, both because Steve Lampen has made himself so visible, and because Belden makes extremely competent cables, within the parameters of their approach to cable. Belden is the Cadillac/Mercedes/whatever of cable as the answer to a function needing to be fulfilled. Many years ago, Belden was a key manufacturer of AQ cables, especially our analog video cables -- because they are a very competent organization, and because their test factory is a full-on full-scale facility with the flexible artisan culture required to always be testing new techniques and processes. During those years, a bunch of Belden engineers came out to visit AQ in San Clemente. While sharing many hours with us, they listened to directionality -- they heard the difference, they did not try to deny what they heard, they only wondered, even if only temporarily, why they heard what they heard.
However, some months later, when I visited these engineers at Belden headquarters in Indiana, they spoke about what they had heard as if it were a somehow isolated phenomenon -- a very normal human response. I wished so much that I had had with me the $99 JVC boombox I had previously travelled with, so that I might set up this oh-so-high-end and exotic system in their office, and let them hear that there it was equally easy to hear directionality in CA vs. IN, or on a mid-grade audiophile system vs. a boombox (with detachable speakers and a need for speaker cable).
A small side story about my claim in my previous post above, that I ask questions -- I am grateful to Steve Lampen for all of our exchanges, and in particular during a meeting in my San Clemente office, for explaining to me that the 8 ohm potentiometer in series with the TFA Return on a Tara labs cable, was't really a variable resistor, but in this application was more nearly a tuner. This exchange was about the same cluster of evidence and techniques which led to my Noise Dissipation System in cables, and some of the underlying technology that Garth Powell has employed in designing our Niagara AQ AC filters. It's all one never-ending frontier -- even while in public Steve often appears to be the audiophile's enemy because we have many areas of disagreement, he is in fact a friend and a fellow compatriot on the frontier of learning.
A couple of years later, sitting with me in my Irvine office, after we graduated from a collection of 15 almost adjacent light-industrial spaces in San Clemente, Steve proudly told me about his progress in conductor design, about how a compressed stranded conductor facilitated better performance in high-speed data applications than a conventional stranded conductor. He was proud of the progress Belden had made, but then with a bit of wistfulness, said that it still wasn't as good as a solid conductor. Does that story make some on this forum now consider Steve to be chasing ghosts and part of the "problem", or is he as I see him, an honest compatriot doing the best he can on the frontier of applied knowledge?
As for the logistical question which caused you to cite Steve Lampen. We do not listen to stranded conductors. We listen to single conductors (a strand) before they become strands in one of our few stranded cables -- and yes, the many steps along the way towards a finished cable include numerous opportunities to mix direction. I once had to salvage a very expensive cable which had one of the 3 conductors running in a different direction by selling the finished cable to a Japanese electronics manufacturer, who took the cable apart and used the inner conductors, in the correct direction, for internal wiring. Another time, a large batch of a simpler three conductor cable had the same problem, and so I sold it to a discount oriented dealer who assembled their own cables -- he never attached XLR plugs, which require the use of all three conductors, but only used the two same-direction conductors attached to RCA plugs.
About your question as to whether some conductors exhibit more difference due to direction than others -- not very much, except for the conductors I explained in a previous post, which were the result of a specialized conductor supplier trying to eliminate directionality. These conductors were still directional, but clearly less so. I assume that they had been annealed even more extremely than the conductors I buy from this supplier (as with most products manufactured in China, my cables are an assembly of parts and components from around the world, the conductors travel from the East Coast to China before being assembled into a finished cable). We now think we know enough to not want less directional conductors, as I explained when commenting on why using amorphous conductors would take away the valuable phenomenon of being able to direct noise.
Sincerely, Bill Low
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