Topic: Directional arrow on cables

[Scooter123]

I think it is the elimination of crystal boundaries which makes this so desirable. 

[Sebastian]

That "very special cable cooker" sounds very interesting. I'm currently using a rice cooker for all my interconnects, but I'm always looking for ways to improve my process.

[rocksuitcase]

So as some of you know, I used to own a company which manufactured cable for the underwater industry. We also made hydrophones with the extruded cables.
So, cable ITSELF, typically does not require directionality unless one CONFIGURES it that way. Speaker cable especially, but any two wire cable is germane to this topic. 
NOW, it has been brought to my attention by a non-TS user that:
When we get into specialty uses of cable. Like audio/video. In a consumer based audio system, the RCA cable rules. Mixing consumer gear (RCA) with pro gear (XLR/bnc,SPDIF etc) can get sticky with regard to shielding configuration and in some cases the shield may be configured to require a specific "directionality". Similar to what GB has put in this thread.

The directional arrows on cables,.... are not snake oil [ed: MIGHT not]. They are completely legitimate, and indicate the direction of the shielding of the cable.
There are so many types of cables that it becomes a bit, well, esoteric, I suppose. But, in unbalanced cables, your basic RCA/RCA level of stereo user interconnect (read: not balanced, professional/recordist level), you connect the shield to the upstream piece of gear, only, and leave it open, not connected, at the downstream end, if you want to shunt off EMF/RF signal. Otherwise it just passes that crap downstream towards the end user [ed: device]. The arrow indicates directionality of shielding for shunting back to the upstream devices earth/negative post grounding.
This makes the unbalanced cables completely directional, as a shunting device.

This cutting off the shield at the 3 wire end has been A PITA for me all of my soldering life, which is why I mostly choose not to solder my own stuff any longer and rely on folks like Ted G!

Thoughts? discuss amongst ourselves?

[JiB97]

I’ve had this cable for years that was included with some regular XLRs I got in the Yard Sale that I never knew what to use it for but it has a directional arrow written on it:



Obviously a splitter for a mono source but just wondering what type of application this cable would be used.

[Charliebrm]

Awww $#it. Please. This goes back at least to 1988. I worked for years in home and car audio installations, wiring up panels with maybe 1800 watts over 4 amps, a few active crossovers, etc. before they got put in the vehicles by guys more trim and flexible than me

[Fast answer in the last paragraph]
In 1988 Esoteric's rep shows up with the new product line and the line level phono plug cables had directional arrows on the sheath. He pointed this out as a feature but couldn't say anymore. We never counted on a sales rep to know much about the stuff anyway. Nobody at Esoteric and no Esoteric packaging or literature explained anything about them. The owner and I had been sharing electronics as a hobby since the mid 1960's so we were curious as to what they were trying to accomplish with this new twist other than drawing consumer attention.

That fall we went to CES in Las Vegas and I found an Esoteric rep to politely (not snidely) ask him to explain the purpose of the "directionality" of their line level audio cable. Instead of even offering a bullshit answer he instead adopted an aggressive attitude which attracted two more Esoteric reps in the room so now I had three of these sales twits in my face challenging me if I knew so much to take it up with their designer. Talk about a cult of know nothings.

It was months and months before we dragged out of Esoteric that what they meant was they only connect the shield at one end of the cable. What a let down. I enjoy hearing techno bullshit. Hell, we'd been doing that for years already with a thing called snips if we had a troublesome hum on interconnects. So that's what the arrows can do - provide a way to uniformly arrange cabling so the shield grounds are all at the output termination instead of randomly at input or output in your signal chain.