Does vendor-claimed audio cable directionality make theoretical sense, far from delivering real-life perceptible benefit? And what about the number and organization of in-cable conductors?

Within my recently published two-part series on the equipment comprising my newly upgraded home office audio setup, I intentionally left out one key piece of the puzzle: the cables that interconnect the various pieces of gear in each “stack”. Come to think of it, I also didn’t mention the speaker wire that mates each monoblock power amplifier to its companion speaker:

but that’s a hype-vs-reality quagmire all its own! Maybe someday…for now, I’ll tease you with the brief revelation that it’s a 2m (3.3 foot) GearIT 14 AWG banana-plug-based set purchased in like-new condition from Amazon’s Resale (Warehouse) section for $17.18:

Conventional recommendations

Back to today’s quagmire When spanning the equipment placed on consecutive shelves of each audio “stack”, the 6” cable length is ideal. For the balanced interconnect-based setup located to my left on my desk:

wherein all of the connectors are XLR in form factor, I’ve found Coluber’s cables, available in a variety of connection-differentiating colors as well as as-needed longer lengths, to be excellent:

This particular setup, now based on a Drop + Grace Design SDAC Balanced DAC:

initially instead used Topping’s D10 Balanced DAC:

whose analog line-out connections were ¼” TRSs, not XLRs:

In that earlier gear configuration, I’d relied on a set of WJSTN Suanqi TRS-to-XLR cables to tether the DAC to the headphone amp (the Schiit Lokius equalizer wasn’t yet in the picture, either):

What about the unbalanced (i.e., single-ended) interconnection-based setup to my right?

In this case, I’ve mixed-and-matched RCA-to-RCA cables from WJSTN:

and equally highly-rated CNCESS:

depending on whose were lower-priced at any particular purchase point in time.

A pricier (albeit discounted) experiment

Speaking of economic factors, as regular readers may recall from past case studies (not to mention my allusion by example earlier in this writeup), I regularly troll Amazon’s Resale (formerly Warehouse) site for bargains. Last summer, I came across a set of “acceptable” condition (i.e., packaging-deficient) 0.5-foot-long RCA cables from a company called (believe it or not) “World’s Best Cables”:

and titled as follows:

0.5 Foot RCA Cable Pair – WBC-PRO-Quad Ultra-Silent, Ultra-Flexible, Star-Quad Audiophile & Pro-Grade Audio Interconnect Cable with Amphenol ACPR Gold RCA Plugs – Gray & Red Jacket – Directional

Say that ten times real fast, and without pausing to catch a breath midway through!

They normally sell for $30.99 a pair on the company’s Amazon storefront, which is pretty “salty” considering that the CNCESS and WJSTN alternatives are a third that amount ($10.99 for two). That said, these were discounted to $18.82, nearly half off the original price tag. I took the bait.

Like I said earlier, “packaging-deficient”.

How’d they sound? Fine. But no different, at least in my setup and to my ears, than the brand new but still notably less expensive CNCESS and WJSTN ones. This was the case in spite of the fact that among other things they were claimed to be “directional”, the concluding word in the voluminous product title and the one that had caught my ever-curious eye in the first place.

Directional details

As I’ve groused about plenty of times in the past, the audio world is rife with “snake oil” claims of products and techniques that supposedly improve sound quality but in actuality only succeed in extracting excess cash from naïve enthusiasts’ wallets and bank accounts. My longstanding favorite snake-oil theory, albeit one that mostly only wasted adoptees’ time, was that applying a green magic marker to the edges of an optical audio disc would improve its sound by reducing laser reflections.

Further magnifying this madness, at resultant higher damage- therefore wallet-induced devotee expense, was the practice of beveling (i.e. shaving down) those same edges:

I’ve also come across plenty of cables, both signal and power, and in various shapes and sizes, that claim to benefit from directionality induced by their implementations. Such directionality is, of course, forced on the implementation by USB cables, for example, which (for example, redux) have a Type A connector on one end for tethering to a computer and a Type B connector on the other end for mating with, say, a printer. Both types are shown at right in the following photo:

Conceptually, the same thing occurs with power cords, of course, such as this one:

But that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about claimed directionality introduced within the cable itself—by the materials used to construct it, the conductors within it, etc. For cables that carry digital signals, this is pure hogwash as far as I can tell. But for analog cables like the one I’m showcasing today? There may, it turns out, be some reality behind the hype, depending on what kind of signal the cable’s carrying and for what span length, along with the ambient EMI characteristics of the operating environment. Quoting from the Amazon product page:

Each cable is configured as a “Directional” cable and as such the shield of the cable is connected to the ground only at the signal emitting end. This allows the shield of the cable to work as a Faraday’s cage which rejects external noise that could degrade the signal. The cable will work even if you plug it the opposite direction, but this will diminish the noise rejection capabilities of the directional design. This enhances the noise rejection capabilities of our cables over our competition.

To clarify: when I said earlier that I discerned no difference in the sound between the “World’s Best Cables” interconnect and its more cost-effective alternatives, I was referring to:

• Short cable spans (6”) transporting
• Reasonably high-level innate signals (specifically line level, 0.3V to 1.2V)

Would an alternative RCA cable set carrying, for example, the lower magnitude output signal of a turntable cartridge—moving magnet (3-7 mV) and especially moving coil (0.2-0.6 mV)—to a phono preamp be more prone to the corrupting effects of environmentally induced noise, especially in high EMI (with an overlapping spectral profile, to be precise) environments and across long cable runs? Low-level microphone outputs are another example. And would shielding—especially if directional in its nature—be of benefit in such scenarios?

Twist, double up and fan out

Truth be told, I’d originally planned to stop at this point and turn those questions over to you for your thoughts (both on them specifically and on the topic more generally) in the comments. But in looking again at the conceptual cable construction diagram this morning while prepping to dive into writing:

I noticed not only the shielding, which I’d seen before, but that there were four conductors within it. Each RCA connector is normally associated with only two wires, corresponding to the positive and negative per-channel connections to the audio source and destination devices.

Four total wires might make sense, for example, if we were looking at the middle of a unified cable, with both channels’ dual conductors combined within a common shield. And it might also make sense (albeit seemingly still with one spare wire) if the per-channel cable connections were balanced. But these are RCA cables: unbalanced, i.e. single-ended, and only one cable per channel. So why four connectors inside, instead of just two?

My first clue as to the answer came when I then looked at the top of this graphic (table, to be precise):

Followed by my noticing the words “WBC-PRO-Quad” and “Star-Quad” in the aforementioned wordy product title. My subsequent research suggests that the term “Star Quad” isn’t unique to “World’s Best Cables”, although it typically refers to mic and other balanced interconnect applications:

The star quad design is a unique configuration of wires used in microphone cables. Unlike traditional cables that consist of two conductors, the star quad design incorporates four conductors. These conductors are twisted together in a specific pattern, resembling a star shape, hence the name. The layout of the conductors in a star quad cable significantly reduces electromagnetic interference (EMI), resulting in cleaner and more reliable audio transmission.

And how do two connections at each cable end translate into four conductors within the cable?

Star-quad microphone cables are specially designed to provide immunity to magnetic fields. These microphone cables have 4 conductors arranged in a precise geometry that provides immunity to the magnetic fields which easily pass through the outer RF shield. Four conductors are arranged in a four pointed star configuration and the wires at opposite points of the star are connected together at each end of the cable.

When the cables are wired in this manner, the + and – legs of the balanced connection each receive equal induced voltages from any magnetic field. This configuration balances the interference to the + and – legs of the balanced connection. The key to the success of star-quad cable is the fact that the magnetically-induced interference is exactly the same on the + and – legs of the balanced connection. The star-quad geometry of the cable keeps the interference signal identical on both legs no matter what direction the magnetic interference is coming from.

In the “a picture paints a thousand words” spirit, this additional graphic might be of assistance:

Along with this lab equipment- and measurement-flush video:

But again, we’re still talking about long-length, low-level balanced cables and connections used in high-EMI operating environments. How, if at all, do these results translate to the few-inch, comparatively high-level and low-EMI applications that my “World’s Best Cables” target, especially considering that they also include heavily hyped directional shielding? Even audiophiles have mixed opinions on the topic.

And so, at this point, after twice as long a write-up as originally planned, I will now stop and turn these and my prior questions over to you for your thoughts (both on them specifically and on the topic more generally) in the comments!

—Brian Dipert is the Principal at Sierra Media and a former technical editor at EDN Magazine, where he still regularly contributes as a freelancer.

Related Content

• Sonic excellence: Music (and other audio sources) in the office, part 1
• Sonic excellence: Music (and other audio sources) in the office, part 2
• Peeking inside a moving magnet phono cartridge and stylii
• Microphones: An abundance of options for capturing tones

The post Added-conductor and directional audio interconnects: Real-life benefits? appeared first on EDN.