Thanks! I took a picture of the cable, and it is at 180 degree of the original orientation since the gears were relocated vertically. I believe the radius is not too severe.
I could move them back to the original positions since I do not plan to put the power conditioner on top of the DAC anymore.
That should be fine. In a week they will WANT to be that way! Yep, the FEP takes a set over time.
Best,
Galen
I don’t fully understand how you can rotate an XLR cable 180°. I’m not sure about that 
. This can happen with RCA cables and attention should be paid to the preferred direction. An XLR cable has male and female connectors and can only be connected in one direction. When assembling the XLR cable, I paid attention to the correct alignment of the individual conductors and their running direction.
What Donald might mean by this is that the cables were moved and the bending caused the junctions formed in the crystal lattices to loosen. The cables must be reused for a few hours to regain full performance.
XLR cable has male and female connectors and can only be connected in one direction. - True, but…
The XLR cable is polarized to one orientation with zero twist. If you orient it for a straight through it will have to be 180 degree on a loop back. If you set it up for a loop back it will be 180 out of phase for a straight through. It can’t be connected without a twist in the opposite equipment orientation. RCA aren’t keyed to one polarization orientation so this isn’t a problem. And yes, you can reverse an RCA and not an XLR.
I think you thought that we were “reversing” the cable ends and yes, can’t be done on an XLR and can on a RCA.
Alternating current can’t have a preferred direction and by definition, it alternates. You can orient the copper grains but that is more OCD than changing the nature of AC. Which sinusoidal polarity is your preference? The positive or negative direction? One is the opposite the other so the “grain” can only orient to one and not the other.
Some postulate, no proof at all, that an initial positive speaker polarity is best. Speakers which have the drivers move OUT and not IN. People feel there is more dynamics to the sound. This could possibly be true on a single transient. But this is a speaker, not a “directional” wire grain orientation.
All the break-in, crystal lattice and grain orientation is user preference over time. We listen to our systems awhile anyway so it all ends up being used awhile.
Best,
Galen
Galen explained it much better than I can. Well, after a day I decide to move the gears back to their original positions. The sound is getting better, but I like MK2 to be closer to PST so my I2S cable would not be stretched to max (it is a .75m Dragon48).
This means I need to bend the XLR cable back to its original orientation and wait for everything to settle again.
My experience with my XLR cables was that the orientation of the conductors made a small difference. MCS silver 0.75 mm solid core (monocrystalline) was used as the conductor. The structure of the cable corresponds to that of the Audioquest Dragon xlr. Due to the orientation and pull direction during manufacture, the conductors likely have a preferred direction. I first connected the direction of the conductors from the source to the receiver as specified by the manufacturer for all pins in the same direction. I swapped the direction of the conductor for the inverted pin and the sound became smoother. With the same orientation I felt it sounded a bit rough/grainy. I’m not an expert. My explanation for myself is that the signal for the inverted signal has exactly the same conditions as a result as with the non-inverted signal when the direction of the conductor is different.
I also had a Berendsen blue RCA cable. It had a direction. It has two silver conductors inside and a separate shield that was only connected on one side and did not act as a conductor.
Greetings Andreas
What Galen means is that the defined distance between the conductors inside the cable can change by twisting the connections relative to each other. Correct ? Oh a new rabbit hole 
What about the three individual conductors of my Audioquest XLR and the storm cables? Does that change anything in the result? The individual conductors look for their individual location based on how they are laid.
There is no repeatable proof or calculation that shows this, and that’s what I design to. We don’t sell what I can’t prove is actually changing per accepted practices.
The grains are theoretically going to matter if we did have a means to test electrical (we can test for the grains direction with visual analysis equipment). The draw speeds and heat create the grains, and the O2 scavenging at faster draw speeds allows more oxygen to stay in the wire. More pure continuous draw wire is drawn slower to allow the scavenging process to work longer.
That said wire, in any orientation, does sound different with identical tested attributes. As much as I hate it, it certainly does. All we can do is offer the copper draw science and adjust for the wires cost. As we always use a given single piece supply spool all the wires are in the same direction. A user can flip them around and listen to grain orientation (I hear no differences).
If one wire is “A” and the other “B” we can do a simple trial
A initial B initial -----> <------- (random grain direction)
Flip A leave B <------ <------- new orientation
Leave A Flip B <------ -------->
Flip A leave B ------> -------->
Now you have listened to all the combination possible.
Best,
Galen
Read how an RCA should work and how shields work. Then decide if that Berendsen RCA is a good design. It isn’t. Make sure the fundamentals are correct. There is no cheating how RCA work. SPG, Single Point Grounds, don’t work, they create a resonance circuit that makes a situation worse.
Why people think they “work” is because they have a broken ground plane with a high differential DCR. A shield that now doesn’t work is “better” than the broken grounds hum. We just lessen the brokenness and should fix the ground.
ICONOCLAST doesn’t get to change physics. All we can do is optimize how they work and/or the balance we decide to accept. We explain all that in the tech papers, too. Anyone can reproduce the results because we use accepted test standards and calculations.
https://www.emcstandards.co.uk/cable-shield-grounded-at-one-end-only
The myths that (1) a cable shield grounded at one end only (single point gnd, SPG) is really a shield and (2) that a shield grounded at both ends creates an unwanted ground loop have been asinine EE folklore for decades. Both are dead wrong. An SPG cable shield is a hi-pass filter to magnetic fields and a lo-pass filter to electric fields with amplification at the break frequency. Alleged ground loops exist before shields are considered. A properly grounded shield simply does its job -
attenuate. Cable shielding and ground loops must be disassociated. People with no knowledge are fictionalizing a problem they don’t understand. Ground potential differences must be attacked with proper isolation techniques not wrongheaded shielding. “Grounding” a cable shield is a misnomer; cable shields should be “bonded” to the enclosures their cables arefastened to.
Best,
Galen
I had the feeling that after I turned a wire in the XLR, the harshness I had previously noticed disappeared in the sound. Direction of the crystals of the wire. MCS silver is probably made by hand in Austria and is very close to the optimal single crystal. Since the structure of the XLR cable with the Teflon tubes allows the conductors to be easily pushed through, I tried to swap the PSS silver for the MCS that I have available. First I had all the conductors in the same orientation. The next day I reversed a conductor and liked the sound better.
XlR :
Transmitter 2 > Receiver 2
Transmitter 3 < Receiver 3
Transmitter 1 < Receiver 1
Thanks for the information and the link. According to my information, Mitsubishi’s DUCC copper is said to have the least directionality. There may be other conductors, but they are not so easy to come by.
Greetings Andreas
UP OCC is the only true single crystal batch drawn science there is that I’m aware of. Long grain isn’t the same. UP OCC batch size limits the length based on the crucible volume so application has to fit the wire AWG length capability of the process. UP OCC is patent controlled.
As far as design, the skin depth and DCR are crucial to getting a better Vp across the analog band. And the DCR has to be INCREASED, not decreased, to do it. This makes design very hard. The skin depth at a frequency needs to be tailored, too, and belive it or not aluminum has a more consistent skin depth (deeper across frequency) than any other metal.
Design has more to do with the sound than the metal if the metal is accounted for. You’ll find that after you do that, copper keeps being the best compromise.Truse me, I looked at what material to make ICONOCLAST out of extensively. Even copper covered aluminum. It is easier to toss a metal in there and say, “oh it’s expensive so it has to be good”. Not until it is electromagnetically managed it isn’t. A wire is just a wire until it is made into a “cable”. You have to prove you did that.
Look at the tech papers and see what’s really involved in making a CABLE, and not selling a material in a simple package that has no real thought to it except cosmetics. The true open-short impedance and Vp calculations and the like don’t lie. I have no objections to a set of agree upon limits a design is made to. I have a lot of objections to pages of prose with nary a technical explanation made as the how and why a cable works the way it does and yes, with proven fundamentals. All cable has those just like an amp or a speaker.
I give the test objectives and proofs that I have to meet and sell to only those. Anybody can test them. The cable has to work as marketed. Any tertiary stuff we can’t test (we touched on those above) has to be most effective when they are set upon a solid fundamental L, R and C basis. That explains the copper choices. I don’t sell to those except as a try before you buy, and of course know they cost more. All I can offer is the grain count and absolute contamination levels.
Best,
Galen
Of course, the conductor material is only part of the whole. Another factor is the material of the dielectric and the actually important structure of the cable influence the result. Your cables appear structurally well thought out and overall have a reasonable cost-benefit ratio. The customer receives excellent results at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, there are enough on the market whose prices are through the roof. And if something can deliver the same or similar results with less effort, the benefit to the customer is even greater. As much as necessary, as much as possible.
Greetings Andreas
Galen, Thanks for talking shop. Actually, the whole thing only started because Donald stacked his system differently on the shelf. Should he go back now or have the plug on the cable swapped? Doesn’t it hurt that he twisted it a little? I don’t know the internal structure. Helix, braided parallel. Can tear the foil shield if the cable is badly twisted… not that Donald broke it and needs another upgrade. 
It’s back to original position, and I like it better already; the look and the sound.
Hello Donald, did twisting it make a difference in the sound? Or does the position and arrangement of the components also play a role. Small cause big effect. I was reading through this. Your speaker cables seem to have good geometry.
Greetings Andreas
Skin-Effekt - oder: Warum Kabel klingen (2001).
The cable is bent gradually in the reverse direction, but there was very little twist. So, the cables are in good shape, the sound is as good as before after a few hours of playing.
In the other orientation the sound was a bit different, but it probably needed more time to settle before i swatched back.
No, what I mean is that an XLR is a polarized connector and you need to orient the cable such that it can plug in. If the triangle of three pins is facing up, or facing down, it has to match the components input orientation. If it doesn’t you need to ROTATE the cable up to 180 degree to change the three pins orientation. This twists the cable along it’s length. Too short a cable with air tubes, stiff by natural geometry, to a twist or bend is harder on the cable and can even collapse the air tube. Twist a long tube, a really long one. Now cut it in half and twist it, cut in in half again etc. You’ll feel the effort go up and at a given length the tube will collapse. We want to remove the TWIST, and only have the bend radius (loop back radius) to deal with. One is easier than two forces to manage. They add up and make the point the tube collapses sooner and force a longer cable length to dissipate. This is what it is, there isn’t a way out other than to understand the air tubes properties and if they fit your application.
A shorter cable can’t dissipate the twist as much and you can damage the air tubes. We actually ask customers if it is a straight through or loop back orientation. A super high flex cable like the BAV PRO studio XLR is so flexible you won’t even notice this in a 1 meter cable length. And yes, this is by design too. Studios don’t need or want the aggravation of straight through or loop-back XLR orientation so the cables design has to mitigate this issue.
I have no comments on the copper crystals behavior after a bend is made. This is the rabbit hole, not the connectors orientation that requires a twist of up to 180 degree to insert. You can orient a XLR at say 45 degree so it is split between the two, even.
Sorry for the confusion. I didn’t intend to even touch on copper “sound” after it settles when we move it in any manner. I lump this with break-in and all the rest. Just use the cable and over time all that is taken care of for you. The design isn’t. It has to work for you right away. This is why we have the two lines, BAV and ICONOCLAST.
Best,
Galen
I understand Iconoclast and BJC speaker cables have the same locking banana option. No way to ask this diplomatically but does this mean BJC speaker cables are getting killer bananas for the price, Iconoclast cables are leaving some performance on the table, or are most high end bananas grossly over priced?
Allan,
We can buy more of them and keep the costs in check. So yes, the lower lines still get a great banana connector. The design adds more pressure to the pin contacts over “spring” type banana and help offer a gas tight seal.
Sometimes spread spec volume in a smaller scale is the best option and a win-win for customers. If we made 10X of both designs, maybe we could hit price breaks on a “cheap” and “the better” option, both. As is we will use the one very good banana made to work well with the ultra-sonic weld machine. It isn’t the same banana as the generic option so we need to order QTY and to do that we use the locking banana everywhere.
Best,
Galen
Thank you Galen. I appreciate your explanation.
I have a pair of 5000UE cables with the locking bananas on a desktop system and like them a lot. I’m reading up on cables and attempting to digest some of your papers and was just a bit surprised to find the same bananas on the Iconoclast line.
