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Questions 2 and 5 are related

Cable direction matters because of the extrusion process by which metal stock gets pulled or drawn into wire.

Most people know that the hair on violin bows is from horse tails.

Very few people know that the hair hanks used for hairing bows are arranged so that half the hairs lie North-South, and the other half lie South-North, and the goal is that they be as close to evenly spaced and assorted as possible.

That's because horsehair makes sound only in one direction!!!

The "cuticle" part of the hair shaft is made up of overlapping scales of keratin, layered like shingles on a roof. If you pull the hair strand across the violin string "upside down," that is, starting at the frog of the bow with the fanny/rump/rear end of the strand at the frog/bottom end of the bow, and pull the bow down, you get no sound, because the overlapping scales just bump past the string, rather than catching on it.

However, once you have pulled the bow all the way down and begin pushing the bow up ("up-bow"), then the exposed edges of the scales catch and release, making the string vibrate.

That's why to make sound in both directions, bows have to have half the bow hair oriented "upside down."

The scales of the horsehair shaft are analogous to the crystals of copper metal that have been drawn through a die. The crystals go from a randomized 3D orientation to a more aligned orientation that IMHO influences the "Skin Effect" of the conductor.

Even for non-magnetic/non-ferrous metals and alloys, the cryogenic processing does tend to relieve internal stresses. (However, if you cryo-treat some plastics, they fairly explode, as the water trapped inside expands.)

My experience (I have used cryogenic processing since Ed Meitner introduced it to me in the mid-1990s) has been that any cable-termination process, whether mechanical crimping or thermal soldering, introduces stresses, and those stresses actually create what I call "Nano Diodes(TM)."

And, the property of a Diode is that current flows through it more easily in one direction than another. You don't want that in a cable.

Of course, if you believe that CD Error Correction Cures All Ills, then you have wasted your time reading this!

Anyone can question my conclusions; but you cannot say that I don't have lots of experience; or, that I have failed to think these issues through.

BTW, my friends at Wilson Benesch found out that the actual type of tool steel (Austenitic vs. Martensite) used in their loudspeaker SPIKES made a difference in sound, and you will never guess the easiest way to increase the proportion of the desirable crystal in a steel billet!

amb,

john

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