IMO at least theoretically there is an advantage to the directional cable because, in theory, it does a better job of noise rejection. But I think in practice your solder skills are much more important to cable quality than your choice of terminating the shielding.
 

Looking forward to your results. I'm a big fan of DH Labs so if you aren't happy with your cable I'm pretty sure it is your fault . I think I can say that because I'm a software guy and I freely admit my solder skills suck.

So I finally got the DH Labs Coaxial Digital cable built.  After some research and obtaining the build instructions from DH labs, I opted to not make this a directional cable due to the design of the barrel connector.  The only soldering I had to do was to solder the center pin of the cable to the internal pin of the connector.  

After it was all soldered up, I made the terminations, added the tech flex, and finished it off with heat shrink tubing.  Here’s a few pics of the final product…





Going to give it a listen tonight, but this build saved me $80 bucks on the cable…essentially half off the original price.  

As a follow up to this post…I finally gave the newly built DH Labs cable a listen.  As I commented in another post, I’m very impressed with the sound reproduction of this cable.  The sound is very dynamic with a lot of detail and clarity.  I was playing some songs off of Randy’s Decfest playlist in Qobuz, specifically Geoff Castelucci’s “ Man of Constant Sorrow” and I was blown away.  The sound coming through the Err’s was full, clear, and deep.  

I was previously using an old Radio Shack digital coax cable.  Believe it or not the Radio Shack cable is actually a pretty decent, but the DH Labs cable just smoked it in dynamics, clarity, and detail.  Needless to say I’m very happy with this cable, especially since buying it myself saved me half off the current price.