Are silver coated cables a bunch of hype?

Coating a cable with silver is going to change the sound, but I bet a good part of the silver-coatedness is marketing. Most interconnects of that type are all in the same price range, and no really high-end cable I can think of uses that hybrid. I have used a pair. They were okay, but an all copper pair that was about the same price was better for most applications. There may be some nice silver/copper ICs, just depends on the design.

Like anything else, it will depend on the design and quality of materials used. Many people complain of heightened yet "hashy" sounding highs with silver / copper hybrids. I think a lot of it may have to do with the amount or "depth" of silver plating used. I also think that Silver takes longer to "break in" than copper does, so they may be basing their opinions on cables that are still "settling". Either way, i don't think that i have any silver plated copper in any of the systems that i have. I do have silver, i do have copper, but none of them are plated hybrid's. Sean
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While I would tend to disagree with a blanket statement that "...silver [makes] no difference", there are a lot more factors in cable design than whether the copper is coated or not which affects what they sound like: cable geometry, conductors, networks, shielding, dielectric material and mechanical connections to name a few. IMO, everything is hyped to a certain degree - it's just the age-old sales ploy to get your attention. Only your ears will tell you if it's worth the scratch.

Since silver is a better conductor than copper, the silver plating causes any frequencies on the "skin" of the wire to travel better and faster than the frequencies in the "core" of the wire. Since it is well known that the "skin effect" is a result of high frequencies traveling on the "skin" of the wire, and low frequencies traveling in the core, adding silver plating to the "skin" of the wire will only make the "skin effect" worse than no plating. The high frequencies will travel better and faster, and arrive at the speaker before the low frequencies will, thereby "smearing" the coherence of the signal. The effect will be bright and brash, with added time-distortion, that IMO, will do nothing good for the system. I personally would not use it.

hmmm... Bear makes silver plate cables, and they sound awesome.