" For XLR I go with the silver plated Neutrik's. Pretty much the top of the line in the pro world and still reasonably priced. The silver to silver contact minimizes issues going from one metal to another. "
" I read a long time ago that mixing metals had possibly deliterious effects, so if I use silver cables I try to keep silver to silver contact from end to end. "
If you want silver to silver contact, you need to use solid silver. Plating isn't good enough. It can be complicated, and here are different ways to do it. For example, if you wanted to plate silver over copper directly, you can only put an extremely thin plate on before the process stops working. Once the exposed copper is covered by silver, the process stops working electricity. The ultra thin coat of silver will not stop the signal from interacting with the underlying metal. From that point on, if you want a thicker plate of silver, you'll need to plate another metal over the copper, like nickel of rhodium first, and then plate the silver. But even then, there will be some interaction, but now with 3 metals, not 2.
You have to also consider the costs of plating. Its probably cheaper to just buy solid silver than plate it over another metal. To do a good job, just having the list of materials on you may be enough to have you detained, or possibly arrested. 90%+ of this type of plating is sent to places like China.
There's plenty of audiophile connectors in the market that use solid silver. Furutech, WBT....
" I read a long time ago that mixing metals had possibly deliterious effects, so if I use silver cables I try to keep silver to silver contact from end to end. "
If you want silver to silver contact, you need to use solid silver. Plating isn't good enough. It can be complicated, and here are different ways to do it. For example, if you wanted to plate silver over copper directly, you can only put an extremely thin plate on before the process stops working. Once the exposed copper is covered by silver, the process stops working electricity. The ultra thin coat of silver will not stop the signal from interacting with the underlying metal. From that point on, if you want a thicker plate of silver, you'll need to plate another metal over the copper, like nickel of rhodium first, and then plate the silver. But even then, there will be some interaction, but now with 3 metals, not 2.
You have to also consider the costs of plating. Its probably cheaper to just buy solid silver than plate it over another metal. To do a good job, just having the list of materials on you may be enough to have you detained, or possibly arrested. 90%+ of this type of plating is sent to places like China.
There's plenty of audiophile connectors in the market that use solid silver. Furutech, WBT....