Mixing Silver and Copper cables -- Good or bad??


I have heard from a highly respected retailer that mixing silver interconnects with copper speaker cables is bad -- that you can actually hear the problems at the interface where it switches from silver to copper or vice versa. (what about the copper and/or silver wiring in the amplifier, wouldn't that have an effect as well?) he said one should use all copper or all silver throughtout the system. Is this right? Or is there a balalnce to be had? If a silver IC is noticably superior to a copper one, would that advantage be worth more than the problem casued by the silver IC to copper speaker cable interface in the system?

Finally, if you are bi-wiring or bi-amping a set of speakers, I have heard it could make sense to run silver on the top, and heavier copper on the bottom. Is this correct? Or, as the retailer would suggest, that mixing silver wires with copper wires is the overwhelming no-no?

What has been people's experience mixing silver IC's with copper speaker cables (or vice versa!)? What about silver on the high and copper on the low in bi-wire or bi-amp set-ups? What does theory, practice and experimentation tell us about this?
lotusm50
As noted, this is a highly nebulous area in which only experimentation can typically provide answers. There are no hard & fast rules, although there are perceived generalizations which *do apply a large amount of the time. Trial & error is normally the best approach.
Mixing silver and copper can be a match made in heaven. Realize alot of the cables on the market have a copper conductor with silver on top of the copper.

You can even mix different brands such as using Nordost Vahalla on top and Audio Magic Illusion on the bottom or vice a versa. And in this situation do you not only have different brands but totally different conductors.

I happen to like the silver better on top and the copper on the bottom in most circumstances but not all.
Some of the best cables available use several different types of preciouse metals and alloys to compliment different areas of the frequency spectrum with very good results.You have to experiment and decide what sounds good to you and works best with your components.
So many factors such as what dialetric or what the true resitance is etc make the difference.This claim would make me skeptical as to his other "claims".It's just BS so he has something to say.