Pure Silver Wire

To the original point... solid silver is expensive and occupie only the top of a cable manufactures line.  My Wireworld Platinum speaker and IC cables are silver and sound wonderful.  The speaker cables are much richer sounding than the Nordost Valhalla 2 copper/silver cables they replaced.  Audioquest's top of the line cables are solid silver and violently expensive but highly regarded for example. 

@coppy777 Well those WW Platinum Eclipse ain’t cheap either! I opted for the less expensive WW Gold Eclipse 8’s and they are really nice.(CONDUCTOR MATERIAL-4N Solid Silver)

Hey fthompson251,

Agreed. The ICs between preamp and amp are actually G.E.8s. I auditioned a pair of Platimums as potential replacements and returned them. Could not hear any difference after a relatively short audition.

Best,

@carlsbad2

while what you say is correct, it doesn't cause silver to preferentially transit one frequency over another

It might change the discussion focus, when debating digital interconnects, from resistivity to the skin effect at megahertz and gigahertz frequencies. 

Of course, the physical topology of a cable also matters.  At low frequencies (speaker cables) two parallel conductors might suffice but at higher frequencies coaxial cables take over until they in turn give way to very thin unshielded twisted pairs.  At higher powers and frequencies, tubes can replace solid rods, and multiple Litz strands can replace thicker wires.

All cable technologies have capacitance and inductance as well as resistance, and these do attenuate frequencies differently!

I wish there was more discussion about the use of aluminium as a conductor ... especially where low mass is beneficial - power transmission wires, speaker coils, moving coil cartridges.

richardbrand: Do you have experience in designing sound equipment?  Your comments are unusually insightful.

I wish there was a greater understanding of what is going on with cables.  A lot of the comments I agree with from personal experience.  Many silver cables are quite harsh and unacceptable.  Theugh, I have tried few different ones.

Some comments are book knowedge of science.  One comment above talked about valance shell of copper, silver, and gold are the same (true), and there shouldn't be significant difference between them (false).  Chemistry is extremely complex, and the stuff you learn in Freshman and Sophmore courses in undergraduate is very simplistic.  That is where a lot of confusion comes in.

If you make it to Junior level courses in chemistry, that is where real knowledge starts to be explained.  You spend most of your first semester freshman year learning that PV = nRT, the ideal gas law.  This is really quite incorrect.  

It is a nice, simple equations that gives you a basic concept on how gases act.  But when compared to real world test results, the numbers generated by that formula are inaccurate.  One of the assumtions of the ideal gas law is that the gas molicules never touch.  That is why it is labeled as "ideal".

You then start working on theses very complex equations that make accurate predictions only under very specific conditons.

The point of this long explanation (which unfortunately was the simplist I could think of):  Even college level science courses will mislead you on how complex real world interactions are.  Using simple vector and scalar equations will never be enough to model something as complex as stereo equipment.

One of the simplifications commonly made is that electrons outside the valence shell (the outermost electrons of an atom that are primarily, but not totally, responsible for chemical reactions.   If that were the case, then there would be relatively little difference of the chmistry between lead and calcium.  I think everyone knows that isn't the case.

Just thought of a good demo of this.  The group 1 or alkalii metals in water:

All of these metals have the same valence shell of 1 electron:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPipS2OitjI

This really shows the effect of the supposedly unreactive electrons in an atom.

Also, this shows you the danger if a untrained fireman hoses down a burning electric car with water.  At least lithium is the least flammable with water.