The Absolute Sound "review" of USB cable reads suspiciously like a press releaste

If you’re referring to the speed of the signal there is virtually no difference through copper or silver. In both cases it’s near lightspeed. 

If you’re referring to the speed of the signal there is virtually no difference through copper or silver. In both cases it’s near lightspeed.

I was referring to the data edge rate, not the speed in term of data rate or propagation speed.  The edge rate is the signal slew rate measured in V/sec.  You were referring to propagation speed which is measured by (radiant/meter). What I was saying is that fast edge rate might not be desirable.  If a cable made of silver, it will increase the edge rate which can potentially cause EMI issues and may end up having more jitter.  It's not a simple one rule fit all sort of thing, and silver may improve other aspect of the data transmission, but with respect to edge rate, it does not mean the faster the better.

With respect to USB asynchronous architecture, the jitter from the USB data stream is not an issue because the data is buffered before it is clocked to the DAC using a local clock that does not depends on the USB data stream.  It's how the USB data stream may cause jitter down stream to the DAC.  The faster the edge rate, the more like EMI will cause interference to ground, power and so on and ultimate jitter to the DAC. 

For synchronous USB, then may be silver could be better since it has faster edge rate and that could improve jitter.  That's why I am saying there is no one rule fit all but depends on other factors.

Isn’t slew rate a function of the amplifier? Not the conductor. The advantage of silver is that the resistance is lower. Maybe someone should come up with copper-plated silver wire. 😬

The Final Touch Audio Callisto USB cable that @jbrrp1 mentioned that gave him excellent results is not purified copper, with gold and silver literally hammered (smithed) into it, or so it states on their website.

Looks like this jungle of cables are getting denser. 😄

All the best,
Nonoise

Isn’t slew rate a function of the amplifier? Not the conductor. The advantage of silver is that the resistance is lower. Maybe someone should come up with copper-plated silver wire.

Yes, but the conductor does play a role.  All cables act like some sort of low pass filter.  If you model out a simple resister and a cap as a low pass filter, the higher the resistance will result in more low pass filtering.  As you said silver does have lower resistance so the rise time won't be degraded as much as copper.  In some cases having a higher rise time improves jitter but high rise time will also result in higher EMI.  That's why most high speed data rate will have only enough rise time to get away with.  It's a balanced act so it depends what you want to achieve,  

Also as I mentioned, there is no one single factor.  It depends on the situation.