While I can’t recommend a budget cable, I can offer insights from my journey of moving from copper based cables to an entire silver interconnect signal path. My most recent move is this past week where I upgraded my speaker cables from Audioquest Robin Hood Zero and Bass to William Tell Silver and Bass cables. All of my other interconnects are of equitable performance: all Audioquest Fire (XLR and RCA) except for my turntable to phono stage cable which is a WEL Signature. I’ve bought all used at a significant discount from list.
For me, it isn’t about emphasizing or taming certain frequencies, harshness or texture. It is about timing, which can be observed through perceived changes in frequency, harshness and texture. As the recreated sounds of your system closes in on the ideal - the perfect recreation of sounds made in real time (unachievable), your mind does less “recomputing” and interpreting of the music. This frees us to be completely absorbed by the music.
Through evolution or design, acute perception of the directionality of sound is a survival mechanism. Being able to detect and accurately locate a faint sound, like the snap of a twig in the prairie grass, made the difference between running away from the tiger and living vs. choosing the second best route when running away from the tiger and being eaten.
So, Mr. Indulgent, what does this have to do with silver conductors? As well stated by others, as long as your cables are not magnitudes superior to your weakest link component, you should hear tangible results. Impact that can not be correlated to measurements (sorry to those who perceive good sound through numerical analysis).
The last observation I’ll share on the topic - the cable upgrade that made the greatest listening impact was the last silver conductor IC I installed. Meaning, once the last bit of copper conductor was removed, the collective improvements silver conductors brought to the timing of my system were fully realized. I can, and have, reinstalled Audioquest Earth cables (similar architecture to Fire with copper conductors) and hear a significant degradation of the sound. Swap two Fires for Earth and the degradation continues, but not nearly as much as the first swap!
I hope this helps!
