Copper vs. Silver tonearm wire

@jasonbourne71 

VdH experimented with all sorts of strange insulation.  Wood, ceramic beads, you name it.  I’m not really a “wire guy”, being more on the side of proper gauge, quality insulation, straight runs, and making sure you don’t have a rats’ nest of touching/overlapping wires, or wires running close parallel, but instead crossing wire at 90 degrees

That said, the VdH interconnects would definitely impart a sound, or rather a tone, to the music.  Kind of a tubey, warm, sound.  Whether someone like that, is a mattter of taste.

Made me play with the idea that it is not so much the metal or metals in the wire that people are hearing, but that different metals interact with the insulating substrate differently.

That would finally make the wire fights people have make much more sense, as there is very little convincing science or testing to back up people’s claims.

But say, silver reacting differently to (name your insulation) than copper and getting a different result? Sure I could see that.

Are we talking about chassis wiring, tonearm wiring, or ICs? In ICs, the geometry is very important. It determines the reactive nature of the IC (capacitance and inductance). That affects frequency response and also characteristic impedance. Same goes for complex speaker cables. Chassis and tonearm wires are usually a single run of whatever conductor, unless you’re using Litz wire. It’s not just a matter of copper v silver.

Personally I have always had Copper, the difference size and number of strands and insulation.

For a friend I installed two Vintage Micro Seiki MA-505S which was/is their silver wire 'upgrade' version.

I'm not sure if it is solid silver or silver coated copper, in any case they sound great to me. (never a bright or thin thought in my or my friend's mind)

I found that inexpensive cables made from copper vs silver are easily differentiated by the brightness of silver and the warmth of copper. But as you get into higher end cables the categories blur. The best, relaxed… non-bright cables I have heard were Nordost Odin 2… like really really highly detailed copper…but all silver. 

If copper was silvery and silver was coppery in appearance, many would reverse their opinions of the respective colorations.