Cable Characteristcs - Silver vs. Copper

From my experience - silver has a lot of detail but can be bright.

Copper tends to less detailed but smoother.

Obviously this is a generalization and not the case with every cable.

I try to go with copper when I can.

Silver is the best electric conductor but quite costly. So it's best for ICs or internal circuit wires while you'd be better-of with copper for speaker cables.

Marakanetz...Why do you need low resistance (silver) conductors in a line level interconnect, where the current is tiny, and the source impedance is often hundreds of ohms?

The point is that you need to hear the cables in your own system. Although there can be some generalizations regarding silver versus copper, cable performance depends on the design. I current am auditioning silver and copper interconnects where the silver sound less detailed then the copper. Pricing and value depends on what you yourself hear and how much any improvement is worth to you. Price does not always mean better.

Sorry if this is not helpful.

Eldart, to some point it's true, but if the signal goes bellow the tolerance input on a certain volume level than the electric loss isn't negligable.

In the digital source of my primary system I have a high output device which is EAD DSP7000 DAC which is flat linear at any volume and cares none about the wire wether it's copper or silver. However when I did an experiment with the generic CD/LD player(used in the different room) I found that connecting it through the copper ICs v.s. silver ones inflicts loss of a detail at even higher volumes while with silver ones more details are heard. Nontheless to say that the sound is still crap through both wires but that due to the poor analogue output but the voltage drop in the wires seemed to be non negligable in that case.