Would silver cables beat UP-OCC copper?

"Best" is and for the forseeable future will be a word with no universally agreed upon definition, especially in this opinion laden environment. That being said, silver can sound different, but silver can sound different than copper depending on awg size, configuration, solid versus stranded, shield vs. non shield, rca vs.XLR, type of XLR, type of RCA, resonance factors, capacitance, inductance, resistance, not to mention termination skill. To look just at silver vs copper is leaving too many variables off the table. PT

I have experience with both manufactured and self-made high purity silver and OCC copper cables. I agree with Grannyring's thoughts on tone and with Plasmatech's comments on the subjectivity of "best." My favorite speaker and IC cables are made from solid core OCC copper. For power cords, I have had good luck with fine stranded OCC wire, unshielded for amps and shielded for digital source components.

To reduce the variables I compared short segments of 12 awg Neotech OCC copper to dead soft three-nines fine silver from Rio Grande as jumpers in Merlin VSM speakers. No spades, solder, or twist geometries to influence the evaluation.

For me high purity soft annealed silver wins decisively, and the recent decline in commodity pricing eases the pain. Consider experimenting with short segments of copper and silver in series with your speaker cables. At the line level I've had excellent results with DIY ICs made with Parts Connexion's Connex/DH Labs BL-Ag balanced silver bulk cable.

"For me high purity soft annealed silver wins decisively, and the recent decline in commodity pricing eases the pain. Consider experimenting with short segments of copper and silver in series with your speaker cables. At the line level I've had excellent results with DIY ICs made with Parts Connexion's Connex/DH Labs BL-Ag balanced silver bulk cable.

Dgarretson (System | Reviews | Threads | Answers | This Thread)"

How did you anneal the cables? Also, it seems like it is very popular to cryo cables. What made you do just the opposite?

Several OEMs and DIYers have shared that soft silver is important to avoid the etched or bright quality sometimes attributed to silver. Annealing may be more significant than diminishing returns of 5-7 nines purity.

The better factory sources offer fine silver across a range of hardnesses. "Dead soft" silver implies full annealing. I suppose one could repeat the annealing process for incremental benefits or to restore softness, since silver tends to harden as it is worked. For this reason it is advisable to avoid excessive bending and twisting of silver cables.

Cryo treatment has goals unrelated to softness. No contradiction doing both.