Are silver cables on the way out?

There is nothing inherently wrong with silver-- as is well known, it is the best electrical conductor of any metal on the planet at room temperature. Any "problems" in silver wire are almost certain to be due to implementation, i.e, other factors such as cable geometry, dielectrics, gauge, winding, etc. Again, as is well known, silver is highly prone to oxidation and if it is not protected from this problem (meaning varnished or otherwise molecularly coated), it will be adversely affected. Many silver-wire makers simply don't address this problem. In addition, where gauge matters (i.e, speaker cable), it is far cheaper to use bigger copper wire to lower the resistance than it is to use a silver wire of equal resistance. Many silver speaker cables probably got a reputation as "zippy" because they were just plain too small.

Snooks' observation matches one that I heard a couple of years ago in my home. We had a new speaker being demoed for the NJ Audio Society in my home, which used a copper jumper between the bass section and the separate tweeter-midrange module that sat on the bass cabinet. As we were positioning the speakers, for fun I put in my Kimber Black Pearl jumpers I then used for my speakers in place of the copper jumpers (a 6 inch length). The speaker designers were stunned at the better clarity, dynamics and overall tonal and harmonic truthfulness resulting from the change; we used the jumpers for the demo.

My system currently uses copper interconnects all throughout (I'm pretty sure the NBS Omega is copper) except for the Graham IC-70 arm cable; in the past I've not liked the sound of silver in my system for the reasons Tim (Tireguy) mentioned. I'm now re-thinking that, and I'm trying Siltech's new G5 interconnect between my phono stage and preamp. The latest silver designs seem, at least in limited demos I've heard and definitely in the new Graham armcable, to have become far more natural and full-bodied than the older designs I remember. Ultimately, the differences I'm hearing are probably more a result of other factors in the cables' design than the type of wire involved, though, as many of the other posters here have noted.

I continue to use Red Dawn silver-over-copper for long IC between pre and monos, as well as speaker cables, but have found that I prefer Discovery Essence XLR pure copper over the RD, HT Pro-Silways, and Siltech ST48b between my digital source (EMC-1 MkII) and pre. Detailed but fuller.
Great balance and bloom without loss of air. Kudos to Discovery....