Gold, platinum, Palladium Silver,copper, ! Which one them is the best signal carrier ? if you know the answer please do let me know because over the last 40/50 years Involved as serious music listener both analog and digital ( approx 35 hours a week) tried radio shack to extortionately priced interconnects and speaker cables, Yes I totally agree that cables do makes a difference and yet every cable they do have their unique characters , some Audio pre or power amps they make not like above mentioned different materials some they do As we all synergy is very important as well as room acoustics, also realised that SET amps are less fussy to make good marriage, all above mentioned different materials cables but PP/ and SS Amps slightly different issues I've experienced, never tried Hybrid amps therefore no opinion on that, most important thing is, if your system's interconnects are all copper ! and yet speakers cables are , silver or gold even platinum , or palladium results could be negative it is all depends what we believe and what we hear ? as well as what we can afford after all I've settled well executed well burnt Copper cables. ( well known cable designers like Yamamura who baked his copper cables high temperature stone made owens in italy highly expensive but amount of labour and skills required to make those copper cables it may be worth it .)