Are silver coated cables a bunch of hype?

Since silver is a better conductor than copper, the silver plating causes any frequencies on the "skin" of the wire to travel better and faster than the frequencies in the "core" of the wire. Since it is well known that the "skin effect" is a result of high frequencies traveling on the "skin" of the wire, and low frequencies traveling in the core, adding silver plating to the "skin" of the wire will only make the "skin effect" worse than no plating. The high frequencies will travel better and faster, and arrive at the speaker before the low frequencies will, thereby "smearing" the coherence of the signal. The effect will be bright and brash, with added time-distortion, that IMO, will do nothing good for the system. I personally would not use it.

hmmm... Bear makes silver plate cables, and they sound awesome.

So far(only 20hrs. of break in)Twl's comments are unequivocally correct.CAPITOLE MK1 PRO SILWAY MKII INTO VTL MONOBLOCKS TT25'S INTO DECAPO I'S LATEST VERSION.QED CABLES SILVER ANNIVERSARY are quite bright but it may be singing a different song two hundred hrs out.The strong point of this system is the right down the middle between solid state and tube qualities I am experiencing.On ART GARFUNKELS album Breakaway the track Waters of March has a sibilance that wouldnt be so readily apparent in all copper cables esses and pees pop out and you can tell if a pop screen was used on most recordings more easily.It still comes down to horses for courses silver plate may work better or worse in your system...fetlocks vary.

Dennis, I never said that nobody would like silver-plated cables. I just stated their typical characteristics. Since different people have different systems, and have different needs, sometimes a bright cable is needed to offset some other deficiency in the system. Cables seem to be used as tone controls these days. I don't know if every system is coherent enough to show the time distortion they produce. Hence they may sound good on certain systems.

I don't want to prejudice anyone against my favorite cables, but Purist Dominus is ultra high purity copper with silver coating.

Purist Audio never mentions this fact in advertising or specification sheets, nor do they make any claim as to the technological or performance benefits.

I only discovered this when a roll of Dominus conductor was shipped to me to use in various components that I was modifying.

Soundlab wired my U-1 with this conductor and the comments were that the insulation (Teflon) was the most uniform and predictable to strip they ever worked with. The exposed silver plated copper was free of any adhesives or synthetics and easy to solder. The final results set solidly, ultra clean without any debris or puddling in the matrix of metals.

As already mentioned here by others, implementation is more important than subjective discussions of the impact of the materials selected.

Performance wise, Purist Dominus typically is described as liquid, dynamic and seductive. I have never heard a criticism of phase or brightness problems. Again, implementation is everything.