Are silver coated cables a bunch of hype?

Redkiwi, I have read that silver oxides are still conductive, so that they still sound good after being oxidized, whereas copper oxidation is not conductive/less conductive, and adds bad sounding artifacts. So this could be a good point for using some silver coating. At one time, when wires were inexpensive, this was not a problem because if they had corrosion/oxidation, you just got new ones. But at several thousand dollars a set, we don't want to just go out and buy new, when any oxidation takes place. So for long term use, silver plating may have its advantages over plain copper.

I like the sound of pure and simple copper. Melding of two different metals never seems to become as coherent as a solo one..

And it is good to see you are still here Albert, and Jadem6 on this same thread too. I have been too busy work-wise to visit here recently, but hope to rectify that. Twl, you are right in your observations on conductivity and it had not occurred to me that this was also a reason for coating copper with silver, but it makes sense. I have some old Straightwire Virtuoso cables that have corroded quite badly where they are terminated in the RCA plugs. I can see it, and believe I can hear it too - unless they really were that bad to begin with...

I see that you had called Canare and spole to a tach there.

I recently posted my impresions of their newest cable at AR.Just was not a good source IC for my CDP.I reinserted a run of AQ Ruby and the problem was eliminated.

If it was COAX you were going to use look elsewhere for an IC and do not use COAX.

There are good Silver coated cables out there like Audience Au24 but they are truely expensive.I have read several opions on the coating Q and from what I gather is the thing that it does is minimise corrosion or the transfer for highs travel on the outter surface while the bass is mre torwards the center of the conductor.I believe in the former.

If you are thinking of going to Silver in any respect I would go with Solid Silver.There are some that are not going to cost a real lot,but I went with 47Labs OTA instead.Seems the purist philos. won out.If you are going to spend up to $600 on IC's and speaker cable it is the choice I would go with.

Other than that be prepared to do alot of mixing and matching to find what will work best in your system.

A cheapest route is Knu Koncepts.com which was pretty close to much more expensive Audioquest stuff.$43 for 10ft of speaker cale & 2 IC's.

Hope that helps,good luck.

Red, I may very well be wrong, but I believe that silver coated copper predates the use of teflon insulated wire.

Twl, you are correct, silver oxide is conductive. Copper oxide is a semiconductor(can be conductive or non - conductive, depending on circumstances). Semi - conductors almost never exhibit good conductivity.

The point of a wires insulators is to (1)keep the conductors from shorting & (2)protect the wire from the outside world. I would say that if a wire is not being protected, the manufacturer is not doing his job. Even if they are using a material which does not provide that protection because of sonic reasons, at today's prices, they more than owe it to their customers to insulate the insulator. Provide some means of protecting their wire and our investment.