Speaker Cables - Copper vs Silver Coated?

I've always wondered, is the purpose of a silver coated speaker cable to protect and to prevent from tarnishing the copper wire or does it give it a different sound signature as in more bright? I've used Van Den Hul CS122 cable that is silver coated but I'm curious to try Canare 4s11 quad which is pure copper just to see if I can hear a difference but I really doubt it!

 

Using silver had nothing to do with tarnishing or oxidising, it is used to improve or tune the sound in a particular way.
I've found silver much harder to match to a system or component.

 

Silver-plated copper wire became widely used in avionics and spacecraft in the 1970s, because tinning copper was not a viable solution in high temperature applications because of tin's relatively low melting point vs. silver. Silver had the advantage of high melting point and high conductivity -- higher conductivity plating vs. lower conductivity plating like tin or nickel could be particularly useful at radio frequencies and other very high frequencies where skin effect is an issue. Silver-plated wire was adopted by audiophiles for audio use, but I don't think they were initially created by or for audio use. Silver obviously has the disadvantage of being more expensive than tin as a plating material or copper as a conductor. Silver however can tarnish and silver plated wire is susceptible to "red plague" if moisture gets between the wire and the insulation.

I've never used silver-plated wire for speaker cable personally, so I have no opinion on sonic differences if there are any. Nor do I have any opinion on those particular cables. But I will note they are pretty different cables geometrically -- the Van Den Hull is a widely separated twin lead. Each lead is stranded and 12.5 AWG in total. Canare is a twisted quad, in which pairs of separately insulated stranded conductors are wired together to create twin conductors of around 11 AWG. Resistance shouldn't be enormously different between the cables though the Canare by virtue of it's geometry will have much high capacitance, which is unlikely to matter. I have no idea what the inductance differences are between the two cables, which the geometry will also impact.

 

I've used silver-plated cables for a while, then I switched to copper. Copper seems warmer to me

 

Me too

 

I'll soon find out as I have some silver cables that I'm preparing for use w/my speakers. If they don't fare well as speaker cables I can use them to make interconnects and see what they do.

Currently I'm using tin plated copper speaker cables and although they sound fine I'm curious to hear the difference.

 

Had some old silver cables and changed them for copper (same ''model'). The harshness of cymbals (and sometimes in voices as well) was gone. But apparently that was typical of those 'older' silver cables.

 

I use Belden 5000 series all copper 10AWG terminated by BlueJeans Cable for many years now. I have been tempted to try silver coated copper from different brands but I come to same question....Why? I really like the deep bass notes that come thru and I don't perceive any brightness coming thru at all, I continue to read about silver coated copper as having that possibility.

I don't see me changing anytime soon. But I also believe it is system dependent, just try them is a good suggestion.

 

My speaker cables are all copper, but my interconnect is silver plated. I actually just emailed the manufacturer to ask them why they silver plate the IC. Both cables are by Nordost.

The sound engineer who recommended both to me did so because he feels that the cables are trasparent in the system.

 

I read silver are brighter sounding in RCA input cables, not sure if silver speaker cables would make a difference at the very low impedance.

 

This is what Nordost said about my silver plated ICs:

"Silver is mainly to provide a better transmission surface since copper is porous. So much of an audio signal travels on the surface of the conductor and holes on the surface slows the signal down where it can be impacted by other things including the dielectric.

Of course it also adds to the lifespan of the cable."

 

Actually audio at 20kHz is low for skin effect (signal on surface). Now 20mHz had a fair amount of skin effect.

 

That sounds like nonsense to me. I've tried numerous boutique cables and power cords, and never really heard a difference. I don't remember who made these, but I have a pair of RCA interconnects made from thin pure silver wire insulated with Teflon. They were $100/pair. I have swapped them with Kimber Kable and Tributaries interconnects on my main system, and they all sound pretty much the same. Currently using them to jump my Schiit SYS to my Parasound DAC/headphone amp which does not have a line out level control for the desktop speakers.

 

I am not that familiar with silver plating or coating, but, I've heard similarly constructed cables that are made with pure copper and pure silver. There is quite a bit of difference between the two. The pure silver speaker cables sound more extended and clear, while the copper is warmer and richer sounding. In my system, I prefer the pure silver. But, these differences are more pronounced with interconnects, to me, than speaker cables.

 

I have Canare 4S11 speaker cable with welded locking bananas. It works. Before that I used Belden wire. If there is a difference, I couldn't hear it. I bought the Canare from BJC because I rearranged my system and wanted longer cables. That and the banana plugs were nice to have. I wouldn't get too caught up in speaker cable for home audio use. Copper cabling with reasonable shielding and decent connectors is good enough for what most of us are doing.

 

99.9% copper works for me.

 

99.99% silver works for me.

 

Of course it also adds to the $Price$
Never liked the sound of silver in any function. Just me I guess. John M.

 

Of course that is complete bollocks. Copper is not porous - total nonsense. And the second half of Nordost's waffle pseudoscience that "so much" of audio signals travel on the surface of the wire is also nonsense. For round wires, and audio frequency up to 20kHz (and well above), the skin effect is absolutely minimal, and not at all affected by silver plating. Microwave waveguides are silver plated because at GHz frequencies skin effect is a significant problem - but that is a million times audio frequencies.

Of course Nordost (or any audio cable manufacturer) produces any measurement to substantiate their claims. There is the odd exception to that statement, but these are few and far between.

In fact silver plating has its own raft of problems, such as red plague Red Plague: Damaging Corrosion in Wires . So in fact, on Nordost's final point, silver plating can actually reduce the lifespan of the cable.

Now of course wires made of solid silver do not suffer from red plague, provided your pocket is deep enough.

 

Well I finally got around to making the wires suitable for using as speaker wire and they are silver plated copper with woven shielding and they are 16 gauge as opposed to my 12 gauge tin plated copper and there was a difference, a pretty big one, which I was surprised at . . . and all for the better.

I hear more definition and the leading edge is more precise which IMO leads to more dynamics. I did change the settings on how I load my carts to compensate for some overall brightness that I heard, but the silver cords I'm now using still sound better. I thought I'd lose bass with the thinner gauge but that has not happened.

It was a PITA to unwind the shielding and the cables are pretty stiff for their size - I never saw anything quite like these wires before as far as construction goes . . . but then again what do I know?

I tried various speaker wires over the years that I bought at usedcables.com and later returned because I couldn't hear that much of a difference, or more precisely, that they improved the sound. Yes they changed the sound but comme ci comme ca, not always for the better and their cost/benefits were not worth it.

I bought the wires on eBay at a $1 a foot. I bought enough to bi-wire. I also use locking bananas that I bought from BJC.

Here's the link for the cabling I bought:

10 ft 16 AWG Shielded Silver Plated Polyimide Film Kapton Wire Twisted Pair USA | eBay

 

I too experimented this week. I began by swapping out the Van Den Hul CS122 12awg silver coated speaker cables and hooked up some mogami 3103 copper 12awg, for me the results were better with the copper cable in my given system. The copper seemed to tone down the harshness and brightness it was exactly what I needed. I guess it is room and system dependant one is not better than the other. Was glad to hear the comparison for myself.

 

Agreed, the silver plated wire is seemingly brighter but changes I made mitigated that and with my DAC the brightness was appreciated when I run it in the 'tube' mode.

The question I have is the sound brighter or more detailed? Or looked at another way: does more detail make the sound brighter?

The most 'detailed' speakers I have heard are bright sounding. Is there a correlation?

 

I think it is subjective, meaning depends on what media you prefer or are used to......For me when I listen to CDs of the same vinyl I have there is a brightness that does not agree with me, in this case its not my speakers or system or cables but rather the media. I have a Grant Fidelity tube DAC and if I run that between my CDP in tube mode it does quell some of the brightness.

But I agree there are some speakers that are bright in character and should maybe only be used for certain media, but that is an expensive scenario. Again, I think you have to take the 80/20 rule and just deal with it, I doubt it will ever be 100% to our liking regardless of media on our systems. Especially when you have mfg who only use digital to voice their amps and preamps, that's why you really should audition as much as you can including cables.

 

I use AQ Sky XLR IC's which are pure silver not silver plated and AQ Mont Blanc Speaker cable which is pure copper. Idont notice any brightness is the system but detail,speed and tonality are great. I talk to my AQ rep about using silver in my system and they totally recommended it. I had tested AQ KE4 which is a pure silver speaker cable and it sounded awesome in the system but the cost was way out of reach for me. The AQ KE4 was very detailed and full sounding with great speed and attack with out being bright or harsh. You have to remember also is that you dont clean silver cables you want the silver to oxidizes since silver oxidation is more conductive than the silver it self.

 

I tried AQ silver ICs with my VPI Scout and Jolida JD9 for a couple of days. They sounded bright, flat, harsh, and lifeless to my ears so I changed back to my BJC ICs and haven't looked back. The loss with the silver AQs was more than noticeable, it was glaringly obvious.