Mixing Silver and Copper cables -- Good or bad??

I can give you my experience - I have all kimber - silver streak from dac to preamp and kcag from preamp to amp and 8tc to speakers. I don't notice anything but open, airy, dynamic, rich sound with incredible imaging. I personally have stopped taking advice from anyone in sales. You'll never really know unless you conduct trial and error yourself, it is either painstaking or enjoyable but that is the only way.

Before you decide what did what you need to answer a few questions -

did you buy or make the cables?
are they *identical* in all facets except for the material of the wire itself?

If there are differences, you can not be sure that it is the metal differences that you are hearing.

_-_-bear

Actually, in my system the silver plated speaker wire made the bass less boomy and deeper. Whas it the copper alone or the silver or what? I paid $10 for each 16 ga.-25 ft roll, so dollar for dollar that can't be beat...

The general wisdom on Silver (tinkly top) vs. Copper (fuller, but not as clear) sound is usually correct, as far as it goes.

There is NO transition between the two cables used in the same system, since they don't physically touch. The dealer may have been trying to say something like I say on my website, which is when you use a cable that is actually cleaner than another, you'll hear ONLY the *less clean* cable!

Some people try to use a silver and a copper cable to get a balanced sound. I feel that this is generally NOT a good idea, but with most silver cables, it might be the only choice you have (in an otherwise relatively neutral system) to get a tonal balance that is about right.

When I first came out with Silver Lighting interconnects, (over 10 years now) I found that the nice part of silver was great, but it always seemed to have a deficit in the lower mids and bass. So, I developed Silver Lightning and found a way to solve the tonal balance issue in silver and still preserve the benefits of that "silver sound."

One should be careful when comparing cables to understand that in *majority* the differences between cables are due to
the *physical geometry* being different - so comparisons between silver and copper are best done with otherwise identical cables! This is tough to do for most people, but keep this in mind when listening. The secondary factors are then the materials and the connectors, if all other things are equal.

I use OFC Absolute Power Cords, Phoenix Gold single crystal copper interconnects, Sceptor silver content coaxial for my DAC hookup and silver plated OFC speaker wire with no problems. My system is sounding open, live and relatively fatigue free...

Amen.

using harmonic technology cables i found the best sound with thr copper Truth Link from the CDP and the hybrid coper/silver Pro silway II between the amp and preamp. With the silver from the CDP it was a bit glaring. All coppeer is good too but there is a loss of openness and air

Find a new "highly respected " dealer, as I wouldnt trust any of this ones "advice"

Sounds like a dealer trying to step you up and get more money out of you.

So many factors such as what dialetric or what the true resitance is etc make the difference.This claim would make me skeptical as to his other "claims".It's just BS so he has something to say.

Some of the best cables available use several different types of preciouse metals and alloys to compliment different areas of the frequency spectrum with very good results.You have to experiment and decide what sounds good to you and works best with your components.

Mixing silver and copper can be a match made in heaven. Realize alot of the cables on the market have a copper conductor with silver on top of the copper.

You can even mix different brands such as using Nordost Vahalla on top and Audio Magic Illusion on the bottom or vice a versa. And in this situation do you not only have different brands but totally different conductors.

I happen to like the silver better on top and the copper on the bottom in most circumstances but not all.

As noted, this is a highly nebulous area in which only experimentation can typically provide answers. There are no hard & fast rules, although there are perceived generalizations which *do apply a large amount of the time. Trial & error is normally the best approach.

There is no absolute on determining which type of cables is superior. It depends on the quality of the products and the system matching. The Copper cable can sound a bit smoother and warmer in general, while the Silver cable usually sounds faster and articulate. One thing about Silver cable is when it gets oxidized, the conductivity is still not too bad.

About the mixing, as long as you like the sound, it really doesn't matter that much. However, the matching can be somehow more difficult than using the same type of cables.

For the bi-wire or bi-amping, if you really need to mix, we prefer silver or silver plated wires for the woofer and copper for the tweeter. The tweeter can sound a bit smoother while the woofer can sound a bit faster.

Good luck.