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guy sergeant wrote:

Can't say I share your abhorrence of all thing silver. My experiences have been somewhat different. I wouldn't however want to be accused of blinkered partisanship towards any particular brand though so I'll say no more about (some of ) the AN stuff.

Actually, it is not my “abhorrence” of silver but just depressing facts about it’s sound. Believe me or not but I quite sensitive to detect silver’s presents in a playback system and there were many “bling” stories in the past…

Ironically, the presents of silver itself is not as bad (ET has some silver in it, Purist cables also do) but rather the designer’s stress of silver as an expressive tool is something that turns me off.  So far, and without exceptions, any manufacturing house that explicitly accented the value of silver within thier designs were failed short during my listening. In many instances I did not even know that some “pure silver” was used and I juts was commented that it sound like a silver-loaded… and here it were… it usually was the case. I have written in past, about all that silver paranoia the takes place in audio, but to recall it briefly here are just a few of my problems silver in sound:

1) Silver dehydrates sound. Pretend you have a certain sense of humidity of sound and pretend that this sense of humidity fluctuates with frequency. Silver dries upper bass and upper mid range and makes the sounds like the Sahara wind. The dryness itself is not the problem but the difference of sonic dryness within the frequency range is a highly annoying factor,
2) Silver wipes out the upper frequency information and substitute it with an artificial “presentation of high frequency screen” (sort of digitalized, micro-evented presentation that many people mistakably take as the evidence of “quality”). The “screen” does not sound like natural sound but rather as the presumptuous attempt to depicture the HF presents. This is why the “silverised upper frequency”, my hearing, are never properly integrated with the rest of the music.
3) 98% of silver cables that I heard artificially emphasized HF, not juts boost the amplitude but by injecting an accent that is a permanently damage music and is a non-curable audio effect.

There are many other problems with silver that sometimes might be attributed to adherent silver properties and sometime to the specific bad silver utilization. This all brings to the question of the questions: what is wrong with cupper?  Anyhow I have to note that I have seen some element that used some silver ingredients and blends to accomplish the specific purposed and it was fine. However, the situations when the companies and the individual people were stressing the “reimbursement” of silver-silver-silver usually juts did not sound appropriately. Furthermore all those people mostly turns out to be just holding the fashionable silver masks behind which was hidden a complete ignorance of the subject.  Besides, and it is quite interesting point: I know a guy who know very well how to work with silver and he affirms that by using the special precautions and with some expense it is possible to eliminate all known silver problems and make it sound like… cupper. This leads to the question that I asked before: what is wrong with cupper?

Rgs,
The Puss

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