Cable Asylum: George Cardas/Jon Risch/IMO by DaveS

The Cardas site has a section under Q&A about silver-vs-copper. Paraphrased he says everything being equal, silver has an advantage in conductivity, but all is not equal. Due to the hugh difference in price, better performance at any given price point currently supports the use of copper.

IMO for applications where conductor size is a real issue, perhaps applications very sensative to capacitance, silver might be warranted. Metals immediately start to combine with O2 and the like, so they are not pure for long. Although I don't have the equipment to properly measure it, my understanding is that silver oxide is an excellent conductor, copper oxide is a semi-conductor, and aluminum oxide is an insulator. That being the case, silver should have the advantage if skin effect is relevant, copper should make some noise in RFI sensative applications, and aluminum crimp joints should be very suspect.

I know Jon Risch strongly discourages the use of silver plated copper conductors (or any plated wires) but of course, silver plating is very common practice in A/V wire applications. Picking on Jon Risch for a momnet, he suggests using silver plate in AC outlets, and also prefers the silver/rhodium finish on the Cardas RCA's--while Rhodium is supposed to be a horrible conductor.

In other words, I really have no idea :-)