I thought I would quickly add some experience I've recently been through. I have purchased .5 meter versions of some different cables and listened, then sent them off to a colleague for him to do the same.

I had him report back his experiences without telling him mine, so as to not as little influence as possible. A couple of months passed between my tests and his. We tested a solid silver cable made by CatCables (SilverCats with Rhodium RCAs), a Copper cable also by Cat (BlueTigers with Gold RCAs), and a set of PCAs. I also tested some Monster 350i, and he tried some Hosa (cheap pro cable), and some ixos cable.

Quick and dirty, we both preferred the silver Cat cables the best. Personally I thought the difference between them and the copper Cat cables were extremely subtle, so much though that I easily could have been making it up. In my colleagues opinion the worst was the ixos, which isn't surprising as it was dirt cheap and questionable to start with. We also both agreed (and I'm prepared to get some angry responses to this) that the Outlaws were on the bottom of the list as well. For me the Outlaws also did worse than the Monster, which are also double shielded, but they were pretty close overall.

Why did we have these results? Our first guess, and we have done no further testing thus far, is that all the cables we liked the least are fully shielded, and in the case of the Outlaws, double shielded.

Our favorite, the Silvercats are not shielded, I'm not sure about the copper Cats, but if they are shielded it is not fully shielded (just copper strand, not braided, etc). Very likely we prefer the non-shielded cable due to the difference in capacitance affects.

Obviously if either of us tested in areas with significant RF issues that may have changed our opinions!

Personally I like the build quality, look, and service I have received from Cat so far. After getting the test samples I was impressed enough from the build/look that I ordered several of their cables to redo much of my system when I installed my 1070. If I needed to get more analog connects, I would probably go with the BlueTiger series (their cheapest copper, and what we tested), unless I magically had a huge pile of extra cash to go silver, then it would be the Silvercats.

For those looking into bias, I really, really, wanted the PCAs to come out on top, as they are 1/2 the cost of the Cats, and significantly less cost than the SilverCats.

These are just my experiences, opinions, and guesses. So please take with a grain of salt, and understand that different people hear different things.

We also decided that depending on what equipment you have Silver may be a waste as some equipment just isn't putting out a signal nice enough for Silver to even make any difference, and in some other equipment it brings out harshness, that even in small amounts, can be unpleasant.

For those curious about that, yes I find the 1070 to be deserving, if you can justify the cost.