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Editors' Choice Award 2024 - The Absolute Sound Magazine
Enjoy the Advantage of Solid 5% Silver-Plated Conductors
Get the big silver advantage with Carbon USB-C to USB-C cable from AudioQuest's 'Indulgence Series.' Carbon delivers low jitter, low distortion audio. Enjoy Carbon USB cables with PCs, DACs, and other digital gear, and experience how good digital music can sound.
AudioQuest Carbon USB-C to USB-C cable is a high-definition, high-performance cable for connecting devices with Type USB-C connectors. AudioQuest USB cables featuring conductor materials and construction techniques that have allowed AQ’s other USB cables to achieve “Best-In-Class” recognition worldwide.
Boasting solid 5% silver-plated Long-Grain Copper (LGC) conductors, Carbon also features a Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation for the most efficient dissipation of radio-frequency noise.
In addition, ALL of AudioQuest’s USB cables incorporate a newly developed strain-relief system to provide robust durability between the USB cable and plug.
Award-Winning Performance
AudioQuest Carbon USB won an Editors' Choice Award for 2024 from The Absolute Sound magazine, which observes, "One of the go-to USB cables for computer-audio fans, the Carbon is neutral without sounding bleached, dynamic without sounding piercing, detailed without sounding analytical."
"Every time I wanted to listen for an hour or three just for the sheer pleasure of it, the AudioQuest Carbon was the one I went to," reports Doug Blackburn in his review for soundstageaccess.com. "They made everything I played sound a little bit better – an improvement definitely worth the cost."
Semi-Solid Concentric 5% Silver Conductors
Semi-Solid Concentric Conductors greatly reduce strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like USB audio.
These signals, being such a high frequency, travel almost exclusively on the surface of the conductor. As the surface is made of high-purity silver, the performance is very close to that of a 100% silver cable, but priced much closer to a copper cable. This is an incredibly cost effective way of manufacturing very high-quality USB cables.
Multi-Layer Carbon-Based Noise-Dissipation
This cable's negative conductors are covered with partially conductive Carbon-Loaded Polyethylene. This remarkable material reduces radio-frequency 'garbage' (RFI) being fed back into the amplifier.
The sonic benefit is exactly the same reduction in 'hash' and improved dimensionality that comes whenever RF interference is reduced in an audio circuit. In addition, a carbon layer damps interaction between positive and negative conductors, and an external Carbon-Based NDS System reduces external interference.
Hard-Cell Foam Insulation
Hard-Cell Foam (HCF) Insulation ensures critical signal-pair geometry. Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy. Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. Hard-Cell Foam Insulation is similar to the Foamed-PE used in AudioQuest's more affordable Bridges & Falls cables, and it is nitrogen-injected to create air pockets.
Because nitrogen (like air) does not absorb energy and therefore does not release any energy from or into the conductor, distortion is reduced. In addition, the stiffness of the material allows the cable's conductors to maintain a stable relationship along the cable's full length, producing a stable impedance character and further minimizing distortion.
Direction-Controlled Conductors
All drawn metal strands or conductors have a non-symmetrical, and therefore directional, grain structure. AudioQuest controls the resulting RF impedance variation so that noise is drained away from where it will cause distortion.
When applicable, arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For most models of AQ cable, the arrows not only indicate the direction that optimizes metal-directionality as part of Noise-Dissipation, but they also indicates non-symmetrical attachment of shield and GND in order to optimize full-system performance.
A fundamental aspect of AudioQuest's multifaceted Noise-Dissipation technology, Direction-Controlled Conductors ensure induced noise is dissipated and drained properly.
The Indulgence Series of USB Cables
AudioQuest has a well-earned reputation as a manufacturer of exceptional analog audio cables. However, the advent of USB presented a new set of design challenges that needed to be solved. In order for AudioQuest to maximize audio performance over USB, new materials and higher levels of manufacturing precision were employed to handle the high-speed, wide-bandwidth signals.
Several of the analog audio design elements that have proven so important over the years turned out to be meaningful to USB signal design. Solid core conductor technology, conductor metallurgy, insulation material and overall precision of manufacture have all been carefully optimized to create a superior line of USB cables.
The Next Evolution of USB Cable Performance
With the Indulgence Series of USB cables, AudioQuest is proud to introduce the next evolution of cable performance. Why the word "indulgence"? When we set aside the time for audio/video entertainment in the home we are, after all, allowing ourselves a bit of well-earned personal indulgence. We allow ourselves time for emotional transportation via video and sound.
There are huge differences in the sound of USB cables. As part of AudioQuest's re-examination of USB cable design, specific attention was paid to maximizing the sonic performance of USB. AQ's Indulgence USB series pushes USB sonic performance to new levels. While test equipment is excellent at tracking control errors or ensuring data pass through, no computer can compete with the human ear when it comes to perceiving the subtle but crucial audio errors and distortion that can reduce the enjoyment of your music and video files via USB.
The Engineering and Construction Edge
AudioQuest begins with Long-Grain Copper (LGC) and adds increasing amounts of silver-plate culminating in Diamond USB, whose conductors are made using solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS). On the two top USB cables, Coffee and Diamond, AudioQuest's patented Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) polarizes the insulation, providing a drop in the perceived noise floor and an increase in dynamic contrast.
