About The AudioQuest Carbon USB Type A To Type B Data Cable
In 1982 Sony gave us "Perfect sound forever," along with the attitude that, "it's just digital, so all CD players sound the same."
That statement has been well and truly disproved and qualitative differences between players has become accepted truth. Next came separate transport and DAC combos, which brought with it the attitude that "all S/PDIF digital audio cables sound the same…" That was also disproved. Now the frontier has moved once again. Is digital audio really just ones and zeros? Technically it is, but with many years of listening to products at all prices, we don't believe so. Once you've had a chance to listen to an AudioQuest Carbon USB, we don't think you will either.
All AudioQuest cables definitely have a high-quality look and feel and in direct comparison to a free-in-the-box USB cable, you will experience greater bass extension, and the soundstage will be opened up with vocals sounding more natural.
A quality USB cable is a great way to connect your desktop or laptop computer to a half decent audio digital-to-analogue converter. For USB audio, as with all digital audio signals, it's critical to maintain accurate timing. This cable can reduce the timing errors or "jitter" that often makes digital music sound less clear and rich and three-dimensional.
The USB Cable For Music Lovers: AudioQuest Carbon is the USB cable for serious music lovers who have heavily invested in high-end gear and who want to believe that their cable is not going to leave them short on performance for the sake of a few more dollars and here's three reasons why.
Solid 5% Silver Plated Conductors: Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors (Silver over Copper) 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 solid silver cable, but priced much closer to solid copper cable. This is an incredibly cost effective way of manufacturing very high-quality USB cables. Silver content 5%.
Tip: When it comes to conducting signals, silver is the best-performing metal — better than either copper or gold. Carbon's silver-plated conductors are designed to reveal more high-frequency detail.
Foamed-Polyethylene Insulation: Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. Carbon USB uses air-filled Foamed-Polyethylene Insulation because air absorbs next to no energy and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. Thanks to all the air in Foamed-PE, it causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.
Carbon-based 3-Layer Noise-Dissipatation System (NDS): 100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment's ground reference requires AQ's Noise-Dissipation System. Metal and Carbon-Loaded synthetics prevent most RFI from reaching the equipment's ground plane.
Terminations: Precision direct-silver plated pins are carefully attached with the very best solder. Through choice of flux and metallurgy, AQ solder has been optimised to make a low-distortion connection. The difference you hear between solders is a result of connection quality. AQ Solder does not have a high silver content because the more silver there is in solder, the more difficult it is to make a good connection.
About USB
The letters USB stand for Universal Serial BUS and this was established by a stalwart group of companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft (just to name a few) in order to give the personal computing world a truly universal standard and means to connect devices such as hard drives, printers, cameras and more importantly, to us, our audio components. Included in the original description are protocols for the pristine transfer of audio over USB. Great care and sensitivity went into this design. Consequently, a computer connected to a USB-enabled digital-to-analogue converter can outperform the best compact disc players available today. AudioQuest is committed to contributing products that honour USB's ability to deliver state-of-the-art performance on this new and wonderful frontier.
AudioQuest Carbon USB Review
"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." The Absolute Sound Editors' Choice Awards 2023
Our Take
AudioQuest Carbon is properly engineered, made with quality materials, and tested through hours and hours of listening by people who have a passion for music. The Carbon USB, like the lower priced Forest & Cinnamon, performs very well on music. The difference, besides the colour of the outside braid, is in the silver content - 0.5% on the Forest compared with 1.25% on the Cinnamon and a massive 5% on the Carbon. The theory is that increased silver content contributes to a faster passage of the signal. Carbon is for those customers who have high-end equipment and need assurance they have bought one of the best products available. So, if you enjoy listening to digital music files on a better than decent audio system, you'll be surprised at the difference a quality USB cable like AudioQuest Carbon can make to your enjoyment.
As one customer said: "This is a good cable, noticeably better than AQ Cinnamon's I've used and blows away most generic USBs. Main difference is clarity with vocals and depth of bass. I use it between my NAD M52 and M50....I will likely be upgrading to the Coffee or even the Diamond soon, as this is probably the weakest link in my current cable chain with NAD M52; M50; M51 & T787." - Source AQ website.
Main Features & Specifications
- USB Terminations: The AudioQuest Carbon USB cable features gold-plated USB terminations for maximum signal transfer
- Fitted with a USB type-A connector on one end and a USB type-B connector on the other end
- Solid Long Grain Copper Conductors: Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter
- Silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like USB audio. The Carbon contains 5%
- Polyethylene Insulation: The USB cable's solid Polyethylene insulation ensures critical signal-pair geometry
- USB 2.0: This cable exceeds USB 2.0 data rate specifications
- Available Lengths: 750mm; 1.5 Metre; 3.0 Metre; 5 Metre
- Warranty: Lifetime. Does not cover misuse or abuse
Note: Features & Specifications subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE