Audioquest Forest USB Type B - Type C Data Cable
AudioQuest USB Type-C cables featuring conductor materials and construction techniques that have allowed AQ’s other USB cables to achieve “Best-In-Class” recognition worldwide.
AudioQuest USB Type-C cables featuring conductor materials and construction techniques that have allowed AQ’s other USB cables to achieve “Best-In-Class” recognition worldwide.
Key Features
For many applications, the speed of digital communication is important. Most visibly, “speed” is about transferring large files as quickly as possible, or carrying enough data for an HD video. For USB audio (and for HDMI audio), “speed” is critical not because of how-much how-fast, but because time relationships within a digital stream are critical to the reconstruction of the analog waveform that brings information, music and joy to our ears. Time-based damage (jitter) to this information within the data package makes the sound small and flat instead of 3D, harsh and foggy instead of smooth and clear.
AudioQuest USB Type-C cables featuring conductor materials and construction techniques that have allowed AQ’s other USB cables to achieve “Best-In-Class” recognition worldwide.
With the newer USB Type-C connector quickly becoming commonplace on many devices, AQ’s line of Type-C equipped USB cables will allow users to connect with Type-C enabled devices such as MacBook, ChromeBook, Pixel, Galaxy Note 7, etc.
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.
Solid 0.5% Silver Conductors
Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated copper conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like Ethernet 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.
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 our more affordable Bridges & Falls cables, and 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.
Gold-Plated Terminations
Precision gold-plated plugs are carefully attached with the very best solder. Through choice of flux and metallurgy, AQ solder has been optimized 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.
Universal Serial Bus Device Class Definition for Audio Devices
USB (Universal Serial BUS) 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, audio components. Included in the original description are protocols for the pristine transfer of audio over USB. Great care and sensitivity went into this. Consequently, a computer connected to a USB-enabled digital-to-analog converter can outperform the best compact disc players available today. AudioQuest is committed to contributing products that honor USB's ability to deliver state-of-the-art performance on this new and wonderful frontier.