AudioQuest Carbon AES/EBU

AES/EBU, a joint development of the Audio Engineering Society and the European Broadcast Union, is a two-channel digital standard for connecting digital equipment in the professional world. But AES/EBU is also used in the domestic environment. Although the AES/EBU standard can refer to single-ended, balanced or optical connections, we are talking about the balanced digital interconnect here.

SOLID 5% SILVER CONDUCTORS: Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications. These signals, being such a high frequency, travel almost exclusively on the surface of the conductor. Because 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 Digital Coaxial cables.

HARD-CELL FOAM INSULATION: Hard-Cell Foam insulation is used exclusively in most of AudioQuest’s video and digital audio cables. Similar to Foamed-PE, it is nitrogen injected to create air pockets. “Hard” foam is used because the stiffness of the material allows the conductors in the cable to maintain the same relationship with each other along the entire length of the cable, thus ensuring that the characteristic impedance of the cable is consistent.

100% SHIELDING (FOIL + TINNED SPIRAL): Shielding plays an important role in any cable design, but the shielding on coax interconnect is especially important because it functions not only as a shield but a return path as well. Because of this, AudioQuest pays special attention to the quality of the metals used and the manufacturing techniques used for the shielding, as both will affect the picture and sound quality.

CARBON-BASED 5-LAYER NOISE-DISSIPATION 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.

CONNECTIONS: Cold-welded Direct Silver Plated Purr 'Purple-Copper' Plugs.