AudioQuest Coffee USB

AudioQuest Coffee USB

In 1982 Sony and Philips brought us "Perfect Sound Forever," along with the dogma that "it's all just digital, and therefore all CD players sound the same. That turned out not to be true and qualitative differences between CD players became an accepted fact. Then came the separate transport + DAC combinations that brought with them the dogma that "all digital S/PDIF audio cables sound the same," until that too changed. Now the frontier has shifted once again. Is digital audio really just a matter of zeros and ones? We don't think so, and if you've had a chance to listen to the Coffee USB once, you won't believe it either....

MASSIVE 10% SILVERED GUIDERS: Solid conductors prevent mutual interference between wires in twisted pair cables and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are perfect for high-frequency applications, such as USB audio. These signals, because they have such a high frequency, transport themselves almost exclusively over the surface of the conductor. Because this surface is made of a very pure grade of silver, the performance is almost equal to that of a solid silver conductor, but is much closer to solid copper cables in terms of pricing. This is an incredibly cost-effective way to produce high-quality USB cables.

MASSIVE POLYETHYLENE ISOLATION WITH HIGH DENSITY: Any solid adjacent to a conductor is in fact part of a non-perfect circuit. Cable insulation and circuit board materials absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and released again as distortion. Insulation with high-density solid Polyethylene ensures that critical cable geometry remains intact, while minimizing insulation-induced phase distortions.

DIELECTRIC BIAS SYSTEM (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1): All insulation materials delay the signal in the conductor they encase. If an insulating material has not been preloaded, it will unevenly delay the signal, a major problem for time-sensitive multi-octave audio signals. AudioQuest's DBS provides a strong and stable electric field that saturates and polarizes (organizes) the molecules in the insulation. This minimizes both energy storage in the isolation and the multiple nonlinear timing errors that occur. Sounds emerge from a surprisingly dark background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast. The batteries in the DBS system last for years. A test button and LED allow you to check the batteries from time to time.

CONNECTIONS: the gold-plated plugs are carefully assembled with the very best solder. The AQ solder has been optimized by making the right choice in flux and metallurgy to make a joint with the least possible distortion. The differences you hear between different types of solder is the result of the quality of the joint made. AQ solder does not have a high silver content because as the silver content in the solder increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a good joint.

UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS DEVICE CLASS DEFINITION FOR AUDIO DEVICES: USB (Universal Serial BUS) was developed by a stalwart group of companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft (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 specification are protocols for the pristine transfer of audio over USB. Great care and sensitivity went into this. As a result, a computer connected to a USB-enabled digital-to-analog converter can outperform even 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.