About The AudioQuest Forest USB C to C Cable
The AudioQuest Forest USB Type C to C Cable with 0.5% Silver conductors is the future of USB cables as the world moves to embrace USB C. Forest is your entry into high quality, great sounding USB cables that feature not only incredibly high transfer rates but also minimal noise and interference.
AudioQuest's Forest USB C cable is not designed to offer the fastest transfer speed or power your devices. Instead, in line with all their other products, it is designed to be the best sounding USB cable available at the price.
USB cables have become ubiquitous in our lives and you would be hard placed to find anyone who doesn't own quite a collection. USB C is the new kid on the block, is smaller than most other variants and is, thankfully, reversible so there's no guessing which way around it goes, it just works every time.
USB Type C connections are fast becoming the norm on many devices because of their fast transfer rates. This Forest cable ensures those transfers also occur with minimal noise and interference. And the design also reduces the timing errors or "jitter" that can make digital music sound less focused.
Semi-Solid Concentric 0.5% Silver Conductors: Semi-Solid Conductors greatly reduce strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like USB audio and video. These signals, being at 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 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 AudioQuest's 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 Contacts & Strain-Relief System: The AudioQuest Forest Series USB cable uses direct gold-plated contacts for its USB-C connector for excellent signal transfer and maximum resistant from corrosion. In addition, the AudioQuest Forest Series USB cable incorporates a newly developed strain-relief system to provide robust durability between the USB cable and plug.
Why USB C?
USB has always been something of a mess. Whether you were trying to work out which data standard your cable supported or which actual connector you were looking at, such as the difference between micro & mini, it has always been quite a hit and miss affair and ultimately quite frustrating.
Apple caused quite a stir in 2015 when it released laptops with USB C sockets only. People with an accumulated collection of USB A leads were suddenly feeling very left out. So things like USB hubs came into vogue so you could tie all your various USB bits and bobs together. Not very elegant, I think we can all agree.
Fortunately, over the years, things have begun to get a lot clearer and more streamlined. Many accessories, laptops and desktop computers now have USB C connections (which are smaller than USB A and, thankfully, reversible) and so a USB C to USB C cable can now be used in many different situations and is fast becoming the cable of choice for most people.
These days you can plug a USB C cable into a suitably equipped laptop or computer and plug the other end into a 4K monitor. Depending on the monitor you can then daisy chain another USB C cable to the next monitor. Your USB C cables will have no trouble transferring the required hi-res audio and video data rates. The other neat trick is that your laptop can also be charged by this same cable, at up to 100 Watts. This means you can bring your laptop home, plug it into one USB C cable and instantly have it being charged and sending hi-res audio and visual data to a couple of 4K monitors. Simplicity itself.
Our Take
Looking to buy a new laptop? Wanting to slim down your mountainous USB cable collection? It might just be time to embrace USB C. The Forest USB C cable can be used in a variety of settings and offers high speed combined with low noise and minimal timing errors. Naturally, because it's made by AudioQuest, the quality of design and construction is second to none and sound quality is their first priority. Buy with confidence.
Main Features & Specifications
- Design: USB Cable with Type C to Type C Connections
- For use with laptops, mobile devices, audio D/A converters, external hard drives, and more
- Exceeds USB 2.0 high-speed data transfer specification
- Low-jitter design specifically for USB audio
- Terminations: Gold-Plated USB Contacts for maximum signal transfer
- 5% Silver Semi-Solid Concentric Conductors significantly reduce inter-strand distortion
- Metal-Layer Noise Dissipation helps prevent RF noise from reaching the ground connection
- Hard-Cell Foam (HCF) Insulation to reduce distortion
- Rugged PVC Jacket
- Available Lengths: 750 mm, 1.5 Metres
- Manufacturer's Warranty: 5 Years
Note: Features & Specifications subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE.