AudioQuest Coffee USB Type A To USB Type B 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 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 Coffee 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 Coffee 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 four 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. Coffee 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.
Dielectric-Bias System (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1): All insulation slows down the signal on the conductor inside. When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio. AudioQuest's DBS creates a strong, stable electrostatic field which saturates and polarises (organises) the molecules of the insulation. This minimises both energy storage in the insulation and the multiple nonlinear time-delays that occur. Sound appears from a surprisingly black background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast. The DBS battery packs will last for years. A test button and LED allow for the occasional battery check.
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.
Our Take
AudioQuest Coffee, like all the range of their USB 2.0 cables is properly engineered, made with quality materials, and tested through hours and hours of listening by people who have a passion for music. The difference, besides the colour of the outside braid, is in firstly in the silver content - a massive 5% on the Carbon and Coffee, plus the Coffee has a Dielectric Bias insulation system which is where the money has gone compared with the Carbon. The theory is that increased silver content contributes to a faster passage of the signal and the dielectric insulation adds a greater degree of isolation from outside effects. Like Carbon, Coffee is for those customers who have high-end equipment and need assurance they have bought the best product 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 Coffee can make to your enjoyment.
Main Features & Specifications
- USB Terminations: The AudioQuest Coffee 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 Coffee contains 5%
- Polyethylene Insulation: The USB cable's solid Polyethylene insulation ensures critical signal-pair geometry
- USB Specification 2.0: This cable exceeds USB 2.0 data rate specifications
- Available Lengths: 750mm; 1.5 Metres
Note: Features & Specifications subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE