AudioQuest Cinnamon Digital Coax

AudioQuest Cinnamon Digital Coax

AudioQuest Digital Coax Cables

AudioQuest’s high-speed digital cables, including FireWire, Ethernet and USB, have garnered near-universal acclaim from reviewers, manufacturers, dealers and end users. While that frontier might be more visible in recent years, the need for superior versions of familiar digital cables like AES/EBU and Digital Coax is as pressing as ever. AudioQuest is thrilled to reveal an entirely new line of 7 Digital Coax cables that feature AQ’s very latest design techniques and materials.
The new Digital Coax line begins with Forest, which is built around Solid 0.5% Silver conductors. While silver-plated copper is sonically disastrous for full-range analog signals it excels with digital. Because digital signals travel exclusively on the surface of the conductor, silver-plate provides an astonishing amount of the performance of 100% pure silver at a fraction of the cost.

Cinnamon, Carbon and Coffee increase the percentage of conductor-metal silver to 1.25%, 5% and 10% respectively, decreasing distortion and improving the sound accordingly. Diamond, Wild and WEL Signature use Solid 100% Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS), AQ’s best conductor metal.

All of these cables feature AudioQuest’s superbly effective Noise-Dissipation System (NDS). Typical cable shield systems absorb and then drain noise and RF energy to component ground, which modulates and distorts the critical “reference” ground plane. NDS’s application of metal- and carbon-loaded synthetics “shields the shield,” absorbing and reflecting most of this energy before it reaches the layer attached to component ground.

As the number of NDS layers increases the greater the protection from this ground-plane turbulence, and the better the sound. Forest and Cinnamon get Metal-Layer NDS, while Carbon moves to Carbon-Based 4-Layer NDS. By the time you get to Wild and WEL there are 7 NDS layers plus additional EMI absorption.

In addition, these cables also feature newly designed plugs. Striking appearance isn’t the only thing different about these plugs however. Carbon and up apply Hanging-Silver, a very thick and unusually pure direct-plating made possible by submerging individual plugs in pure silver, which produces a vastly superior result to the typical process of electroplating batches of plugs by rolling them together in a drum. Not only does this provide a gorgeous finish (not usually a good thing as the standard way to get such a shiny finish is to first plate a nickel barrier layer under the silver or gold), but also the exact chemistry of the plating bath and the bonding of plating to underlying part can be more productively controlled ... something you can hear, and over time see as Hanging-Silver is comparatively immune to turning black. (Though eventually cleaning with a silver polish cloth might become desirable.)

For Carbon, extremely pure Purple Copper is used for the base plug, while even higher-grade pure Red Copper is employed on Coffee and up. Both Purple and Red Copper produce sound that is dramatically superior to sonically compromised brass or any lesser material.

Take a listen and we think you’ll agree that Digital Coax has never sounded better!