Solid 100% Perfect-Surface Silver Conductors and 72-Volt DBS System
Enjoy the benefits of advanced metallurgy and design with Diamond, AudioQuest's USB 3.0 cable with solid 100% Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) conductors and 72-volt DBS System.
For many applications, the speed of digital communication is important. Most visibly, "speed" is about transferring large files as quickly as possible, or carrying enough data for an HD video. For USB audio (and for HDMI audio), "speed" is critical not because of how-much how-fast, but because time relationships within a digital stream are critical to the reconstruction of the analog wave form that brings information, music and joy to our ears. Time-based damage (jitter) to this information within the data package makes the sound small and flat instead of 3D, harsh and foggy instead of smooth and clear.
Solid 100% Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) Conductors
Perfect-Surface Technology applied to extreme-purity silver provides unprecedented clarity and dynamic contrast. Solid conductors prevent strand interaction, a major source of cable distortion. Extremely high-purity Perfect-Surface Silver minimizes distortion caused by the grain boundaries which exist within any metal conductor, nearly eliminating harshness and greatly increasing clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other coppers.
Diamond's 72-Volt DBS System
Unfortunately, because insulation stores and releases energy, it is also a 'dielectric.' In a cable application, all released energy is distortion. The misnomer break-in is often used to describe the pronounced improvement in performance as the dielectric adapts to a charged state as the cable is used. Whenever a cable does not have a charge on it, it is re-adapting to an uncharged state; it is becoming new again.
By maintaining a 72-volt dielectric-bias, far above the voltage of delicate audio signals, the DBS system provides considerably better transparency and dynamics than is possible even from a cable in continuous use. It takes a couple of weeks for the DBS system to reach maximum performance. Since DBS battery packs are attached when Diamond USB cables are first terminated, Diamond will be approaching or at peak performance by the time it is installed in your system. Since there is no load on the two standard hardware-store batteries, they will last for years. A test button and LED allow for occasional verification of battery performance.
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 full length of the cable, thus ensuring that the characteristic impedance of the cable is consistent.
Carbon-Based 3-Layer Noise-Dissipation System
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.
Precision Direct-Silver Plated Termination
Precision direct-silver plated pins are carefully attached with the very best solder. Through choice of flux and metallurgy, AQ solder has been optimized 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.
Superspeed USB 3.0
USB 3.0 specifies data-transfer rates up to 4.8Gbps compared to USB 2.0's maximum signaling rate of 480Mbps.
