Audioquest Carbon HDMI Cable

Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like HDMI audio and video. 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 HDMI cables.

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. Carbon HDMI 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.

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. Directionality All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. All signal conductors controlled for digital-audio direction in AudioQuest HDMI cables, and care is even taken to run the conductors used in the Audio Return Channel in the opposite direction to ensure the best performance for that application. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality.

Just as 4K technology and content have matured, customers are now seeing 8K TVs in stores and the eventual transition from HDMI 2.0 to HDMI 2.1. Naturally, questions arise. First and foremost, are AudioQuest HDMI cables compatible with 8K and the new features potentiated by HDMI 2.1?

All AudioQuest 18Gbps High Speed HDMI are guaranteed to have the 18Gbps bandwidth required for compelling features like 8K/30, HDR (High Dynamic Range) and eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel).

In addition, AudioQuest’s HDMI Active Pearl, Forest and Cinnamon cables employ active frequency-equalization to enable full 18Gbps performance at lengths up to 49.2ft (15 meters). Cherry Cola is a Hybrid Active Optical HDMI model that offers full 18Gbps performance at lengths up to 100 feet (30.48 meters).

AudioQuest 18Gbps High Speed HDMI cables have the bandwidth required for video up to 8K/30 (8-bit, 4:2:0), which is 7680 x 4320 resolution (over 33 million pixels) at up to 30 frames-per-second (fps). 24 and 30 fps are the frame rates for almost all movies and many TV shows. Currently, there is no widely available 8K content, nor are there any widely available 8K source components, so up-conversion in the TV is the likeliest scenario for 8K early adopters.

AudioQuest 18Gbps High Speed HDMI cables support High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Dynamic HDR. HDR content expands the contrast of the image for blacker blacks and brighter whites/highlights as well as greater color saturation and brightness. In addition, 4K Ultra-HD content allows for a wider color range.

This combination of technologies results in more realistic HDR images with greater perceived depth. Dynamic HDR (HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision for example) enables frame-by-frame HDR optimization rather than HDR settings that are fixed for the entire program. The most prominent current HDR formats are HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. AudioQuest 18Gbps High Speed HDMI cables are compatible with all these flavors of HDR, which can be found on Ultra-HD Blu-ray, iTunes, Vudu and more.

HDMI hardware’s previous ARC capabilities max out at lossy (compressed) 5.1-channel surround sound. Not only do all generations of AudioQuest HDMI cables “with Ethernet” support ARC, in order to ensure superior audio performance, the ARC-channel conductor-pair is internally controlled for direction, running in the opposite direction from the 4 pairs that carry information to the TV.

Upcoming HDMI 2.1 hardware support Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC), which increases the digital bandwidth dramatically to support uncompressed and lossless high-resolution multichannel audio, including Dolby TrueHD and Atmos, and DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS: X. All AudioQuest HDMI cables “with Ethernet” have the conductors and bandwidth required for eARC’s enhanced sonic capabilities.