The AudioQuest Carbon USB cable is Paul’s curated pick to run between our Stellar products and your computer when you’re looking for the best price/value performance level. Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors 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 5% silver, the performance is 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. AQ’s conductors are controlled for RF directionality. Also featured is AQ’s 3-Layer Noise-Dissipation System (NDS), incorporating alternating layers of metal and carbon-loaded synthetics that “shield the shield,” absorbing and reflecting most of this noise/RF energy before it reaches the layer attached to ground.