AudioQuest Carbon 48G HDMI Cable Braided - 0.6m (1 ft 11 in)

AudioQuest Carbon 48 — Ultra High Speed 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 Cable

The Carbon 48 sits in the upper tier of AudioQuest's 48Gbps HDMI range, above the Cherry Cola 48, Forest 48, and Cinnamon 48, and below the Vodka 48, ThunderBird 48, and FireBird 48 at the top. It is Certified Ultra High Speed by HDMI Licensing, guaranteeing full 48Gbps bandwidth and compliance with all HDMI 2.1 features. The Carbon 48 combines two significant upgrades that distinguish it from the models below: its 5% silver-plated Long-Grain Copper conductors represent a substantial increase in silver content over the Cinnamon 48's 1.25%, and its Level 3 Noise-Dissipation system adds a dedicated high-loss carbon layer to the shielding architecture. These two improvements work in concert — thicker silver plating on the conductor surface improves noise-dissipation efficiency, while the carbon layer intercepts additional RF energy before it can reach the signal path.

5% Silver-Plated Conductors

AudioQuest's 48Gbps HDMI range is structured around progressively thicker layers of silver plating applied to solid Long-Grain Copper (LGC) conductors. The Forest 48 begins at 0.5%, the Cinnamon 48 moves to 1.25%, and the Carbon 48 steps up to 5% — a fourfold increase over Cinnamon and a tenfold increase over Forest. The silver percentage refers to the proportion of the conductor's total cross-sectional area occupied by the silver plating. Because HDMI signals operate at frequencies well into the gigahertz range, virtually all current density is concentrated at the conductor's surface — the skin effect ensures that the interior of the conductor carries almost no signal energy at these frequencies. Placing a superior metal on the outside of the conductor therefore produces a disproportionately large benefit relative to the percentage of silver used. At 5%, the silver layer is thick enough to extend well beyond the skin depth at HDMI data rates, meaning the signal encounters silver for the entirety of its conduction path. This delivers substantially improved noise-dissipation performance compared to thinner plating, where the skin depth can penetrate through the silver layer and into the copper beneath.

The conductors are solid rather than stranded, eliminating the strand-interaction distortion that occurs when individual thin wires in a stranded conductor make and break electrical and magnetic contact with each other. This is a constant across AudioQuest's entire HDMI range, but the benefit compounds as the conductor quality increases — removing strand-interaction allows the superior surface properties of the silver plating to be fully expressed rather than masked by a more fundamental source of distortion.

Ground Reference: 1.25% Silver

A detail often overlooked in HDMI cable specifications is the quality of the ground-reference conductors — the drains that establish the voltage reference against which the balanced data pairs are measured. In AudioQuest's 48 range, the ground-reference conductors also receive silver plating, but at a lower percentage than the signal conductors, reflecting their different role in the signal path. The Carbon 48 uses 1.25% silver-plated ground-reference conductors — the same silver percentage used for the main A/V conductors in the Cinnamon 48 one tier below. This is a notable upgrade over the Forest 48's tinned-copper ground reference and the Cinnamon 48's 0.5% silver ground reference, and it reflects AudioQuest's position that a cleaner, more stable ground reference directly improves the performance of the data pairs that rely on it. A noisy or unstable ground reference introduces modulation that affects every signal conductor simultaneously — improving its quality benefits the entire cable's performance, not just a single data pair.

Noise-Dissipation: Level 3 (Carbon + Metal + Direction-Controlled)

The Carbon 48 uses AudioQuest's Level 3 Noise-Dissipation — the most sophisticated system applied to the cable's data pairs within the standard 48 range before moving into the Vodka tier and above. Level 3 builds on the direction-controlled foundation (all 19 HDMI conductors oriented during manufacture to direct RF noise away from the most vulnerable circuits) and adds two physical shielding layers around the four FRL (Fixed Rate Link) audio/video pairs and the eARC pair: a metal layer and, critically, a high-loss carbon layer sandwiched between the metal layers.

The carbon layer is the defining feature of Level 3. Traditional metal-only shielding captures RF energy but can re-radiate or conduct it along the shield, potentially introducing it to the equipment's ground plane — the "reference" voltage level that every other signal in the system is measured against. The high-loss carbon material absorbs RF energy and converts it to heat rather than conducting it, providing a fundamentally different and more effective mechanism for preventing intercepted noise from reaching the signal path. The combination of carbon absorption and metal reflection creates a multi-mechanism barrier that addresses RF interference across a wide frequency range — the metal layers are effective against lower frequencies, while the carbon layer excels at the higher-frequency interference generated by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular transmissions that pervade modern living environments.

eARC: 5% Silver and Level 3 Noise-Dissipation

AudioQuest emphasises that in their standard 48-series cables, the eARC conductor pair receives the same quality of materials and construction as the main audio/video data pairs. In the Carbon 48, this means the eARC pair uses solid 5% silver-plated LGC conductors with full Level 3 Noise-Dissipation — identical to the A/V pairs. This matters because eARC is the path that carries audio back from the TV to the AV receiver or soundbar, supporting uncompressed, lossless, high-resolution multichannel formats including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, and DTS:X at up to 192kHz/24-bit resolution. In systems where a TV's built-in streaming apps serve as the primary source, the eARC path determines whether the full-quality audio signal reaches the sound system intact — a cable that prioritises A/V quality but neglects the eARC pair undermines exactly the audio path most systems depend on most heavily.

48Gbps, 8K, and Gaming

The 48Gbps bandwidth enables the full HDMI 2.1 specification: video resolutions up to 10K, resolution/refresh rate combinations up to 8K/60 and 4K/120, Dynamic HDR (HDR10+, Dolby Vision, HLG), and HDCP 2.3 content protection. For gaming, this means support for 4K/120Hz gameplay on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and compatible gaming PCs, along with the HDMI 2.1 gaming features that reduce latency and eliminate screen tearing: Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), and Quick Frame Transport (QFT). All AudioQuest HDMI cables are fully backwards compatible with every previous HDMI generation, so the Carbon 48 works equally well with existing 4K/60 equipment — and the improved conductor materials and noise-dissipation system deliver benefits to 4K systems even when the full 48Gbps bandwidth is not being used.

Build and Jacket

The Carbon 48 features a premium braided outer jacket in grey on black — a non-PVC construction that enhances external noise rejection and provides a distinctive, high-quality feel suited to visible rack-to-component connections. This braided version is not rated for permanent in-wall installation. Available lengths range from 0.6m to 2.25m, covering typical connections between closely positioned components such as source to AV receiver, games console to display, or media player to soundbar. A separate PVC-jacketed version with CMG (CL3/FT4) in-wall rating is available in longer lengths for custom installation runs behind walls.

Carbon 48 in Context: Cinnamon 48 vs Vodka 48

The Carbon 48's principal upgrades over the Cinnamon 48 are its conductor silver content (5% vs 1.25% for A/V and eARC) and its ground-reference quality (1.25% silver vs 0.5% silver). These are not incremental differences — a fourfold increase in silver plating thickness on the signal conductors meaningfully extends the silver layer beyond the skin depth at HDMI frequencies, and the improved ground reference benefits every conductor that relies on it. Moving up to the Vodka 48 continues the progression with even higher silver content and additional noise-dissipation refinements beyond Level 3. The Carbon 48 occupies a position in the range where the noise-dissipation system has reached its most complete form within the standard shielding architecture, and the conductor quality has moved decisively beyond the entry tiers — making it a strong choice for systems where the source components and display are capable of revealing the difference.

Specifications

weight:

0.00

Brand:

AudioQuest

Colour:

Black