AudioQuest Evergreen 3.5mm Mini to 3.5mm Mini Cable - 3m (9 ft 10 in) Single

AudioQuest Evergreen — 3.5mm Mini to 3.5mm Mini Analogue Interconnect

The Evergreen 3.5mm Mini to 3.5mm Mini is the headphone-jack variant of AudioQuest's Evergreen analogue interconnect, part of the Bridges & Falls series. It sits in the same position within the range as the RCA-terminated Evergreen — above the Tower and below the Golden Gate — and uses identical internal construction: solid Long-Grain Copper (LGC) conductors, Asymmetrical Double-Balanced geometry, foamed-polyethylene insulation, and Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation. The only difference is the termination: a gold-plated 3.5mm stereo mini plug at each end, designed to connect any two devices with a standard 3.5mm headphone or auxiliary socket.

Why a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm Cable Matters

The 3.5mm stereo jack is the most common analogue audio connection on portable and desktop devices — laptops, tablets, smartphones with headphone outputs, portable DACs, powered desktop speakers, headphone amplifiers, car auxiliary inputs, and zone amplifiers with mini-jack inputs. In most cases, the cable supplied with the equipment (if one is supplied at all) uses stranded copper of unspecified purity, generic PVC insulation, and a simple braided shield that drains captured interference directly to the ground plane. The Evergreen replaces every element of that signal path with AudioQuest's entry-level audiophile-grade construction, applying the same design philosophy used in their RCA interconnects to a connector format that is often overlooked by cable manufacturers.

The most immediately relevant use case is connecting a portable DAC — such as AudioQuest's own DragonFly — to a headphone amplifier, powered speakers, or an amplifier's auxiliary input. The DragonFly's 3.5mm output carries the full quality of its ESS Sabre DAC conversion, and the cable between that output and the next device in the chain is the only analogue link in the signal path. A generic cable at this point undoes much of what the DAC achieves. The Evergreen is also the natural choice for connecting a laptop or phone headphone output to powered desktop speakers, linking two portable devices, or running a 3.5mm output to a car or kitchen-zone amplifier's auxiliary input — any application where both source and destination use 3.5mm sockets rather than RCA.

Solid Long-Grain Copper Conductors

The conductors are solid Long-Grain Copper — not stranded. In stranded cables, the individual thin wires making up each conductor are in constant physical and electrical contact with each other, and as the audio signal passes through, electrical and magnetic interactions between those strands create distortion. This strand-interaction distortion is one of the largest sources of signal degradation in conventional cables, and eliminating it by using a solid conductor is a fundamental design decision that AudioQuest applies across every tier of their interconnect range. The copper itself is Long-Grain — meaning it has fewer grain boundaries, fewer oxide inclusions, and fewer impurities than standard OFHC (Oxygen-Free High-Conductivity) copper. Surface quality is particularly critical because a conductor acts as a rail guide for the electric fields within it and the magnetic fields around it — at all frequencies, the conductor surface carries the full current density, so surface purity directly defines the conductor's overall performance.

The step up to the Golden Gate 3.5mm Mini to Mini above brings a move from LGC to AudioQuest's higher-purity Perfect-Surface Copper (PSC), where proprietary processing keeps the conductor surface as smooth and oxide-free as possible throughout manufacture. Above that, the Big Sur 3.5mm Mini to Mini introduces PSC+ copper and upgrades to gold-plated Purple Copper terminations.

Insulation, Shielding, and Noise-Dissipation

The insulation on both conductors is foamed polyethylene — nitrogen-injected to maximise air content. Any insulation material adjacent to a conductor absorbs energy from the signal's electromagnetic field, stores it, and releases it out of time with the original signal, creating a smearing effect that degrades detail and imaging. Because air absorbs almost no energy and polyethylene itself is a low-loss material with a benign distortion profile, the air-filled foam version is one of the least intrusive dielectric options available.

AudioQuest's Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation System provides 100% shield coverage while addressing a specific and often misunderstood problem with conventional shielding. Most cable shields capture incoming radio-frequency interference effectively, but then drain that captured energy straight to the equipment's ground plane, modulating the ground reference and introducing noise into the signal path. The NDS acts as a secondary barrier that absorbs and reflects most of the captured RFI before it reaches the ground-connected shield layer, preventing this ground-plane contamination. All internal conductors are direction-controlled — oriented during manufacture so that RF noise propagation is directed in the optimal direction, indicated by arrows printed on the cable jacket.

Geometry

The Evergreen uses AudioQuest's Asymmetrical Double-Balanced geometry, purpose-designed for single-ended (unbalanced) applications. In many competing cables, a single conductor path handles both the ground and the shield — meaning the shield is forced into double duty as an audio conductor, which compromises both its shielding effectiveness and its signal-carrying quality. The Double-Balanced design separates these functions entirely, with dedicated signal and ground conductors and a separate shield that handles only noise rejection. The asymmetric element of the geometry delivers lower impedance on the ground path, which contributes to a richer, more dynamic presentation.

Terminations

The 3.5mm stereo mini plugs are gold-plated and cold-welded. AudioQuest's cold-weld system uses high pressure to create the bond between conductor and plug, avoiding the introduction of heat (which can alter the crystalline structure of the copper at the termination point) and solder (which is itself a relatively poor conductor that creates an impedance discontinuity at the joint). The gold plating prevents oxidation at the contact surface, maintaining consistent electrical performance over time — particularly important on 3.5mm plugs, which are inserted and removed far more frequently than RCA connectors in typical use and are therefore more susceptible to contact degradation.

Build and Practical Considerations

The cable is finished in the Evergreen's signature green-on-black nylon braid jacket, which is more resistant to kinking and abrasion than PVC and provides a refined, flexible feel that is well suited to portable and desktop use where the cable may be coiled, packed, and redeployed regularly. The nylon braid does not carry a CL3/FT4 in-wall rating — the Tower 3.5mm Mini to Mini is the appropriate choice within the Bridges & Falls series where building codes require in-wall-rated cable.

The Evergreen 3.5mm Mini to Mini is available in ten lengths from 0.6m to 20m, covering everything from a short connection between a DAC and a headphone amplifier on a desktop to a long run across a room to a zone amplifier or powered speaker. For connections where one end is a 3.5mm device and the other uses RCA inputs, AudioQuest offers the Evergreen 3.5mm Mini to RCA variant with identical internal construction.

Specifications