⌈ Magnesium (Mg), chemical element, one of the alkaline-earth metals of Group 2 (IIa) of the periodic table, and the lightest structural metal. […] Because of its low density (only two-thirds that of aluminum), it has found extensive use in the aerospace industry. However, because the pure metal has low structural strength, magnesium is mainly used in the form of alloys—principally with 10 percent or less of aluminum, zinc, and manganese—to improve its hardness, tensile strength, and ability to be cast, welded, and machined. Source: ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA | www.britannica.com; accessed: 13.07.2020 ⌋

he Japanese company Tiglon is one of those manufacturers that I have known for years, but only from pictures and their captions from the "Stereo Sound" magazine. It was established in 2008 so it is very young considering the country of origins tradition and it is managed by Mr. Kentaro Okino. Initially, it was called Kryna Pro, and changed it to TiGLON in 2010 (note - not to be confused with Kryna, also a cable manufacturer, which was founded in 1980). It is a typical Japanese company with high technical culture, run by fans of a good sound, but so far it has been focusing on the domestic market. While this is slowly changing, their website is still available only in Japanese.

| A few simple words regarding…

KENTARO OKINO
Owner, constructor

Date of birth: Aug. 3rd 1975
Hometown: Kagawa prefecture
Education: Tadotsu technical high school mechanical engineering course, Kagawa, Japan
Hobby: driving, traveling, musical instrument collection

Carrier: I have been interested in listening music and audio equipment since I was little inspired by my father. After my graduation from high school, started working at my uncle's audio shop. I mainly tuned up customers' musical instruments, audio components and accessories.

I got more interests to original sound of each material through the electrical tuning up of the luxury vintage guitar, 1959 Les Paul. Then, found the potential of magnesium through the study of sounds made by various metals and woods. After that, I launched the in-house venture "KRYPTON PROFESSIONAL", and expanded the business of audio accessories and cables using magnesium across the country. Later I gained international patented technology "Magnesium Shielding", which leads me here, to the current company called TiGLON.” KO

| TiGLON

The basis of a good story is something of a "plot", which often takes the form of a founding myth. Because in every specialist industry, based on emotions - and there are a lot of them in audio - this works particularly strongly. In almost every article on a history of a given company, including those written by me, you will find a description of such a myth, even if its authors do not know what they are dealing with. This is where all well-written PR and press materials begin.

Such a founding myth may be the story of how the boss of the company worked at night on the kitchen table until he put together his first amplifier, which amazed the world. Or it could be a story of how a skilled engineer accidentally stumbled upon something that later turned out to be the key to success. Finally, these may be technical aspects that the company turns into its hallmark. Either way is OK, each has an important role to play, and is a part of a larger audio story.

| Magnesium

TiGLON seems to have taken the "technical" path. In the press materials I received, the most attention was devoted to their use of MAGNESIUM. Magnesium (Mg) is a chemical element with atomic number 12, belonging to the 2nd (IIA) group of the periodic table (group of alkaline earths). It was first obtained in 1808 by Humpry Davy, but was heavily contaminated. It was obtained in its pure form only in 1830.

As we read on the website www.naukowiec.org, magnesium is mainly used as a component of light alloys used by the aviation industry, as well as a material for the construction of nuclear reactors. It is also used to make signaling rockets and in photographic technologies. The addition of magnesium to steel increases its hardness and abrasion resistance. The metallic magnesium is used in metallurgy (metal and alloy casting) as a deoxidizer.

Usage | TiGLON already in 2005 proposed speaker stands utilizing magnesium, the MGT-60S model. In 2008, they patented the use of this material for cables’ shielding. The shield was prepared in the form of a special foil with vaporized metal. The company pointed out that magnesium is excellent at reducing vibration, shielding against electromagnetic interference and RF noise. Moreover: "Unlike aluminum and copper, magnesium is non-resonant, so there is no metallic 'ringing' that accompanies other metals." This claim is supported by measurements provided by the Japan Electric Cable Technology Center (JECTEC).

In 2010, the first equipment rack with magnesium alloy feet was developed, and then anti-vibration feet and a whole range of cables - interconnects, speaker cables and power cables - joined the lineup.

| TPL-2000A

The TPL-2000A is an AC power cord and the company's newest product launched this year. However, it has already won an important award of the Japanese magazine "Audio Accessory" (you can find an interview with the editor, Mr. Yosuke Asada HERE http://highfidelity.pl/@main-834&lang=en ).

There are four elements of this cable’s design worth noticing:

• magnesium foil screen,
• conductors made of DP-OFC copper,
• processing of the conductor in the Hyper Saturated Energizer process,
• Furutech NFC plugs.

This is the reference power cord from this Japanese manufacturer, hence so much attention has been paid to each of its components. From the outside, it looks nice, but completely normal. It is a cable of medium diameter with a gray mesh jacket, and next to the connectors you can see some thickenings on the cables ends, closed in black heat-shrinkable sleeves - these are magnesium filters. As we read, it is a "second generation" PMF mkII filter ".

⸤ TiGLON TPL-2000A CROSSSECTION | drawing by TiGLON

In the drawing showing the cable’s cross-section, attention is drawn to the original workmanship as well as the complex structure. The core consists of three strands of copper wire. Each of them is made of DP-OFC wires with a diameter of 0.18 mm each. They are insulated with one of the PVC types and mechanically stabilized PVC with slightly different properties.

Now comes the shielding, the first of the two. It is made of two layers of copper tape wound in opposite directions. The screen is mechanically stabilized with another PVC layer. And now the most important part: another screen is wound around it, also made of tape, but this time it’s a magnesium tape, 100 μm thick. There are two more layers of PVC on it, with different composition, and a mesh sleeve on the outside.

Hyper Saturated Energizer | We have already talked about magnesium as a shield, so let's say a few words about the conductors. These are copper wires, subjected to a special process called Hyper Saturated Energizer, jointly developed by TiGLON and, as it reads, "a group of cable engineers from Europe, the United States and Asia".

We are already used to cryogenic processing, which consists of quickly cooling the metal to the temperature close to absolute zero, and then slowly heating it up. It is used as a standard process by many cable companies around the world - although Japan is its center. This process is designed to organize the crystal structure of the metal.

Hyper Saturated Energizer process produces a similar effect, although it relies on something else. A DC current is passed through a wires bundle at an intensity that allows it to saturate it and a special amplitude modulation optimized for the specific application is applied to it. This is not the end of the process, because by appropriate application of heat to the metal in this process, the mechanical stresses of the insulation and the shielding layer around the conductor are eliminated.

Among the effects of this treatment TiGLON lists:
|1| thermal decomposition and removal of oxide layers at the grain edges, bringing polycrystalline copper’s structure closer to long-crystalline copper’s,
|2| reducing the internal mechanical stress of the cable, making the entire cable physically softer and much more flexible.

DP-OFC | TiGLON cables are made of copper called DP-OFC. This abbreviation stands for Oxygen Free Copper (OFC) obtained by a process called DIP Forming Process. It is copper with a formal purity of 99.99%, patented by the American company General Electric. In the mid-1970s, it was licensed to Japanese SHOWA Electric Wire And Cable Co., Ltd., a separate division of Tokyo Electric Company (today: Toshiba Corporation). The process consists of producing a thin wire and passing it through a trough filled with molten copper. After the thick core is formed, it is then hot rolled. For example, Belden cables were produced in this way.

Plugs | And finally the plugs - this is the top model from Furutech, which can also be found in the Siltech Triple Crown Power power cable costing PLN 60,000. The model used in the Tiglon was launched in 2017 and immediately found application in the best power cables on the market. Not all manufacturers are their supporters because they do have a characteristic sound signature, but most of them seem to have a similar opinion on this matter as I do - they are one of the best power plugs.

Their body is made of chrome-plated brass and features a characteristic silver braid. The contact elements are rhodium plated. The most important, however, is the material from which the black elements are made in which the contacts are mounted in. It is a blend called: Nano Crystal²-Nano Crystallin Formula NCF, consisting of carbon dust and NCF ceramic nanoparticles. It is a new crystallized material that actively generates negative ions to eliminate electrostatic charges and converts thermal energy into infrared one.

As the manufacturer says: "there is nothing mysterious about the way these crystals work - they just improve the sound quality in a very tangible and measurable way." Furutech achieved this by combining these crystals with ceramic nanoparticles and carbon powder to obtain a piezoelectric effect which provides even better damping properties. It didn't happen overnight - this material is the culmination of 30 years of constant and consistent research.

The cable comes in a simple cardboard box and is available in three lengths: 1.2 m, 1.8 m and custom lengths. We tested the 1.8m version.

| SOUND

How did we listen to it | The AC TiGLON TPL-2000A power cable was listened to in the "High Fidelity" reference system, supplying the Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition SACD player (№ 1/50) in the A / B / A comparative test. The point of reference were two other, much more expensive power cables: Siltech Triple Crown Power and Acrolink 8N-PC8100 Performante Nero Edizione (№ 1/15). All cables were plugged into the Acoustic Revive RTP-4EU Absolute power strip, placed on the Acoustic Revive RST-38H anti-vibration platform.

The differences in the sonic performance between power cables are a thing that has been repeatedly tested and confirmed. Nevertheless, a large part of engineers, and the best cabling companies employ top engineers, both metallurgists, electronics and electricians, in private conversations with me, confirm an interesting fact: they do not know how to combine the audible results with taken measurements. At least not everything and not directly. This frustrates them mercilessly, because they are technicians, often scientists, and the lack of confirmation in "hard facts" is an insult to them.

Nevertheless, they keep trying, changing techniques, materials and topologies, obtaining different performances. With the right experience, they can mostly control the final sonic effect, and when trying to come up with something better, they do not rely on luck, but try to improve those elements that they have previously repeatedly examined and know what they do. For me, these are real engineers and scientists - people who are trying to understand why something IS there, and not trying to prove that something ISN'T there because they don't have the right explanations at hand.

It works similar in our world, the audiophile world. I cannot understand those who thoughtlessly, based on the news limited to general knowledge, try to disavow things that have been known to work in audio for years, that have been repeatedly checked and confirmed. It's either opportunism or stupidity. Most often - both. Equally often, it's just about having something to say.

Listening to the TiGLON cable, however, I found something akin to understanding. Not because I didn't hear the differences between it and the reference cables, because they were clear and repeatable, but because I realized that these were differences of a different type, of a different class - if I can say so - than the differences between the loudspeakers and amplifiers, phono cartridges etc.

If we assume that what distinguishes from each other - for example - loudspeakers is the "main class", then listening to them could be compared to a choice between boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, boiled unpeeled potatoes, baked potatoes and French fries. The difference is clear and noticeable to everyone because it is something completely basic.

But we know that if we want to eat good boiled potatoes, we have to choose the right species of potatoes, buy potatoes that have been properly grown and then stored. Everyone who has been to the potatoes harvest sites at least once knows that all potatoes are not the same, neither are the sellers. Talking about such differences, we would be one level down, with an even more basic choice, in "entry level". We would be much closer to what AC power cables change in sound.

| Our albums

⸤ Mayo Nakano Piano Trio
MIWAKU

Briphonic BRPN-7007GL
Extreme Hard Glass CD-R (2017)

The Briphonic company, the publisher of the MIWAKU album, are crazy - there is no other name for them. They took the process of recording and mixing sound to the extreme, which is also reflected in the way discs are released. They offer CDs made in a pressing plant, as well as CD-R and Gold CD-R discs burned in a mastering studio. The differences between them are distinct, clear and repeatable. You can hear that the closer to the signal source, that is analog tape or digital file, the better the sound.

Low-circulation releases, and this is what we are dealing with, mean that the discs are expensive. But that's not all - Briphonic offers the Hard Glass CD-R version, in which we have glass disc instead of plastic one, and which costs around PLN 6,000! But its sound is just insane. Whenever I played it to someone, be it at a KTS meeting or at home, the audience didn't know what to say, they didn't know how it was possible at all. This is one of the best albums to show how a piano recorded without compression can sound in a natural acoustic environment. All you need is a deep pocket ... ♦

The TiGLON compared to the cables from Acrolink and Siltech did not change the performance of my system tonally enough to call it a revolution. There were some changes, I will get to them in a moment, but we will get a much more important ones by replacing the speakers. Because the differences I am talking about go deeper into the sound and are ultimately more important than the general global ones - that is ones perceived between different loudspeakers (or how potatoes are made).

The Japanese cable that we are testing this time sounds incredibly sonorous. It is not brighter than the Siltech, but it has bright, smooth, "golden" high tones, which make the sound open on the one hand and calm on the other (of course, it is about signal modifications that result in such changes, but I will use this simplifications). The next albums that I listened to with it showed brilliantly conveyed sound of cymbals, strings, and guitars.

It was a kind of "field densification" with a strong sound attack. The latter is a feature that is as important for this cable as the well-presented treble. This distinguishes TiGLON from Siltech and brings it closer to the Acrolink. It is interesting, because the stereotype is that the silver cables sound brighter and harder, and the copper cables sound the other way around. This is a significant understatement, or simply nonsense. Such thinking is the result of listening to bad cables, and not “silver” cables.

Anyway, the TPL-2000A offers a beautiful, resonant treble, with calmness and fast attack, but also the rest of the sound spectrum seems quite agile. Also the midrange. But, again, it's not a hard, contouring sound. I heard something like a synthesis of calm and agile sonic qualities. In the Welcome To The Machine, a Pink Floyd track from the Wish You Were Here album, I heard a full, dense sound, a mood built by synthesizers, and in the next track from this album, the Have A Cigar guitars created the whole "drive" of this track.

The bass of this cable is slightly tuned up. In the sense that it does not go as low as with the reference ones, and its mid-range has a stronger "slam". Perhaps this is why the whole seems calm and energetic at the same time - the midrange and treble build the „calmness”, and the bass energizes the presentation. You will not get bored with this cable, but its sound will not be too intrusive - neither with the amount of details nor with aggression. I would even say that this is a presentation lying on the soft side of the light, on its "sympathetic" or "co-sympathetic" side - with us, with the listener.

TiGLON imaging is closer to what can be found at these price levels with Acrolink or Nordost cables. The soundstage is not very big, so further layers, such as the vocals of Sinatra and Waters, placed a bit further in the mix, will be nice, clear, but slightly smaller than with more expensive cables. In turn, the foreground will be placed quite close to us. It is also a characteristic feature of TiGLON - when on the Takeshi Inomata album entitled Dialogue the kick drum strikes, it is big, dense and powerful, but most of all - close to us. That is why with this cable we get a perspective - a very good depth - and a nice, well-arranged space.

| Summary

TiGLON TPL-2000A is a cable that never gets boring. It offers features known from very expensive products, from above its price category, which makes its sound refined and organized. What places it in its own price range is the not quite reference level resolution. Although, let me add, the vocal that accompanies the leading one in the Welcome To The Machine shifted down by an octave was clear and you didn't have to focus on it to hear its own characteristics.

The treble is most impressive with this power cable. On the one hand, it is velvety, soft, and on the other, clear and strong. This is followed by the midrange, which has a center of gravity set higher than with the Siltech and Acrolink, but still on the right side of the line dividing the “light” and “dark” sound. This is why its sound is open and clear. And finally the bass - strong, full, a bit “forward”, though without a full extension and some exceptional control. All this results in an attractive and sophisticated presentation that will not allow you to get bored after listening to several albums in a row. ■