 "High Fidelity OnLine" has a special arrangement with the company Oyaide (full name: OYAIDE ELEC.,co.,Inc.). At least it seems so to me, though I do not know, how this arrangement should look like. In the time of "arrangement-mania" such a favor from a distant, large company like Oyaide, given to any kind of a magazine, and even more to one, that publishes in an absolutely exotic language (Polish) must call for reflection and animate for action. When I asked Satoru Murayama, the chief of Oyaide, exactly that question, having written a dissertation with tons of questions first, wrote just one short sentence: "It is worth it". This short statement provided us with products for testing in the coming months. Thus when some time after publication of the OR-800 Advanced speaker cable review one of our readers asked: "Why are you testing next cables of a company completely unknown in Poland, even without a distribution network?" I knew what to answer: "It is worth it!". While getting acquainted with further products of this Japanese company, we have the opportunity to touch the mainstream of audio in the world, which means in practice US, UK, Germany and Japan. The world's audio market is situated there (with an emphasis on the US), and in this market products of Oyaide slowly, but surely, conquer the hearts of reviewers and audiophiles. In this test we present two newest products of the company, so new that they are not even on the web page of the US distributor of Oyaide: interconnect PA-02 TR and the Tunami Nigo speaker cable. Both were designed based on conductors (wires) co-developed with another known Japanese company Furukawa Electric, named PCOCC. Shortly, the whole cable is built from a single, long crystal - what is achieved by a long process of heating and cooling of a copper wire. This technology is based on an idea of how to obtain single crystals proposed by Professor Ohno. Oyaide went a step further - additional heat treatment is applied, and the conductors are polished until each wire has a mirror-like surface. Those cables were named PCOCC-A (A=Advanced). LISTENING EXPERIENCE PA-02 TR )
I started the test with the interconnect. As usual, for reference (in a kind of absolute scale) I used Veluma cables, so bear in mind, that my remarks are not made versus a given price range but versus the reference. In such comparison PA-02 stands very well. The sound of the Japanese interconnect seems lighter, more polished (I might have got influenced by the polishing of the wires' surface). Orchestra fill-ins in "Te Quiero Dijiste" of Nat "King" Cole, from his Spanish record "Perfidia" (Grandma, GM310, CD) sounded a little softer and were always more behind Cole's voice than presented by the direct sounding Velum. That is the "sound" of the Japanese interconnect: ultra-coherent, smooth, fluid, with a perfectly kept tonal balance and a fantastic feel for the whole music, and by this slightly "polished", with no grain in the background, the something, that makes air between the players resemble a cloth, something structured, etc. Here the background was perfectly smooth, silky, just like a Japanese kimono. The attack of the instruments is slightly rounded and subdued to the whole. It might seem, that the sound is slightly warmed. One might have some justification for this statement. It is probably due to such modeling of dynamics but not colorizing of the sound, the latter is something that the PA-02, though it has congenital silkiness, fears like fire. Indeed, the voice of Cole had a wealthy palette of harmonics, was shapeable, had all the signs of a good tube amp, but had no tuned low frequencies, it was not pushed in front of the loudspeakers, etc - in general the midrange was not a privileged realm. )
After such introduction I was curious, how the upper and lower ranges will behave, ranges that are not really present on Cole's recording. So I put "These Rooms" of Jim Hall Trio into the player, ingeniously recorded by Japanese magicians from Denon (CY-30002, CD) for 100% (without add-on recordings) directly to two tracks. The treble of the piece "Cross Court" might be treated as reference for other records. From the first note with Oyaide one could hear a beautiful palette of timbres. My previous observation about timbres was confirmed: without any warming, the upper range was crisp, but also sweet, resembling the kind of sound that the BAT VK-50SE preamplifier or the LINN CD12 player deliver (both devices no longer in production). It is something like taking extra care of the details, carefully cleaning them with a soft cloth, so that they do not cover with patina, something that can be heard in many other cables as grain. A "test" of the lower range on this recording is the intro to the piece "Bimini" - contrabass solo. Here the history starts repeating itself, confirming some kind of consistency, consequence in sounding: we hear lots of details, they are not masked or erased in the name of larger stages, no fragment of the sound range is privileged or laid back, but in comparison with the Velum, contrabass is a bit softer, has a more "human" character, in the sense of going in the direction of leisurely spending time and not necessarily in the direction of absolute truth. Its timbre and dynamics though, are outstanding. Bass would not go down as low as the reference, but this was not perceived physically, but as some kind of shift of attention to the higher ranges of the sound. On this record I heard something, that was then fully exposed on a superbly mastered CD, not only for a rock recording, but in general (but shouldn't a recording made in a studio named High End Audio sound like that...?) of the Polish group Coma - "Zaprzepaszczone siły..." (Sony&BMG 85298, CD). Completeness. Stages far into the back. Instruments touchable, with a very good electric guitar. All this will make all people, that like to listen to rougher music, will fall in love with this cable from the very beginning (because all audiophiles are deep inside their souls - even when they do not admit this - fetishists). TUNAMI NIGO )
For sure there is something like "Oyaide sound". The previously reviewed cable Straight Line SL75R (test HERE), the OR-800 Advanced (test HERE) and even the loudspeaker cable TUNAMI GPX (test HERE) are in clear connection to the newest cables. The main highlights of this kind of presentation are smoothness, silkiness, high amount of details and a very good tonal balance. But from that time everything has gone forward! The use of PCOCC-A copper was a gigantic leap forward. Tunami Nigo speaker cable, keeping all the mentioned features, adds much better insight into the recording and better attack. Especially the last feature is exciting, in conjunction with the silkiness of timbre it creates outstanding effects. In the voice of Piotr Rogucki, the vocalist of Coma, it is immediately audible, that there is more treble than with the interconnect, but without any sharpening, just the whole tonal balance is placed slightly higher. The bass drum sound was very good - it had a strong, dynamic character that together with thorough bass made the recording have tempo and vigor. Again the upper treble had a "sweet", golden character. There was more of it than by the PA-02 TR, which, compared to the Nigo, seemed somewhat softened. The electric guitar sounded very nice - you could hear the distortion common to the B-class, widely used in the guitar amps, meaning slight harshness of the higher midrange and softness of the lower midrange. In addition to all this the Oyaide transfers very high amount of information - both at the lower and higher end of the sound spectrum. Compared to the Velum you could think, that the sound is more attractive and fuller. Longer listening showed, that the Polish cable gives more information, in a more quiet, more emotionless (meaning more neutral) way, what, on the other hand, did not interfere in being impressed by the fantastic sound of the Oyaide. )
Both cables are exceptionally good in their price class. They combine seemingly antagonistic features like smoothness, silkiness, details, and dynamics. Both are suitable for long-term listening sessions, because they do not fatigue the ears with anything. Velum shows that it can be done better, in places even much better, but it is money that can give us the improvement. Tunami Nigo shows the something, that makes us not wanting to unplug the Japanese from the system, even knowing that the Velum speaker cable is better. I say even more - in systems that are not top of the line, but already hi-end, Oyaide may sound better than Velum, which is merciless for errors in the sound path, even the small ones. It is an example that a complete system must be balanced, that you have to take care of it's every element, and better does not always mean "better". BUDOWA In both Oyaide cables materials conform to the EU directive RoHS were used, which implies minimizing of use of harmful materials, like for example lead or halogens. The interconnect is semi-balanced, in the RCA version the shield is connected to the ground wire on one end, and the signal flows in two identical wires inside. The outside coat was prepared by the company Furukawa, just like the material for the conductors. It is PCOCC-A copper, a single long crystal OFC, with polished surface. The cables are made of tightly wound wires - every effort was made to eliminate empty spaces between them. The isolation is made from foamed polypropylene. The cable has 120 Ohm native impedance, so it can be used for transmitting digital AES/EBU signal (PA-02 is available confectioned annotated as TR - 'terminated' - or from spool). The plugs are manufactured by Oyaide and although they look quite common - they plug in and out splendidly. The loudspeaker cable Tunami Nigo has a similar structure, meaning it has a shield and two internal conductors, but it has a much larger diameter. Two things contribute to this: larger diameter of the conductors and large amount of isolation material, which is also acting like a dampener, diminishing vibrations. The isolation materials is made from polyethylene, laid under high pressure, in a process developed by Oyaide, filling all empty spaces. Besides outer foil made from PCOCC-A a third conductor is added, running between the isolation layers, with the purpose of neutralizing the loads that can exist between the layers. The cable is outfitted with Oyaide SPYT spades, made from polished OFC copper, covered with thick layer of silver and palladium on the outside.
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