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We have cable, power conditioner, socket, plug, tube, disc.
Has anyone heard cryo a whole tube amp, cap, chip, resistor etc?
Follow Ups:
I just ran into this thread after posting a followup on a thread I started on cryoing components. I think my reply would be of some interest here. And while I'm at it, I'd like to personally thank Moray James for his supportive reply's in my thread.Regards, Robin
Yes: I have cryo treated whole amplifiers, preamps, D/A convertors as well as transports and laser assemblys, CD's and DVD's. Once you get into this you find there is no way to stop. Wall duplexes, fuses, breakers you name it. Have not done lamps for projectors but would assume longer life if done. Give it a try and see what you think. Haver also treated ribbon foil (4.3 micron) as well as ESL diaphragm mylar. The list just goes on and on. Best regards Moray James.
Whole amps & DAC's?I have to admit, I've wondered about it, but after hearing from Terry Cain (Cain & Cain) about the failure rate of speaker drivers - I dropped that thought.
**Granted, he said those that do survive the process are far superior. But, the cost!***
BTW, Moray - I recently bought a John Wright fully modd'd(+power supply upgrade) Museatex Bitsream and Melior CD-D transport. He recommends your digital cable as the best choice, so I am working up the courage/money to invest in one.
Not kidding! Terry had some troubles with Fostex drivers as they use a urethane adhesive which contracts itself off of the magnet parts if done too quickly. Have talked to Terry about his drivers but not sure what rates his treater is using. Cryo treatment decent/assent of one degree per minute or slower is the trick to success. The caps in your bitstream were probably cryo treated (by me). You should also try one of my power cords with the bitstream as that's what John uses as a reference and the improvement is not small.
When did John rebuild you melior for you? Look forward to hearing back from you. Best regards Moray James.
I actually bought it from someone else whose was upgrading to a mega-buck DAC. But, John remembered doing the unit recently with all the available upgrades - Black Gates caps, Cardas RCA jacks, etc.A month later, I bought the matching Melior CD-D transport, but it is an early version and needs to have the C-lock T jitter reduction circuit upgrade done. Although, it functions flawlessly and sounds fantastic with the Data II Bitstream.
Terry had some troubles with Fostex drivers as they use a urethane adhesive which contracts itself off of the magnet parts if done too quickly.
That 6Moons article that someone provided in this thread did a great job of explaining the process in depth and specifically mentioned the potential problem with adhesives and speaker drivers.
I wonder how my entire Bitstream would do with cryo teatment?
Not that I'd risk it because there are so few remaining and it already sounds great. But, it is tempting.
Another potential cryo target are my S&B TX-102 mkIII transformer volume controls, seiden switches, etc.
You should also try one of my power cords with the bitstream as that's what John uses as a reference and the improvement is not small.
Funny that you should mention this, I was just looking at those PC's(dac & transport) yesterday and thinking "I bet I could do better". But, all that has to wait until after I get done with room treatments and an equipment rack.
Send me a PM and we can discuss your bit box further. Regards Moray James.
nt
Check out the interview cited below found on Positive-Feedback. This is one or two interviews with two different pioneers in the cryo application for audio components. According to this gentleman, any component can be treated.
Thank's for the forward, I just skimmed it, and I'll read it in detail when I get time.
The first thing that strikes me however is that Dick Goesinya or whatever his name is either the owner or a principle in Cryogenics International which (last time I checked) means that since this individual profits from this process (doubtless quite handsomely) would tend to make his opinions and assertions somewhat less than highly compelling, no ? as in "follow the money trail"
They've forgotten to cryogenically treat the listener, I think we should petition the utlities to Cryo the whole damn grid ;-)Not looking to get flammed, but my understanding of actual "Real" cryogenic treatment involves a heating process followed by the deep freeze which with certain steel alloys will cause carbide
to migrate to the surface and provide a dramatic increase in wear and service life for rifle barrels and camshafts cranks etc.The reason for the heating aspect is the provision for stress relief as an added benefit, however only certain alloys benefit.
What little I know about Cryogenic treatment I learned from a close friend (Mike Rock) who is a Mechanical engineer with a PHD in metallurgy.Little,if any audio gear IC's etc. could possibly survive actual Cryogenic treatment intact and even if it could I can't see how any benefit would be derived.
Is this some sort of mass delusional neurosis deal, wishful thinking or what ? an offshoot or further collective patholologic aspect or feature of Audiophillia Nervosa ?
Seriously I'm quite curious ?
And here's something I'm sure some of you will eventually need ;-)
Regards FredJ
I have cryoed tons of stuff over the years, a few things have broken where plastics have shrunk around metals, but never, ever had a IC fail due to cryo. This was vapor cryo... full immersion cryo may be different... have cryod tubes, power cords, circuit boards, transformers, loose capacitors, ever the Superclock III in my SCD-1... no problem.
What improvement in a cryo treated IC, in your SCD-1?
OTOH, I've never cracked an IC with vapor cryo.... I performed several tweaks to the Superclock chip, all of them probably had a cumulative improvement. My general, typical experience is a reduction in whiteness, sort of like a smokiness or pall settles and the tone is better, clearer... I think this is especially true with semiconductors because the dopant atoms probably find a more ordered, regular placement in the silicon or whatever substrate. The opposite happens when semiconductors are exposed to high levels of ionizing radiation, the dopant atoms are forced out of position and lose their proper function... a big problem if you're designing exploratory satellites to orbit Saturn or Jupiter, for example. It does illustrate that dopants are mobile. When a chip is made it is unlikely that the dopant is applied in perfect uniformity. The supercooling process allows the crystalline structure to settle into its most highly ordered state. So micro interal boundaries would tend to resolve. Sort of like the "self healing" property that some crystals, like quartz exhibit.... as far as the SCD-1 is concerned, the timing sounds super stable and super tight, like all the ambiguities were removed... it made the Superclock II sound damned crude (had a II, pulled it out and switched with a III)... so you get some idea of what the stock P.O.S. clock sounded like.... if I had the right chip extractor it would be interesting to hear what this does to a Tripath chip
I've put CDs in the freezer for 72 hrs and bought up to temperature in the fridge and final warm up in the room before playing.Found it helped with most of my Discs.For a free tweak try it!Tried a cable an interconnect,gave it the same treatment and have to say I didn't notice a change.I havn't tried a piece of hi-fi yet,not got the patience and besides my freezer is always loaded with food for the kids.Its not exactly Cryo treament but worth it for curiosity.Especially if you know the Disc well.
MikeI would think it best not to expose your CD's to the faux Cryo
treatment as I believe it's been well established that the thin layer of aluminum mitten der little binary information under the polycarbonate are prone to degradation over time, it's called CD
rot, and I'm virtually certain that by freezing and then thawing them
you will be hastening their eventual demise to one degree or another
I'd imagine all of our CD's used in cars in the northern hemisphere
get "Cryoed" inadvertantly.
I learned in my statistics and probabilities course in college
that hominids are exceedingly prone to perceptual alteration by simple suggestion, in a series of interesting double blind tests
our Professor set up.
Over the past 3 years I've become re-involved with analog/Vinyl
and tube electronics and have learned that with small changes in arm damping VTA,VTF, correct azimuth and various DIY Isolation strategies
and tube rolling I can achiieve a great deal of "Real" sonic improvement and it's a superb diversion from my often rather Kafkaesque tawdry existance, I find digital anti climatic as hell
plop the shiny corpodisc in the drawer and hit play, "Where's the Beef ?" ;-)
Analog seems to satisfy those entirely human needs to be involved
on a personal basis, where I'd imagine a great deal of the
cray audiophile BS/Delusion and snake oil comes from in the first place.
Are you old enough to remember Enid Lumley ? Is it better to use East west or North/South electrical outlets ? ;-)
Which electrons are more condicive to better sound those generated hydroelectrically, from burning Coal or Nuc ? etc. Veritable insanity
maybe thousands... there's a bunch of rolling cabinets filled with them. Never had CD rot, not on one so far, and they do sound more clear and open... makes sense, they're destressed and there's less uneven diffraction. You ca see this if you take a sheet of polarizing film, tape it over a lamp, the take another piece of polarizing film and look at the CD through it, rotate the pola film and you will see a bunch of strange fabrication stresses where the polycarboate or whatever resin was injected under extreme pressure. A double cryo run will visibly reduce these stress veins. Somebody should take a pic and put it in one of the audio 'zines.
Haven't had a problem yet with freezing CD's and DVD's (been doing it for over three years now). You're right, though, cryoing came about when Scandinavian blade makers noticed that blades made and left outdoors in winter held a better edge....
Fact is that for the vast majority we allow our rational side to dominate everyday life. The human body as a sensor, especially if trained to do so, can resolve far more differences than a room full of test gear. Trouble is, when you try to reduce it to math, often times you find the scale of human resolution to be astonishingly small, to the point where you may be counting zeros after the decimal point. Just one case in point: the best human noses (the perfume sniffers) can detect one part per trillion as determined by spectrographic analysis. What if some humans can match this kind of sensitivity on the aural scale?
Certainly food for thought.
Stu- Thank you for your well thought out response and I am aware
of that side of things I was the Univ. of Wi. Kendo Sensei for a few years and ended up making some wonderful Gen X friends, one of whom Perry is a brilliant EE and one Saturday morning as we were listening to Pink Floyd and drinking coffee, I mentioned that I'd built my first DIY IC's and speaker cables (both were the Jon Risch
Beldon 89259 recipe the basic ones)Perry said that was nice and that doubtless kept me off the streets and out of trouble, but he hoped I didn't actually take any of that stuff seriously, and proceeded to expound at length and in great tedious detail ;-) how the differences
would require very expensive test equipment to even measure and would be at least 2 full levels of magnitude below possible human perception.
Now Perry is truly brilliant he does research out of the Universities various departments, does contract work for NASA
has a regimental combat team of PHD's who have worked under his direction and at the moment is involved in trapping Neutrinos
(can you imagine trying to skin one of those puppies out ? ;-)At any rate I said lets see, so I shut things down and replaced the expensive MIT IC's between my Preamp and 45 SET amp with the JR Beldons, and fired up "Wish You were here" Perry's mouth hung open
and it sounded like my Full range high efficiency loudspeakers had had artic sleeping bags bungiied around the removed, seriously improved neutrality and clarity, my friend was speechless and near being in a state of shock, we repeated that with the speaker cables and there was an increase in clarity as well, just not nearly as dramatic as the IC's.And I've also learned that my SET amp which seems a bit lame looking at it's output on an O'scope in comparison to my SS Moon 1.5 integrated and yet has crystalline imaging a black backround and is so damn musical and engaging that I don't answer the phone of doorbell or even drain the Lizzard until I'm in extremus.
However some of these things are so very obviously preposterous and the avaricious opportunistic dirtbags who are essentially punking some of you out have nothing but sheer contempt for thier marks, the 2200% profit over-ride should be your first serious clue,
then if you read the absurd and utterly ridiculous descriptions of the benefits and the principals behind them, it becomes patently obvious that they are anti social sleezoids and are essentially putting you over the barrel and pouring it to you, about the only difference between them and TV evangelists is about 35 point higher IQ and slightly better Karma.I used to be a partner in an Advertising/PR agency and used to write drivel like this myself (and not particularly proud of it either) and have met countless assholes just like this where you need to count your fingers and check to make sure your still wearing your watch after shaking their hands, and feel like taking a long very hot shower.
But to each his own, and if you havent taken the opportunity to bring up this URL please do so.
As you know marketing is everything in the US. Cryo effects can be heard by as simple a deed as placing CD's in your freezer. I purchased a surplus lab freezer which goes to -40 C and the effect is even greater and can be heard even on cables and things of that nature. Most cryo companies offer fairly reasonable costs: I've seen cryo treatments offered for as low as $10 per pound. For the time involved and the amount of LN used I would think that as a fair price, although shipping to and from can kill you. Hint, check out your local universities, as many have cryo facilities.As for other audio products, well, that is another story. Still it takes $10K to get a patent with the attorneys and searches you have to go through, and things like that add to the cost of the item. As you were in advertising, then you know the horrendous advertising rates being charged. Mike Sanders of Quicksilver, who has never advertised, once told me he estimated tht his retail prices would have to triple to pay for similar advertising that his competitors take out.
I would still agree that there are a few hucksters out there (well maybe more than a few).....
Sometimes though, there may be a kernal of truth to some of the more outlandish claims made. I've been surprised more than once by some weird things that didn't make sense at all, at least not in the beginning.
Stu-Would you consider the folks selling the $500 Wooden Knobs and $6000.00 volume controls as having any validity or being on the level ?
If you had the financial wherewithal, would you consider a Cryogenic listening room, sort of like Batman's Nemisis Yhe Penguin ? ;-)(I'm just kidding)
I have Cryo'd Rifle barrels, but I don't think I'd bother with CD's
as I'm one of the Vinyl cranks I only listen to CD's while I'm riding my Motorcyle, mowing the lawn or canoeing.But it would be interesting to see if I could hear the effect with IC's and a Phono IC would be one of the more revealing applications, does Cryoing change the capacitance, inductance or resistance ?
I have eaten my share of Crow in this hobby so far ;-)
stories about some very well known audio companies and their practices. I know of one company which sent a memo out to their dealers saying that they had reburshed products reconditioned so that they looked to be brand new in every respect and that they would be available very cheaply but could be sold as new. This was when they had just announced a new model.
On the other hand, if you purchased a $500 volume control knob, you probably deserve the outcome.
Seriously, though, even before the $500 wooden knob came out, I discovered that the knobs do significantly affect the sound. I was experimenting with some of the 3M tube dampeners, which are made from a very stretchy plastic. You can expand the small 1.25 inch ring to as much as 4 inches in diameter, but it shrinks back down to very close to the original size in a few minutes. Anyway, as I was experimenting with some power tubes I decided to remove the dampeners and placed them on my preamp volume control knob so I wouldn't have to restretch them as much if I elected to put them back. I was stunned to notice that the sound gained quite a bit of detail even though I had removed the dampeners from their designed use.
In further experimentation I came to realize that a heavy metal knob on a long shaft actually passed on some vibration to the wipers of the volume pot. With this reasoning I placed the dampener so it barely touched the faceplate, figuring that the dampening of the knob to the faceplate should further reduce vibration. Sure enough, the detail increases even more. The effect, of course, can be duplicated to a great degree by a simple o-ring. The little experiment, though, did open my eyes and ears to the fact that even something so mundane as a volume control can affect the sound.
This idea of the volume knob shaking the pot and causing problems is an interesting one. Easy enough to visualize, perhaps too easy, thus its appeal.Also easy to test. I have begun tests. But I'll start another thread for that.
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