Tubed1 - I hope your joking? Cryo treatment modifies internal micro structures of the material which is why it is used for cables and such where something is traveling inside the material. Please explain how a change in internal micro structure would make any difference for a record? If the external shape of the record it wouldn't have any better chance than melting it with heat for improving the sound. |
Thesoundhouse - How do you test the speed of a cable? Also, how does the speed of a cable impact the quality of said cable? If speed from one end to the other improves sound then just get a shorter cable. It sounds like a cryo treated cable that is 1.12 to 1.20 meters long would perform the same as a 1 meter untreaded cable when it comes to transfering the signal from one end to the other.
Geoffkait - Even if cryo treatment improves the material properties of vinyl (i.e. records) it's likely an improvement in strenght or bending properties and has nothing to do with a needed bumping along its outer surface.
The absolute farthest that I can stretch this thought experiement would be that a record just might not wear out as quickly, but then I have nothing to base that idea on. |
Geoffkait - Unless cryo treating changes the physical shape of an LP then it should sound identical. The stylus doesn't do anything beyond following the surface of the groove. I don't get it. If cryo helps an LP then there's no limits.
Frozen waffles are not as good as fresh so what's the magic temp that makes everything better? |
Geoffkait - The stylus to LP connection is a physical transfer at the surface of the LP.
This is similar to a car driving down the freeway. Let's assume that the freeway is made of machined steel and that one lane has been cryo-treated and the actual surface finish was identical prior to the treatment.
Will the car perform differently because the atomic structure of the steel is more orderly? The performance on an LP doesn't depend on its strength or electrical transfer properties. The primary factor is the shape of the surface and cryo-treatment does not change this. The stylus isn't riding at the level of single molecules.
The only thing that I can think of would be that a cryo-treated LP would somehow resist vibration better, but generally a more uniform material will resist vibration less. This is why acoustic tile is often made up of several layers of material with different properties.
I'm skeptical that it works in cables, but when it comes to LPs I say placebo BS all the way. It would take someone doing an A/B demonstration of two identical LPs to prove that I couldn't tell a difference and then again after one had been treated. I might even require two identical turntables to be used side by side for the fastest possible input switch. I bet I could tell a difference IF someone told me which one was which. I don't think anyone has a good enough "memory" to compare the result using a single LP. |
I would argue that cryo may increas the uniformity of vibration in cables and such, but uniformity isn't the path to less vibration. Sound damping is done with composite materials that have different densities and vibrations don't transfer from layer to layer as well as it does through a single material.
Why should the onus be on the people not promoting a product that is being sold as something valuable? We're not trying to prove it's value.
We can't forget that science has proven that placebo's work. If you believe it can work for you, but you can't prove how or why, just that it does. This doesn't prove, however, that anything actually changed. |
Theaudiotweak - In your trumpet example your supporting my statement that cryo treating increases the vibration transfer. People go to great lengths to reduce vibration in LPs.
The molecular changes that result from cryo treatment is on an order of magnitude that is far different than a stylus. If the surface friction is reduced by cryo-treatment then the LP surface is changed and there's no way that this could systematically improve the recording. The result would be random. |
Geoffkait - exactly, but what does that have to do with playback of an LP? I'm not sure I agree completely with the less vibration part (it should result in a more uniform vibration which is, in theory, why electrical current flows better though a cryo treated cable), but better material properties is a fact BUT only matters if the use of the material interfaces with these properties in a meaningful way.
Example: I can type a sentance on a roll of single ply toilet paper and on expensive letter head. The quality of the letterhead is much higher, but it has no bearing on if I can read the sentance as long as the toilet paper isn't damaged.
I don't see how material properties have any measurable effect on the playback of an LP. Cryo-treating causes material changes that are verified in metals using electron microscopes and this is orders of magnitude different from the scale of a stylus where I'm fairly certain that it's possible to tell the difference between different tip designs using 10x magnification if not using the naked eye.
I've never said that the LP material properties are not better, just that it doesn't matter. The stylus is a macro mechanical transfer of informaiton and cryo treatment resuls in a micro material improvement.
Theaudiotweak - How does one give vibration in an LP direction? |
Would a piano sound better if the keys were cryo treated? |
Geoffkait - Just because a select few can hear a difference doesn't mean that their ears are actually hearing the difference. The power of suggestion is strong, I prefer to think of it as "group think" but at this point I'm not sure enough believe for it to be considered a group.
In medical field new drugs are tested against placebo drugs because a certain percentage of people feel and actually get better medically taking a placebo. In the cases where they did actually get better it still had nothing to do with the placebo, the change was all in their heads. For a drug to work the people that improved taking the drug must be significantly higher than those that improve from taking the placebo.
I believe that it would be easy to duplicate the number of people that believe in the cryo improvement of an LP simply by taking two cables and telling them that one sounds better because of XYZ modification that really hasn't happened. I wish there were control groups in audio.
Theaudiotweak - The word filibuster comes to mind when I read your explainations. I don't believe that a stylus is small enough to be impacted in any way by a change in the molecule structure of an LP. That's like saying that you'd notice a difference driving a dump truck with 60 inch tires on 3000 grit vs. 3001 grit sand paper. Actually, this example is probably closer in orders of magnitude.
When it comes to metals that carry current I can at least conceive of a logical explaination for how it might make a difference but it still makes my head hurt a bit, but I simply connot come up with a logical connection when it comes to an LP. So far you're providing vague conjectures that have little practical value when it comes to an explaination. |
Geoffkait - I do know about the anti-placebo and realize that people that don't beleive are less likely to hear a difference.
I was very skeptical of Nordost Sort Kones. Eventually the salesman convinced me to take a set home with the promise that if I wasn't satisfied he'd take them back. I'm not convinced that the difference that I hear is real, but I'm also not convinced that they didn't make a difference so I can't take them back. The problem with them is that they take several minutes to install and remove making A/B comparisons extremely difficult. A friend of mine would describe the difference that he thinks he hears in a very similar way to how I would, but commented that he'd like to hear an instant A/B comparison.
In the case of Sort Kones I can see how it is possible that they could make a difference.
I wasn't convinced about speaker wires making a difference but I have heard a difference between a $7 pair that I took in from the hardware store and some $2k Nordost cables, but the difference wasn't even close to being worth the price.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I have heard a difference in things that I wouldn't have believed without hearing it for myself, but in each of these cases I understand how it could make a difference and my objection was that I didn't consider than any difference would be audible. In the case of cryo-records I simply can't conceive of how anyone would ever think that it could make a difference. It's outside the box of logical reality for me. |
"I guess you could say the same about black holes, the big bang, relativity theory, teleportation and the atomic bomb - the preposterous nature of such things makes it extremely difficult to conceive they're real without proof or demonstration." - Geoffkait
The audio world has a lot of BS products that consumers lacking scientific knowledge happily purchase. Some of the products you list fall into the category and others have potential, but I think cryo-LPs takes the cake.
As for black holes, I don't claim to have any knowledge on the subject, but I'm skeptical that we really have a solid understanding of a lot of things in space. I believe the Big Bang to be total BS, but that discussion has nothing to do with audio so I'll leave it alone. Do some reading on origins and you'll find that the Big Bang isn't really the best explaination even from the perspective of evolution. Teleportation isn't a reality and I highly doubt it will ever be. Finally, including the atomic bomb in this list is just plain ignorant. |
I have been racking my brain to come up with any reason that a cryo-LP would sound better. Sometimes something unexpected happens during a process and the change is attributed to the wrong thing. Here's the only thing that I can think of.
Is it possible that during the process of cryo treating an LP it's become cleaner? I know dust and such has a significant impact on how it sounds. Is it possible that the cryo process somehow allows the contaminants on the surface to be released such that they can be removed during the cleaning process? |
Cryo treatment effects the material properties so unless the use interfaces with these properties then it's meaningless.
As I've said before, a more homogeneous material may transmit vibrations more uniformly, but it doesn't reduce the vibrations in any way.
Stiffness would only apply if your actually believe that the stylus is leaving a temporary trail of deformation in the LP as it travels in the groove. If this was the case to any significant degree then I'd suggest that LP playback would be someone random because it's unlikely that the stylus would ever follow the same path.
The stress-strain relationship is a measure of how far a material can be deformed before it takes a permanent set. In my college material labs we used steel bars and then pulled them until they break. In certain ranges the steel will go back to the original shape, but there comes a point where it goes outside of the elastic range and starts to stretch like taffy. Even if you don't continue pulling to failure it will never go back to the original shape. For this to matter in a record you would have to assume that prior to cryo treatment the stylus was actually pushing the material outside of the elastic range causing permanent deformation.
The most likely cause for any change in playback quality is playback quality. There's no need for the people selling the goods to test it because there are plenty of people that don't have any understanding of what they claim to be selling and in many cases it would debunk them all together.
Ironically, when stress is reduced in metals the material actually becomes more ductile can deform more and still return to it's original shape. Do you really believe that this has anything to do with the stylus to LP relationship? |
First, explain to me why a cryo treated steel rod would vibrate less and how it can be verified, then we can discuss how that transfers to vinyl. If it's obvious and you've done it a practical explaination that's based in science shouldn't be too difficult. |
Geoffkait - So you're saying that you're willing to compare the sound of a hammer blow to a piece of metal to what happens when an LP is cryo'd?
If this is the common result of cryo treatment of metal why would people cryo brass instruments?
A different frequency isn't directly related to the magnitude of the vibration in the material. I'm not saying that you didn't hear a difference, but higher or lower notes could simply sound different in your "listening" room.
I'll have to think more about what you describe, but it sounds like you're saying that cryo-treatment made things sound dead. I better not cryo my Nordost Sort Kones or they may turn into isolation rather than coupling devices. |
Geoffkait - I'll admit that I have reached the end of my ability to discuss this topic in a useful way. I'm not a materials engineer or an expert on the cryo process so I can't really get into the specifics of the process and how it relates to specific materials without doing more research than I'm willing to do. I'll wave my white flag and let people make up their own minds.
This Friday I should have the opportunity to discuss this topic with some people in the audio industry, specifically turntables, so I'll see what they say. I'm expecting them to say it matters, but doubt I'll get any real explaination.
As a final question, can you explain the specifics of how you compared the before and after to verify that you can hear a difference of a cryo'd LP? |
If I have to hear it to believe it, then what A/B process did you use to verify the difference? If the average person wanted to prove it to themselves, I don't think that sending you and LP and waiting a week is really an adequate method of comparison. |
"By the way, an alternative to sending audio items like LPs to a cryo lab is freezing them overnight in the home freezer, then let them thaw out slowly in the morning."
Really? You're really going to say that a home freezer is similar to a cryo process?
I'm sure you realize that cryogenic temperatures are in the range of -300 degrees F. I don't think the temperature in a home freezer, even a home deep freezer (about 0 degrees F), is even cold in comparison. I guess this is why we shouldn't send an LP to you.
By the way, unless your kidding consider your credibility lost on this subject with this statement. |
I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but now that you've essentially said that CDs and records that are shipping in the northern states in the winter will sound better than those shipped in the summer. Should audio purchases have a season that matches winter for the best result?
0 degrees F simply isn't low enough to cause a permanent material change. |
Can it be proved in a forum thread? I'm specifically thinking of materials used in audio applications that would change for the better, but would be happy with any example of a material that starts at room temperature and then has a permanent material property change when subjected to 0 degree F temperatures and then warms back up to room temperature. |
Iso - Can you cryo them or should I just put them in the fridge when they arrive? What's the break in period on them? |
You mean it's easier to get used to a new sound that's actually the same instead of worse? |
Tonight I visited my local hi fi store and had the opportunity to listen to some fantastic music starting with the newest Clear Audio turntable, Aesthetix products between the source and speakers and Focal Stella speakers with dual JL Audio Gothom subwoofer using Nordost cables and a stack of Nordost Sort Kones. There's a lot more than I could correctly identify, but it was certainly fun to see some of this stuff in action. It's the worst my system has sounded since I've owned it. It's still wonderful, but no match for this truly amazing system.
While I was there I inquired about cryo-treatment of records with a local Focal rep and a highly respected amplifier engineer/designer that was there. The response was in the range of head scratching/shaking. Neither seemed to be aware of the concept which was interesting since they were on hand for the U.S. debut of the Clear Audio Master Innovation turntable. I would expect the amplifier guy to be at the leading edge of LP technology.
In any case, it's the most impressed that I've been with the main rig in the store in a long time. Everything seemed to be working great. On previous visits I wasn't as impressed with the Aesthetix products compared to the previously used Krell, but this time I had no complaints. |
If I were forced to make a prediction I would have guessed the opposite. Go figure. |
