As I predicted, the "LP gurus" had no idea what you were talking about.
"If I were forced to make a prediction I would have guessed the opposite. Go figure." Oh, it figures. :-) |
If I were forced to make a prediction I would have guessed the opposite. Go figure. |
"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."
Just as I predicted. At least milk didn't squirt out of their noses, right? :-)
"Everything is relative." - old audiophile axiom |
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. |
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Cryo the Machina Dynamica gimmicks and double your pleasure! |
Cryo + Machina Dynamica tweaks = audio bliss? |
Of course I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that an experienced listener, one who knows what he's listening to, should be able to distinguish sound that is better, worse or the same. How else would he progress in this hobby?
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
If at first you don't succeed try the outfield. - Anonymous |
You mean it's easier to get used to a new sound that's actually the same instead of worse? |
"Mceljo said: "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?"
That's actually an excellent question since cryo'd materials require about a week or more to recover from thermal shock. This explains why some audiophiles jump the gun and report the cryo sounds worse when they audition the cryo'd item as soon as they receive it. Another advantage to the home freezer technique is there isn't much thermal shock, so you can dispense with the break-in period. |
Legal Disclaimer: Insertion of the AEH component copyright @ 0 degrees F, into any ear type orifice MAY result in difficult removal. If condition persists for more than four hours, immediately consult a medical professional. small print:
*further than recommended insertion may result in brain damage.
*not meant for any other bodily placement, all rights reserved. |
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? |
Mapman, Your idea reminds me of the old days before hearing aids. A funnel type horn was held to ones ear for magnifying sound. Audiophile Ear Horns. HEY...Advanced orders now accepted! |
Cup your hands behind your ears to hear better when listening for guaranteed better results. Cheaper and less expensive than cryo treatment! Results are absolutely guaranteed as well regardless of source medium! |
It would probably be more instructive to perform the home freezer experiment for oneself than for me to go into the details of what I experienced. After all, my evidence in these matters, even if I were to go into excrutiating detail, would be anecdotal. Like a lot of things in this hobby there's no substitute for trying things at home, on a system one is familiar with and with recordings one is familiar with. Try the overnight freezer thing with a few CDs or even LPs and let me know what you think. |
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. |
"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. "
Hmmm, I didn't say that but it's an interesting theory. Recall I said the freeze time is overnight - about 12 hours - plus thaw time of 4 hours. So shipping time via air would not be sufficient to produce the desired effect.
"0 degrees F simply isn't low enough to cause a permanent material change."
I beg to disagree. And it's easy to prove. |
Geoffkait said: ...so you have to ask yourself, why would a high end outift use cryo if it didn't work?
Because there are silly audiophiles that are willing to pay for it. Just like there are other silly people that pay for palm reading and fortune telling. |
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. |
"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?"
Yes, I'd say similar, but obviously not identical.
"I'm sure you realize that cryogenic temperatures are in the range of -300 degrees F."
Yes, I realize that. Recall I've been doing cryo for 15 years.
"I don't think the temperature in a home freezer, even a home deep freezer (about 0 degrees F), is even cold in comparison."
Obviously a home freezer is not nearly as cold as a cryo cooler, however it is a lot colder than room temperature. And it's that difference in temperature (70 degrees F) that's important.
"I guess this is why we shouldn't send an LP to you."
I already said don't send LPs to me. LOL
"By the way, unless your kidding consider your credibility lost on this subject with this statement."
Would I kid you? Does this mean I had some credibility with you prior to the home freezer statement? LOL |
"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 don't think anyone is saying that cryo is a universal process that makes everything better. However, there are by now many audio companies, Meitner, Walker, Jena Labs, Purist Audio, to name a few, who have been using cryo processing for their products, including cables, DACs, CD players, turntables and tonearms, among other things, for many years, so you have to ask yourself, why would a high end outift use cryo if it didn't work? 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. |
If I cryo treat a glass of water, does it taste better? Is it heavier? Clearer? I'm just saying if you heat treat carbon steel, it gets harder. If you heat treat, wood, it's called burnt-up wood. There is no universal process that makes everything better. |
Let's get to the crux of the biscuit, as it were. |
Geoff, I agree, that does make sense! Tho, the posed question remains..had YOU actually performed this simple test? If not how do you support your claim? Thank you for your answer, in advance. |
Why would anyone send me an LP? Hel-looo! Send the LP to a cryo lab. Listen to the cryo'd LP. If you cannot be sure of the results, mistrust your ears, or have poor aural memory, etc. compare the cryo'd LP to the same LP that hasn't been cryo'd. You can even do blind tests, you know, whatever you feel is satisfactory. Make sense? |
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. |
Mceljo, You gave it an earnest try. I believe the debate went in your favor:) |
"""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?"
Geoffkait, That is a very logical question, and one I'm glad someone finally asked. I'm on pins and needles......"
Yeah, right. Kinda like the question, How can you verify the existence of God? Real logical. |
"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"?
Geoffkait, That is a very logical question, and one I'm glad someone finally asked. I'm on pins and needles...... |
"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."
Mceljo- I am a materials engineer and have considerable experience on the cryo process; I'm actually one of the very first to use cryo for audio applications, going back nearly 15 years. I suspect cryo is just one of those things you have to hear to believe. LOL
"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."
People in the audio industry? Hmmmm, I'll be on pins and needles to hear what they have to say. LOL
"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?"
Is this like a final exam? I thought you weren't going to ask me that. LOL |
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? |
"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?"
Yes. But I did not say hammer blow.
"If this is the common result of cryo treatment of metal why would people cryo brass instruments?"
To improve the sound and to make the fingering of the valves smoother, to name two reasons.
"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."
Thank you for not saying I didn't hear a difference. LOL
"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."
That's kind of a semantic argument and kind of a strawman argument. I didn;t say things sound dead at all. I said the cryo material rings less. Should I assume you like things that ring? BTW cones respond well to cryo treatment since the material will become harder, thus transferring energy more efficiently. It's a materials science thing, right? |
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. |
The ultimate cold stamper. |
The cryo'd steel (or aluminum) rod vibrates less when struck with, say, a wrench or other tool, more of a "thunk" than ringing. I actually cryoed all the steel or aluminum rods for one of my products (isolation stand) way back when for just that reason. Is that scientific enough for you? |
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. |
It's quite obvious, having done it, that cryoing a steel rod makes it vibrate less, so it's not too much of a stretch that the same is true for vinyl. So I disagree with your premise that a more homogeneous material doesn't vibrate less (for its modes of vibration). If the vinyl, in fact, vibrates less due to extrernal forces, then the stylus will be extracting information from the grooves more accurately. Make sense? |
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? |
Mceljo, while I appreciate that cryo is very mysterious, not so much for tools and musical instruments and golf balls and rifle barrels, racing engine pistons and valves, and razor blades, for which the benefits appear to be strictly better durability, hardness, stiffness, but for audio related items like CDs, LPs and cables, for which it is not so obvious why there is a performance improvement. I think that it would be relatively easy to demonstrate that dust is not the issue for cryoing LPs, since brand new or thoroughly cleaned LPs would exhibit sonic improvement with cryo. Without a thorough examination of what is going on, and I kind of susoect noone has really done that, not even the cryo labs, in the case of LPs, the sonic improvement most likely is associated with better characteristics of the vinyl making it less subject to vibration coming from the floor and the turntable motor. Better sound might be due to improved stiffness, reduction of stress and strain (that the vinyl is subjected to during the stamping process), and perhaps other reasons that remain unknown.
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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? |
"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. |
Yes, I suppose that's true. But it's also true the use of the atomic bomb prevented 500, 000 casualties. So, one could say the atomic bomb is a real lifesaver. And just what does that have to do with this discussion? |
Geoffkait said: the preposterous nature of things like cryo-records, wire and fuse directionality, tiny little bowl resonators, coloring the edge of CDs, crystals, Mpingo discs, demagnetizers, ionizers, extremely low frequency generators, things of that nature, there will be a lot of skepticism to overcome. I guess you could say the same about black holes, the big bang, relativity theory, teleportation and the atomic bomb but he left out "calling someone up on the telephone to make his system sound better"... |
"Well, with over 105,000 casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think it's pretty safe to say that the atomic bomb is real."
Yes, I suppose that's true. But it's also true the use of the atomic bomb prevented 500, 000 casualties. So, one could say the atomic bomb is a real lifesaver. |
Stop, please stop! You're killing me - I'm splitting a gut laughing at some of the comments to this post.
This is an example of our "superior" American education system at work. All of you who have never taken a high school or college physics class, please raise your hand. Hmmm, just as I suspected. OK, let's make it easy: the secret word is thermodynamics. Go ahead and Google it, we'll wait...
But back to the OP. In a nutshell, (so-called) cryogenically treating vinyl records is a bad idea for several reasons; but mainly because PVC, like most ethenyl compounds, contain some small amount of asphaltenes that are prone to stress fractures under low temperaures.
Question - what do your LPs ave in common with your driveway?
Answer - ask anyone who lives in Minnesota about how their asphalt driveways look like after a few cold winters. (Hint - not so good)
Class dismissed. |
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. Well, with over 105,000 casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think it's pretty safe to say that the atomic bomb is real. |
Does audiogon charge for plugging products and writing in marketing adds in the guise of a thread, or is it just sort of a fringe benefit?
The Easter Bunny is curious about this one. Santa is trying to figure out if cryo'd snake oil is still the same stuff as original snake oil. |
Mceljo - It's certainly understandable that one cannot conceive how Cryo-records could make a difference. I suspect until one actually tries these things for himself, in his own system, with his own ears, the preposterous nature of things like cryo-records, wire and fuse directionality, tiny little bowl resonators, coloring the edge of CDs, crystals, Mpingo discs, demagnetizers, ionizers, extremely low frequency generators, things of that nature, there will be a lot of skepticism to overcome. 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 - 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. |
