There are more and more cable manufactures treating there cables now. Some offer this service for a fair price. I was thinking of getting all my IC, Speaker and PC treated along with the Power condintioner. Can anyone give me a before and after sonic description of the cryogenically process. Steve
This habit of yours to completely change the text in your posts ... significantly after you have posted it, really has to stop .... no worries, I was nice enough to capture the original post already.
I have a document that clearly says I am the world’s smartest and strongest dad. My son made it when I was about 5 years old. It carries about as much validity of me being the world’s smartest and strongest dad as the so called "documentation" you assert for cryogenic treatment in audio has audible improvements.
Many many many people, in many areas will swear that "something" does "something" when it does nothing or even does harm. Above average intelligence is not some magic shield for this either unfortunately.
geoffkait17,964 posts11-04-2019 10:38amSorry if I’m being too harsh but that last post is mostly pure speculation. The history of cryogenics for audio is long and colorful and well documented. There’s no reason to be so skeptical and reactionary. Heck, I broke three Laws of Physics today already and it’s not even lunchtime.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
– Mark Twain
Hold on, geoffkait likes to use that one. He is getting a copyright on all the quotes he can find. Quotes by other people, I mean. His were rejected by the ethics committee.
Feel free to point out what specifically as "jibber jabber". Your post is jibber jabber. You are trying to dismiss my arguments out of hand, but you cannot even address them. Why is it that you cannot actually address my arguments? Is it that you cannot? That makes your post text-book jibber-jabber.
I am neither skeptical nor reactionary. Again, based on your last post (and others before), I would say you are projecting your own emotional mindset on me. Addressing my arguments would go a long way to prove I am not right. So have at it ... address my arguments.
What you call skepticism, I call reality. Given the number of industries and scientific endeavours that require signal transmission properties far stricter than audio, surely there must be a body of work discussing the benefits of cryogenic treatment of cables for signal transmission?
You like quotes, here is one for you:
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
– Mark Twain
geoffkait17,964 posts11-04-2019 10:38amSorry if I’m being too harsh but that last positive a whole lotta jibber jabber. If you don’t know just say you don’t know. There’s no reason to be so skeptical and reactionary. There is no basis whatsoever for your speculation except you skepticism. No offense to you personally.
Sorry if I’m being too harsh but that last post is mostly pure speculation. The history of cryogenics for audio is long and colorful and well documented. There’s no reason to be so skeptical and reactionary. Heck, I broke three Laws of Physics today already and it’s not even lunchtime.
Cryogenic treatment of steel for mechanical properties and thermal properties is well understood, and applies to other metals, though they typically do not have the significant changes that steel does.
Some of the properties that are stated for steel after cryogenic treatment, i.e. transformers, are not as well accepted, at least whether the cost justifies the improvement or if it can be accomplished by other means. Even small improvements in electrical transmission efficiency can justify fairly significant equipment cost increases, at least for transformers.
We do know that cryogenic treatment of copper does increase the conductivity, depending on the initial copper quality and processing method, from 2-4%. That would of course be the same as increasing the cross-section 2-4%, or in the case of high frequencies, increasing surface area 2-4%.
If a cable vendor has a very specific construction, that they claim has some specific impedance control, whether we believe that is effective or not at audio frequencies, then cryogenic treatment of those cables is going "break" that design by changing the properties of the conductors.
The corollary is that all those implied "impedance controls" don’t really do anything at audio frequencies at least if cryo-treating the copper always has a positive effect ..... well that or the cryo-treatment provides no audible benefits.
millercarbon1,879 posts11-04-2019 1:26amCryo is another one of those things that have been around and known to work for a very long time now, and yet still it goes on on an the people who haven’t yet learned. My first cryo was brake rotors on my 911. They modulate better at threshold, respond more consistency at temp, and last a lot longer compared to identical factory non-cry rotors.
Which is interesting because when I went looking for someone local to try cryo with my stereo the closest one turned out to be a shifter kart racer who me being a PCA track Instructor we hit it off and he told me all about his business.
Taking days to cool down to whatever temperature in liquid nitrogen seems unexpected, to say the least. At least for things of sizes mentioned above. It may be some counterfeit liquid nitrogen sold on eBay.
One clumsy move with one’s hand while doing it will reveal that getting cold will not take that long. Do not try this at home. Leave it to someone who has done it before for reasons well-established.
millercarbon Cryo is nothing more than a chest freezer into which goes everything from tubes to cables to crankshafts, custom hunting knives and French Horns. The expense is all in cooling mass to near absolute zero, something that happens only slowly over a period of days immersed in liquid nitrogen. Then after a few days the nitrogen is allowed to boil off and the whole thing comes back to room temp.
This is the reality of cryo. Anyone touting anything even slightly different than this is either lying or clueless because, get this, physics is physics. Its only at the extreme low temp of cryo that the molecular changes happen, and there just ain’t nothing more to it than that.
>>>>>OK, REALITY CHECK. Liquid Nitrogen cryo is -300 F. Absolute zero is -460 F. So, in REALITY the standard cryo treatment is not anywhere near absolute zero. Hydrogen cryo is much closer to absolute zero but not commonly used. Also standard cryo treatment doesn’t not (rpt not) involve immersion in liquid nitrogen, which would cause thermal shock. The treatment involves only immersion in the vapor. Even with the two day staged cryo process there is temporary but non-permanent thermal shock that is audible when you first receive the goods. So, waiting several days is required until the cryogenic treatment shockmgors away. Third, as I’ve outlined on these fora previously, home freezer temps of circa -10 F are sufficient to produce very good results for all manner of audiophile stuff, from CDs to cables, to CD players to amplifiers to fuses to speaker drivers, LPs, there is almost no end to it.
Costs vary from Cryo Labs but mostly likely actual costs are between 10 and 15 dollar per pound, and there is probably a minimum charge as well. Plus theee is the cost of shipping both ways which for me, shipping a five pound box of Mercury’s to the lab is about 30 or 40 bucks including insurance.
Home freezer treatment is FREE 🤗 and avoids the one to two week delay of cryo lab. And avoids the expense of cryo lab. Lastly, since permanent molecular changes probably don’t occur for home freezer treatment one can safely assume that cold treatment of audio items does not (rpt not) involve the more homogeneous physical atomic changes wrought by minus 300 degree cryo. Something else is going on as yet unexplained.
Geoff Kait, Machina Dynamica, first in liquid Nitrogen cryo, first in home freezer cryo, first in the hearts of his countrymen. 🥶
Cryo is another one of those things that have been around and known to work for a very long time now, and yet still it goes on on an the people who haven't yet learned. My first cryo was brake rotors on my 911. They modulate better at threshold, respond more consistency at temp, and last a lot longer compared to identical factory non-cry rotors.
Which is interesting because when I went looking for someone local to try cryo with my stereo the closest one turned out to be a shifter kart racer who me being a PCA track Instructor we hit it off and he told me all about his business.
Cryo is nothing more than a chest freezer into which goes everything from tubes to cables to crankshafts, custom hunting knives and French Horns. The expense is all in cooling mass to near absolute zero, something that happens only slowly over a period of days immersed in liquid nitrogen. Then after a few days the nitrogen is allowed to boil off and the whole thing comes back to room temp.
This is the reality of cryo. Anyone touting anything even slightly different than this is either lying or clueless because, get this, physics is physics. Its only at the extreme low temp of cryo that the molecular changes happen, and there just ain't nothing more to it than that.
The cost therefore, the entire cost, is liquid nitrogen, and the few minutes it takes to pack the freezer. Which ain't much. My whole system, every bit of wire, including the AC circuit wire, whole CD player, dozens of CDs and some more stuff I'm forgetting, was all done for less than $200 all-in. Nice improvement, well worth it. What some charge now though, inflated with nonsensical fairy dust new-age mumbo jumbo, is nuts.
Cryo should cost no more than $1 to at the most $3 per pound. Anything more than that, save your money, buy an Orange Quantum Fuse, be way ahead of the game.
Nice to see Mr. Know-it-All has a sense of humor, even tho not that original. School. My mom told me I had to study hard so I can get a good job. No, ma, I don’t! I’m going to be a comedian. 🤡
Did you perform a controlled double blind test? It’s generally two weeks from the time you send a musical instrument off to the cryo lab and get it back AND let it settle down from the cryo treatment shock for at least a few days. Plus, your aural memory must be outstanding to remember how the instrument sounded more than two weeks previous.
I'm a pro musician....some of the pros I know have treated their trumpets, sax's, etc. They say it makes the sound better.... I couldn't tell the difference.
"Cryogenically treating anything improves its performance. And someone recently posted, even putting cables in the home freezer for 48 hours offers a very noticeable improvement."
As I mentioned in that same thread, freezing works only for ice-cream. All else is imagination of a few people with ice-cream envy.
I’m sending the entire 52 CD box set of Mercury Living Presence CDs off to the cryo lab as we speak. Gee, I hope the polycarbonate layers don’t get all brittle and break into little pieces. Or Explode! 😛
They laughed at Bozo the Clown, too. He who laughs last laughs best. 🤡 Good luck with your Google searches. That’s the next best thing to cutting and pasting from Wikipedia.
teo_audio, The only thing scientific in my post was that Teflon insulation can stand up to cryogenic temperatures, PVC and polyethylene, not so much. I posted this as there were specific questions in this thread about whether cables could be damaged or not.
The rest of my post was to point out that highly critical industries don’t show much interest in cryogenic treatment of cables and you don’t have to be technical to draw a conclusion from that.
Contrary to your statement, I find that many in audiophile communities do actually want to learn and step outside their comfort zone of knowledge. That may require simplifying things more that many of us are used to, but the underlying science does not change. Based on how few people seem to actually post and how many active audiophiles their are, I would say the group that wants to learn is the silent majority and the group that wants to shut down discussion is the loud minority.
Whether geoff gave up or not, I do not know, but I know this is a discussion for a different thread and not where the op was trying to learn. I only responded to geoff in this thread as it was where he tried to negate my comment, not by adding any value or by negating what I said, but by negating me. I don’t stand for that here or elsewhere.
I am not sure where this came from
"So if you want to figure any of this out, it is ALL ON YOU. You
can demand all you want but a sensible human being would ignore you....
and when you refuse and demand again, then expect to get smacked about.
For all the right reasons."
or the rant w.r.t. patents? How is that at all related to this topic and/or this thread or what transpired between geoff and I?
What I really don't understand teo_audio, is why you are trying to shut me down? What is your goal here? What are you trying to accomplish? It really makes no sense within the framework of this discussion.
atdavid: addressing everyone with the scientific end of the thing does no more than not addressing them.
If they understood what someone was talking about, then they would not need the scientific explanation. If they are given that explanation, due to them not understanding the result, there is generally little to no chance they understand the scientific explanation.
The whole thing becomes a circular mess.
All that is left is open ridicule, as all other avenues have been well exhausted. Ad infinitum.
It’s that maxim: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
But on the internet the curmudgeons remain at the laugh and fight level, they never progress past it. And if they do, they do it silently, the saving face bit..and they are replaced by the next wanna be dogmatic ’law’ spouting expert.
IMO, Geoff gave up long ago and remains in a comfortable ’smack them around’ mode. For good solid reasons.
the next thing I’m aware of, and I’ve been through this many a time..is..that..if one shares the reasoning, the few get it and then the attacks cease. Sort of. For a while. Until the next thing comes along that they don’t understand. Which isn’t long in coming.
Meanwhile, some of them are rushing to production and the patent office, to take one’s explained ideas and understandings...for themselves.
For me, I’ve served up about 5-6-7 patents that way (ideas patented by others), served up to other people and actually started up two branches of ’high end’ product (audio and video) areas via ’doing things right’.
I did this so often, for a while, that I used it as a litmus test to see if someone was decent and capable of being trusted. If they took the bait for the low (hanging) level patent (fruit) or idea and stole it, then they showed they could not be trusted with the good stuff.
IIRC, and I can’t explain who and what, but there is a recent patent in some areas of high technology and is used by a audio company of new renown (re-established by the owner, etc) all based upon my stolen idea.
I shared an idea with someone who can’t keep their mouth shut, it seems, and that idea ended up being the center piece of a new company from a stalwart in the audio business. The person I knew and shared with was hanging out with the ’stalwart’ at the time it would have been gestated). Number 7 or 8 or 9, for me, now? (stolen ideas, patented by others)
So if you want to figure any of this out, it is ALL ON YOU. You can demand all you want but a sensible human being would ignore you.... and when you refuse and demand again, then expect to get smacked about. For all the right reasons.
geoffkait, I am new to this village, but one thing you learn when you travel a lot is every village has an idiot, everyone knows who they are, and they are usually easy to spot.
Do you ever have anything of value to add to threads, or just this running dialog with yourself? I am sure you find yourself amusing. I expect others, not so much.
And now, because you were not happy with just looking inane, you are going for deceitful? After I called you out on your non helpful tweets, you edited your initial post to look like you had something to add. You did that 20 minutes after the original post ... and after I called you out for it. I have highlighted what you added.
However, as opposed to adding anything to the conversation you pretty much illustrated that cryo in audio cables is for marketing only. However, I can only assume that your knowledge in this area is skin-effect deep since you would not send things to "the lab" for cryo, but to any number of companies that do cryo treatment of metals for physical properties as it is quite a common process and I certainly would not call these places "labs".
You may have garnered more respect if you had validated your statements against Wikipedia as opposed to making false statements, but it appears from a quick perusal of your posts that this is pretty much your modus operandi .... to accuse others of being Wiki smart when you cannot address their arguments in a logical and accurate fashion. That behaviour is childish and if you think it garners you respect, you would be the only one.
geoffkait17,927 posts11-03-2019 11:38amAnother fly! That’s lunch right there! No McDonalds for me today! I hate to judge before all the facts are in but this fly appears to be one of them Wiki skeptics. 😛
It seems highly unlikely that any harm can come to audio cables during or after cryogenic treatment since most high end cable manufacturers with any sense cryo their cables and many audiophiles send their cables into the lab for cryo. In fact, you must cryo your cables if you want to compete on the world stage. Better safe 🤗than sorry.
Another fly! That’s lunch right there! No McDonalds for me today! I hate to judge before all the facts are in but this fly appears to be one of them Wiki skeptics. 😛
It seems highly unlikely that any harm can come to audio cables during or after cryogenic treatment since most high end cable manufacturers with any sense cryo their cables and many audiophiles send their cables into the lab for cryo. In fact, you must cryo your cables if you want to compete on the world stage. Better safe 🤗than sorry. 😢
Do a Google search on something along the lines of "electrical conductivity copper cryogenic treatment". After you sort through all the results on thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity at cryogenic temperatures, perhaps you will find a paper or two about measured effects ..... and pretty much anything left will be consumer audio cables.
Perhaps, at this point, you will ask yourself why, when cryogenic treatment is only modestly expensive, are there not more articles, advertisements, etc. about cryogenic treated copper for improving conductivity and transmission in industries where they can both justify the expense (i.e. communications networks) and where they have the knowledge, expertise and equipment to quantify the differences?
Teflon and similar fluoropolymers can withstand cryogenic temperatures fairly well. PVC jacketing, and even the very common polyethylene insulation essentially becomes glass like, so any movement can induce fractures.
"Cryogenically treating anything improves its performance. And someone recently posted, even putting cables in the home freezer for 48 hours offers a very noticeable improvement."
Cryogenically treating anything improves its performance. And someone recently posted, even putting cables in the home freezer for 48 hours offers a very noticeable improvement.
I own both a cryogenically treated interconnect and power cord from a local cable designer. I had previously owned the same interconnect but non-cryo. The cryogenically treated cable showed an immediate and noticeable sonic change. The main difference was a smoother, more detailed top end. Also, the musical presentation was clearer and more defined. I have not treated all my cables, but based on my experience I would recommend you try it.
You can run the dedicated power line through a through filled with ice. The cable would run inside a pipe so that ther'e no possibility of a short. This cryogenically cooled electricty would bring a new musical sense: 'dimensionality', 'air' and 'resolution' unparalleled. The same could be done with power line conditioners. Keep them in ice.
However, you have never heard my PSYCHICALLY TREATED CABLES. The sound is definitely out of this world...
How about inventing a lineconditioner/ac regenarator/refriderator unit for high end stereos? This unit would provide regenerated ac for the whole system while freezing every component and cables and only revealing the speaker drivers.
The electricity bill will go up, but so are those PS Audio powerplants.
I had an opportunity to listen to a complete Jena Labs wired system(right down to the cryo treated hubble outlets) it was nice, not broke in yet so I am expecting the rough edges to smooth out. I am interested in how it is going to sound in a few weeks from now. This is slightly off topic, but can you cryo treat CD's? they are metal(with plastic around them) any one try it if so any benefits?
If you contact jena labs, which you can find on the internet, my understanding that jena is quite available and a wealth of information. however she is quite brilliant, and you might need an interpreter to simplify the info...
from what i gather, polymers (TFE, PVC, PTFE, etc) do not undergo any changes w/ treatment. long term, only the conductors experience and maintain their changes. rhyno
What happens to the dielectric? insullation? In some cables, as much engineering goes into the dielectric as it does to the conductor itself. Couldn't changes to the matter which makes up these IMPORTANT non metallic elements of a cable increase inductance or alter the properties of the cable?
cryo does induce permanent changes from a metallurgical perspective---granted you need an electron microscope to see it, and a resolving system to hear it, but its obvious.
again, jena is not the only show in town. rick at controlled thermal processing in chicago can do it too.
Jena Labs offers no proof dry ice is not cold enough (may not be), they only offer their say so, which conveniently justifys them as the only person you can go to. Anyone who claims their Cyro process is the "only" one available is lying big time. Anyway, who really knows if Cyro does anything perminent?? If the effects also wear off, your audio memory will never notice a gradual change.
Gboren, i've used two different "cable burners" with varying results. I had a Duo-Tech that i could never tell any difference with. I then went to a Mobie made by G&D Transforms and WOW !!! This thing actually works and makes a VERY noticeable difference. I know that i am not alone in these findings, as Rhyno states basically the same thing above. I've also burned cables for others and they too were amazed at the differences.
Figuring out how to build a more efficient burner is on my list of projects to do. It should not be hard or expensive for the basic circuit. The greatest expense would be the chassis and all of the connectors required to make a versatile unit. Don't hold your breath waiting on my results though, as i'm on project 5 with about another dozen to go.... Sean >
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