I've seen on the internet several tube dealers promoting cyro treated tubes. Anyone have any experience with them? Is the sound or durability any different? I have a Jolida 502p that I will be purchasing a back up set of tubes for and found the cyro idea interesting.
Cryogenic International in Scottsdale, AZ can tell you all about this process; Charles does it for many tube dealers and manufacturers. It improves the gas molecular structure and lowers the noise in them.
Be careful - i purchased a pair of 12ax7 Mullards and a pair of EL34 Mullards and they acted very oddly (perhaps they needed extra burn-in, I don't know). On the other hand, I purchased a pair of gold pin Electro-Harmonix 5751's that are awesome. I'm using them in my phono stage to pare down its agressiveness, with great result.
I have some new re-issue cryoed Ruby 12AX7 tubes and some NOS GE 5751 preamp tubes that were cryoed as well and I haven't heard any difference with their non-cryoed counterparts in my Jolida 502P amp. As for cryoed power tubes I never did any A/B testing between cryoed and non-cryoed. I do have some cryo treated Tung Sol KT-120s and they sounded great with the 502P and I haven't had issues with longevity.
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