Why "Cryo" anything?

Naturally, everyone is free to believe what they wish, but some of the sheep shearing I see in this hobby sets new highs in lows. I just took a break from working on my sailboat. If sailors bought into & embraced as much hokum as some audiophiles there would be a lot more lives lost at sea. I offer the following to bring a little truth & direct experience to the discussion.

"Adhesives will melt when cryogenically treated."

Not true. Nothing melts when it gets colder. At least not as long as the universe keep expanding. If/when the universe stops expanding & begins to collapse...then things might melt when they get cold...but that isn't likely to happen for a few billion years yet. Chances are excellent we'll have exterminated oursleves by that time.

No disrespect to Lak intended here..

"FROM JENA LABS"

This dribble from Jena is pure marketing hokum. They use a lot of technical jargon that sounds impressive, but actually says nothing.

"...In the liquid state as we use it, the LN2 is actually much colder than this temperature."

Absolute nonsense. They couldn't afford the science that gets liquid N2 colder.

"Exposing metallic objects to this extreme cold causes beneficial molecular changes to occur..... "

Pure fiction. The molecules don't exist...thus no changes can occur. I'm sure many of you have kids...ask one of them that has had even the most basic chemistry or physics courses.

"Working with LN2 requires very specialized and expensive equipment, and extreme care in process. It is very dangerous, as the cold is so severe that it can result in severe injury from accidental exposure to the liquid.... We feel strongly enough about the musical merits of the treatment, that we gladly make the investment in the equipment, the time, and the safety procedures needed to make the benefits available to our customers."

More marketing dribble. Handling liquid N2 in small quantities requires (typically) a 400# insulated low pressure tank that you dispense out of. From this tank you vent it through a stainless hose into a vacuum bottle (like a Coleman glass-vacuum thermos bottle). From this bottle you can pour it like water into any vessel or equipment you like. Yes it's cold & you have to be careful, but it certainly isn't any more dangerous to handle than many common tasks you do around the house everyday...like cooking & draining pasta. Jena includes this in their marketing hype so that you feel better about paying a healthy price for their 'service'.

Given my familiarity with handling N2 I supposed I could make a few bucks 'cryo treating' various items for folks...but I don't think I could live with myself after taking their money.

Back to reality & working on the boat. :-)

I'm not an MSE, but I am a chemist & have had some materials science...and I've used liquid nitrogen (I'm guessing liquid N2 is the cryo liquid being used in the cryo 'treatments') more times than I can remember. Liquid N2 is a pretty generic, very inexpensive material with really nothing exotic about it.

There seems to be some confusion with regard to heat treating & simple submersion into a cryo fluid (N2). Heat treating and N2 submersion are two separate processes & shouldn't be blended into a single term (reference). i.e. a material can be heat treated without being cryo treated & something can be cryo treated with being heat treated. Neither process requires the other.

Material like metals & glass...have no 'molecules' to rearrange as they are not made up of molecules. They do have a crystal structure that can be impacted by heat. Metals can be thought of as elemental(iron, manganese, tin, copper...or alloys) protons in a sea of electrons or electrons in a sea of elemental protons...whichever way one wants to look at it. How these protons & electrons are arranged relative to one another determines the crystal structure (hold that thought for later).

Materials like plastics are made up of molecules & they too are impacted by heat. All these materials have a specific temp where they turn from a glass-like state into a 'malleable' state. With respect to polymers (plastics) this characteristic temperature is called the Tg (glass-transition temp). A polymer below it's Tg is basically a frozen solid...this can be at room temp or even much higher temps. Frozen is defined by the polymer molecules being unable to move or slide by each other. A plastic fork is a good example of a plastic(actually it's polystyrene) below it's Tg. When you heat this fork up to about 100 degrees C you notice that the fork can be bent. When you bend a hot plastic fork the molecules are sliding by each other & taking on a new relationship to one another(hold that thought for later). When you let the it cool the fork will be permanently bent. You'll also note that this bent plastic fork can be flexed when at room temp but when you let it go it will return to it's original, bent shape. 'Bending' a plastic fork stretches the polymer chains(the chains have a zig-zag conformation & thus can be extended...sort of like a coiled telephone cord stretching & recoiling)...when you stop bending the fork the polymer chains resume their previous position & the fork looks like it did before. Now dropping this fork into liquid N2 does nothing to change it's molecules relationship to one another...they are already 'frozen' into the fixed relationship they take on when their temp drops below the plastic's Tg. If you try to bend the cold, N2-frozen fork while it's still very cold the fork will no longer flex as it did before, rather, it will shatter as the polymer chains can no longer deform.

No doubt that heat treating has positive impacts on metals, and possibly other materials(plastics for one), but the reasons why are well understood, are far as I know. When you heat treat a sword (for example) the crystal structure changes(protons & electrons change their relationship to the protons & electrons that were close by before heat was applied). When you quickly quench the hot sword into water, oil...etc the crystal structure doesn't have time to change back to what it would be at room temp. The quenching has frozen a new crystal structure into place. This new crystal structure offers new properties...like hardness. Just like the plastic fork, cooling this sword from room temp to liquid N2 temps won't change the crystal structure...it's already frozen in place. When the sword returns to room temp it's properties will be the same.

Now if one just takes any material that exists a room temp, cools it down in liquid N2, and returns it to room temp I can't imagine any physical reason why the object would behave differently...electric or otherwise...and this comes from a reasonably good understanding of what the material "is", in an atomic or molecular sense. If cryo-treated audio accessories are actually being heat treated first & then dunked into N2 for a little exotic touch...then it might be more understandable that 'cryo treating' could change things(as the heat treating does). Although I'd guess heat treating & quenching a vacuum tube in N2 might be a little rough on the tube.

I've typed all this out to help folks appreciate the mechanics of why some might doubt the reported effects cyro treating. I have glossed over some of the specifics in how materials behave as explaining further could take much longer & be much more boring to some people. Naturally a good MSE could shoot some holes in what I've typed...but I'm not an MSE..I'm just an organic chemist with some appreciation & understanding of the materials that surround all of us.

Lastly, there may be reason why NASA, NASCAR... are doing cryo treating, but it's likely they know why. Just because they do it (if they do) there is no causal relationship that what they do, for the reasons they do it, will also result in audio system sounding better. If NASA...etc is actually heat treating with a very fast quench in N2(there would be reasons for doing this) & this is being called "cyro treating" ...well..."heat treating with a fast quench" might be closer to the mark.

Lastly, lastly, if we could cool our audio systems to liquid N2 temps & keep them there...then they would approach, or be, super conducting & THAT might sound interesting.

It's your money...what you do with it is your business. At the very least it helps the economy keeping rolling.

"It's always ironic to me that most of those.." people that find science objectionable fail to realize that life as they know it, in every corner of their material lives, from the time they wake up to the time they fall asleep, including the mattress they sleep on, is based on science and doing a little bit of experimentation. Most people find the output from all this science to be very acceptable, but have little interest in the very topic that makes their world go 'round.

As for working from ignorance..after extensive education I've spent the greater part of my life working (making a real living..my & my family's well being on the line) in science. I've done OK and have managed to scatter numerous patents across the world. While it's true science can't explain everything we experience it's equally true that separating what we experience (what we believe) from what may or may not be happening in the physical world is most often an impossible task...it's the difference between faith & science, perception & reality, fusion & cold-fusion...and I don't expect we'll resolve this age-old discussion in this thread. I would encourage people to at least make a slight attempt to understand what happens as materials get colder rather than embracing market-speak at face value. Look up what happens at the physical level (atomic or molecular) as one approaches absolute zero(the concepts are fairly easy to understand). "Absolute zero" is the term you'll use on google. Compare what you find out with the concept of mysterious changes occuring as the temp goes down. If that's too much effort and freezing things makes you happy, then be happy. As you know, you can even be cryo-treated when you pass on..

As this discussion is starting to get personal I'm going to exit at this point. I hear my boat's rudder calling me.