Cryo-treating things - thoughts?

[u/Entire-Reindeer3571]

Hey all,

thoughts on cryo treating things?

A little controversial... but really it shouldn't be.

-Bringing the temperature of something down to about negative 196C / 321F over a number of hours normally with liquid nitrogen.

- Ensuring it sits at that temp for a short period (overnight maybe?)

- cautiously bringing it back to to temp over a few days so it doesnt shatter

For anyone saying "snake oil" the material itself is clearly physicallychanged if you google it and easily visible under an electron microscope - completely different structure. It is not unreasonable to think it'll impact something.

I forgot until recently 20 years ago I got a bunch of speaker cables, rcas and 70 year old NOS vales/tubes done. My stereo still sounds incredible. It was more a matter of systematically trying to play around with eqch element that led me there. Not expensive to do at all. Failure at the time would have been expensive... $1K in tubes! (more like $5k now)

Anyone a materials expert?

[u/2bags12kuai]

I have a set of cryo cables I use for certain songs .
Ice ice baby
Cold as ice
Ice cream paint job
Anything by the artist “Ice Cube”

[u/Vivid-Act-7138 → u/2bags12kuai]

genius, i bet frozen by madonna sounds incredible too

[u/lordehumo → u/2bags12kuai]

I once watched the movie Frozen on a cryo-treated HDMI cable. Breathtaking!

[u/rankinrez → u/2bags12kuai]

Just don’t put on any Coldplay and we’re good.

[u/Orcinus24x5 → u/2bags12kuai]

Don't forget Ice-T.

[u/AmazingPangolin9315]

It is not unreasonable to think it'll impact something.

It is entirely unreasonable to think that if you cannot quantify this beyond "something". What has been changed? How has it been changed? How does the change affect the physical properties of the material? What makes you think this leads to an audible effect? And can you actually hear an audible effect?

If you cannot answer any of these you're in the realm of woo-woo.

[u/dat_mane47]

“It is not unreasonable to think it'll impact something”

It is unreasonable to think any impact it has will be audible.

[u/jippiex2k]

Cryo treating what?

Speaker driver materials? Enclosure material? Cables? Electrical components? Physical storage media?

Overall I would imagine it has no practical effect. If anything sudden contractions would damage the material.

It would probably also make the material stiffer. Which generally is seen as an undesirable property, as it produces resonances.

Though might be leveraged intentionally to push the resonant frequencies of a driver higher than its operating range.

[u/rankinrez]

My instinct is you’re not wrong about the charge in the material, but it’s likely not something that is going to make a perceptible difference to the sound given the voltages involved.

More like something for the large hadron collider to worry about than us.

[u/rankinrez → u/[deleted]]

How much differences in those properties of the cable matter is directly related to the voltage of the signal.

[u/AmbitiousTiger9091]

well i'd be curious to see some proper measurements comparing treated n untreated components, the physical changes are interesting but whether they translate into audible improvements is another question imo

[u/mfolives]

I was under the impression that the cryo treatment for tubes may extend their life but wasn't expected to improve their sound. It would be fairly easy (and not expensive)to do an A/B test with just a single signal tube, but I've never been motivated to try that. Maybe something for the bucket list...

[u/Nox-Eternus]

I tried it on my grandfather, couldn't resuscitate him. It was a spectacular failure!

[u/fruhfy]

Amorphous steel cores are, in fact, cryo treated (made this way, actually). Probably the only plausible case here

[u/pekak62]

Aren't some industrial tools cryo treated? Drill bits and the such? Super hardens the tools?

Lots we simply do not understand me thinks.

[u/SashaDabinsky → u/pekak62]

Yes. I worked at Amana and around 2000 they started cryo treating a lot of the tooling in the tool and die department, and the life went up dramatically. They also cryo treated the copper 'tips' (copper bars) for the spot welder that was used in making condensers, and the lifespan went up, and the current required went down about 50 amps.

[u/dat_mane47 → u/[deleted]]

Who cares if it improves conductivity though if our current cables are adequate to give us perfect fidelity already? It’s a solution to a non-existent problem.

[u/dat_mane47 → u/[deleted]]

Why would it sound different? Assuming the cables are all working correctly. Their job is just to carry volts. How does a cable change the output waveform from its source? Since you’re invoking science…

My idea of “perfect fidelity” is when the output waveform is identical to the input waveform. If a cable is changing the waveform then it is lower fidelity.

[u/dat_mane47 → u/[deleted]]

The thing is “microscopic deviations” are not audible. Our hearing is not sensitive enough to perceive differences of tiny fractions of a db.

It would take you about 2 google searches to confirm this, also.

[u/dat_mane47 → u/[deleted]]

Ah the ol’ “trust me bro.” Look mate if you wanna do an AB test and post your methodology and results I’d be keen to see that and then we can look into what’s going on. Until then the burden of proof is on you to prove these things. As a well-educated man of science I’m sure you know that.

[u/rankinrez → u/[deleted]]

The paper doesn’t say if the change in conductivity is significant in terms of an audio signal though.

Not saying it couldn’t be; but this paper doesn’t really say anything in terms of this debate.

[u/Toobman300B → u/[deleted]]

Thank you good sir for your commentary. Great 2nd paragraph. People forget to listen and enjoy.

[u/chuck1charles → u/[deleted]]

Because it’s amusing gawking at regards that genuinely believe that having lower than copper resistance will make a measurable difference in acoustic output, let alone an audible.

[u/chuck1charles → u/[deleted]]

Check out r/jazzcirclejerk, regard

[u/chuck1charles → u/[deleted]]

Never mind, even the cryotreated alloy in the paper has a higher resistance per unit length than standard annealed copper 😂😆🤣

[u/chuck1charles → u/[deleted]]

you may find a cable with extremely high conductivity sounds better in your system