The Great Cryo'd Outlet Test

I may have misinterpreted your analogy a bit, I seem to recall tasting ice brewed beer once and thinking it tasted "watery" but then I'm not a conoisseur. It seems like almost everything in this hobby is debatable, even more mundane items like amps can sometimes be controversial, or at least sound quite different in different systems. Not to mention cables. Cryo treatment (and freezing) probably fits in the category of "how could this possibly do anything?" Plus there is the problem of how to make any money out of this puppydog, as initial investment for equipment is very high and prices for service must be competitive (i.e., low). Cryoing will prob. continue to be a quirk and debatable, at least for audio - doesn't even make a good conversation piece as you cannot see it.

The "ice-brewed beer" method of increasing alcohol content is an age old method, best known for Jersey Lightning. This is fermented apple cider which you put out the window in the fall so that the water freezes. Then you pour off the liquid residue, which contains a high proportion of alcohol.

Cryo is just a form of heat treatment, used to alter the physical properties of a substance, usually metal. Cryo treatment of a brass instrument like a trumpet will change its timbre, as will other forms of heat treatment. Interestingly, I am quite willing to believe that cryo treatment of vinyl recordings may affect their sonic quality. For better or worse I don't know. The vinyl flexes a good deal as the stylus traces the groove, and if the vinyl were made stiffer, or more flexible, the sound would change.

It *is* interesting how cryo never seems to be alleged to make anything sound worse, or that its promoters don't seem to find it ineffective in any area...

Speaking of there being no money in cryo, I don't know if that's true across the board, but I do want to restate for the record that not only is Albert Porter basically selling his outlets priced to just cover his costs (and maybe time, though I'm not sure he isn't essentially donating that), but he even offered for me to keep the outlet he sent me for free if I didn't hear an improvement. I paid for it anyway of course, but it should be clear to everyone that Albert is only doing this because he finds it helpful and wants to help others, not to make money. He was also eager for me to try the PP even though he must have known in advance that chances were I wouldn't report hearing a difference and might write here saying so. Were he not the stand-up guy he is, he'd probably be on this thread right now pointing out that I carry my own psychological prejudices into this audition which might well prevent me from hearing a difference no matter what improvements the outlet may make, so I'll stipulate to that again myself.

I also want mention again that Hdm previously offered to send me one of his spare outlets without charge as well, and that although I have expressed my doubts about this tweak in excruciating detail and suggested that the pro-cryo'd-outlet rhetoric has been a bit over the top, I don't think for a second that any of the A'goners here extolling it are doing so for any reason other than to share their enthusiasm with their fellow audio travelers. I may be a skeptic and have my criticisms, but I don't think this cryo business is some kind of nefarious plot, and I appreciate all those proponents who've accepted my commentary at face value and in good grace.

Zaikesman: It should be noted that there are some people (Bob Crump among them) who have reported that they do not like the results of cryo. We also have Stehno's observation, positive on the iec inlet but actually negative on the outlet (sorry Stehno!), so Stehno is perhaps still up in the air. But it is difficult (at least in my experience) when you are working with multiple/different outlets, and I am the first to admit that I made mistakes under the same circumstances.

It should also be pointed out that it is probably very easy to have bad cryo that may result in thermally shocking and perhaps damaging items (the key, at least to my understanding, to good cryo is very slow ramp down and very slow ramp up) and that, at least on Audiogon recently there have been a number of companies (and I use that term loosely) promoting cryo that, to me, definitely lacked credibility.

I am either deluded or have just experienced good cryo I guess. The outlets I have had done were done by Alan Kafton at Cryogenics International, and I now have a cryo vendor locally at a small family owned heat treating company so have actually been able to drop my stuff right into the unit (which does not look much like some of the wonky photos of cryo equipment being touted on Audiogon!) and then remove them 48 hours later when they are still on the cool side.

In any event, you will find detractors as well as proponents for cryo and the debate will rage on. Your final remarks in your last post are appreciated.

Of course my assumption about Stehno's results is that if he went through the same blind audition identification process on the outlets 100 times, the final tally would be pretty close to 50/50 (implying a success rate little different than pure chance), meaning I'm not ready to ascribe any positive *or* negative qualities based on his findings so far and suspect that there are really no significant differences to be heard either pro or con. But you are apparently willing to assign Stehno a 'negative' audition result for the cryo'd outlet based on extrapolation from this very limited data such as it is. One more demonstration that the human brain incessantly searches raw information for patterns, connections, and above all *meaning* - even if such conclusions may not be rationally supportable due largely to our often-limited observational abilities/opportunities. (Whoops, can I say that and still be an audiophile? :-)