"Science is quite often 'crap'. Setting up a good sounding system is an 'art', and as an 'artist' I question your technique. Have fun with your 'test'." - Maxgain on 4/2, about Eldartford
Hey, at least Eldartford is doing a test. You, Max, apparently aren't concerned or curious enough to be bothered - same as me. (And note that conducting a test is not the same thing as "setting up a good sounding system", which was not the goal of Eldartford's efforts in this particular episode. But I think we can assume he's already been attending to that quest over the years, same as any of us.)
"...I noticed barely audible improvement immediately after installing the one cryo-treated IEC. It was not until perhaps 48 hours later (24 hours of system uptime/burn-in) that I noticed the surprising improvements." - Stehno on 4/5
"If it takes several days of operation on the cryo outlet for a difference to be audible I can't do the test. My auditory memory is not that good." - Eldartford on 4/5
I've gotta say after digesting Stehno's updates (5/27, 5/30), I'll take my chances lending credence to Eldee's scientist over Maxie's artist any day. Sorry John, but the differences you report thinking you heard over several days and listening sessions could be due to just about anything that is temporal in nature, from powerline conditions to atmospheric ones, but most prominently including your state of mind/body and the limits of auditory memory.
"...none of the listening tests that I've seen described so far regarding cryo'd outlets do I consider sufficiently rigorous for drawing meaningful conclusions, EVEN WERE I TO DUPLICATE THEM MYSELF...I feel that most of what has been reported on the plus side in this area is probably attributable mostly to psychological causes..." - Me, on 5/29. I just thought it could use repeating. |
I can appreciate that you were unconvinced before trying it out, John. But even in the case of that IEC connector, had I done the exact same 'test' myself, I would draw no conclusions because:
1) there was no opportunity to repeat an A/B test once the connectors were swapped
2) there could always be uncontrolled variables between the original vs. new connectors concerning crimping/soldering/oxidation issues affecting connection integrity
3) there was an inevitable time lag in between audition opportunities while the work was being done
4) even allowing for a low level of interest in this swap going in, just the mere fact of finally having done the work and invested the time has the potential to create a biasing expectation that *something* will 'change' when listening resumes
5) you *were* exposed to positive propoganda about cryo before trying it yourself
6) experience tells me that when it comes to the sort of subjective sonic alterations we as audiophiles often assign to tweakage (i.e., generally unmeasured or even unmeasurable, often subtle or elusive and difficult to repeat with consistency, open to interpretation and preference as to whether any changes reported represent actual improvements, heard by some and not by others, usually not test auditioned with the rigor of controlled or blind procedures, and often requiring a process of 'belief-formation' over time in order to fully convince ourselves of their worth), there is ample motive and opportunity for psychology to play a leading role.
Regarding point #6, I see elements of many of those potential pitfalls in your own reporting on your audition progress, but please don't take that as criticism or think I'm trying to single you out somehow. I'm actually not a big proponent of blind testing (because I think it creates pitfalls of its own) and don't expect audiophiles working with their own systems at home as a leisure activity to don white lab coats. And 'scientific' analysis of one's audio system is largely beside the point anyway, which ought to be enjoyment of music with a little enjoyment of gear and tweakage on the side, not splitting the atom.
But I do think we also ought to try and be as honest as we can with ourselves when exhortations to spend money and incessant attempts at raising of our levels of dissatisfaction are involved. I've made many little adjustments or modifications to my system that I've convinced myself improve the sound, but being totally honest about things, I'd have to say that if someone snuck in during the night and put everything back the way it was, there's at least an even money chance that I'd never pick up on the difference just by listening. I mean, there are many days I can turn on the system and start listening, and have it sound as if just such a scenario may have happened while I was out, so much worse than what I remember does the music sound, while on other days I can do the same thing and think "Damn!", that sounds so freaking good compared with what I was expecting.
Most days of course it just sounds the same and I don't think about it, but these things can strike at any time - just during the last week or so my system has sounded vaguely disappointing to me about half the times I've listened. Who knows why? I'm sure it - or I - will snap out of it eventually (maybe it's just the health of my ears, the pollen count or something), and I'm just as sure this same kind of thing happens with all of us once in a while. My point is that 'improvements' on the level of most tweakage IMO fall within the 'margin of error' inherent in everyday life variability, so I don't like to get too dogmatic or overly certain about these things. I'm not trying to be a scientist when I listen, but I do try as best I can to use a scientist's level of skepticism and awareness in making honest assessments of my reactions to system changes.
Anyway, continue to enjoy your cryo'd AC connectors, and when you (or anybody) formulates a good technical argument explaining why they ought to make any difference in the sound, please share it with us. Until then, this one will reside securely in my "Jury Still Out But Evidence Thin" file no matter what I think I hear or don't hear when I install the Porter Port... |
Thanks Eldartford for performing your tests and reporting your observations. In the other thread I laid out some of my conditions for what would constitute an ideal test design so I'm not going to recapitulate them here, but neither am I going to second-guess anything you've done or not done in this enterprise. Obviously the whole process is somewhat of a pain in the ass, and in the final analysis it is still impossible to A) ever eliminate psychology as the primary determining factor in the different results heard by different listeners, and B) to discount the simple truth that even if psychology were in fact the only causal factor at work here, cryo'd outlets (or whatever, especially relatively cheap tweaks) would still be entirely justifiable if we stipulate that the real end goal is just obtaining greater enjoyment from one's system.
I recently got a Porter Port from Albert, which I haven't installed yet because I've been too busy auditioning some tubes. I bought it in order to get a demonstrably better outlet than what I use now, one that is 50 years old and only 2-prong (I have to resort to an added 3-prong grounding adaptor), and unsurprisingly doesn't grip so well anymore. I admit up front that I don't believe the cryo treatment itself will make any significant difference in this application, but since I never seem to get around to actually buying an untreated outlet at the normal price when I'm in the hardware store, I accepted Albert's challenge as the best way to make myself quit stalling and do *something* on this front. I'll report my non-scientific results when it's been installed and auditioned. (I say 'non-scientific' because this will be an uncontrolled, non-repeatable one-time switch between outlets that will have all sorts of other confounding variables not held constant, so any differences I even *think* I hear A) cannot be considered reliable from a reporting standpoint [even by me], and B) could never be positively attributed to the cryo treatment as an isolated factor anyway.)
For whatever it's worth though, here's my thinking about why I don't find the cryo argument compelling as applied to AC outlets *in theory*:
Let's say first of all that we agree to stipulate to cryo's effectiveness as a treatment for permanently improving the electrical conductivity of the metals used in an AC outlet. This is not something which I actually know, but let's just assume that it is so for the sake of argument. To me, this could mean basically two things: A) that cryo reduces the metal's resistance to electrical current flow, and B) that cryo might also reduce some distortions to the signal waveform it passes compared to non-treated metal. Let's assume that it accomplishes both of these things, which it very well may in real life but which I don't know personally for a fact.
Then consider two otherwise-identical brand-new outlets, with one being cryo-treated and the other not. Let's say, for our thought experiment, that the cryo treatment has doubled the one outlet's conductivity by halving its resistance, while also cutting the distortions an untreated outlet imparts on the waveform by half. Even granting that seemingly significant increase in performance, the crux of my argument against cryo-belief rests on this uncontestable fact: the signal pathway represented by the metal conductors residing inside an AC outlet is extremely short, probably under one inch long.
This means that, for any new, decent-quality outlet, uncorroded and with good grip, using appropriately heavy-guage conductors, and being made from a highly conductive metal such as copper or brass, the total resistance to electrical current flow is already going to be infinitesimally small, and its added waveform distortion infinitesimally low. Its very shortness of path means an outlet will never cause more than negligable signal losses at worst, as long as we are not talking about a corroded old outlet with poor grip.
We can also contemplate that, considered as a portion of the total signal pathway that the AC powerline travels on its way from the generating plant to your components, the part represented by the conductors inside an outlet is but a very tiny fraction. Skeptics of course make this same basic argument about high end power cords, but there is at least one big difference which invalidates that analogy: shielding. Upgrade power cords can provide AC line shielding nearest the components which radiate and absorb electro-magnetic fields, while outlets do not have an impact on this parameter, whether cryo'd or not. Additionally, the differences between aftermarket power cords and stock power cords, or from one aftermarket power cord to another, are manifold in nature, involving all sorts of physical variables, while the difference between a cryo'd and otherwise-identical stock AC outlet is strictly limited to the temperature treatment's effect on the metal conductors and nothing else.
So look at the powerline situation in its entirety: assuming that the (already almost unmeasurably low) electrical resistance of this tiny bit of the AC power pathway represented by the outlet is halved through the application of the cryo treatment, the total resistance of that entire pathway will still remain for all practical purposes unchanged. The same applies to the waveform distortion. You cannot successfully apply the 'weakest link' argument to this situation, because you cannot demonstrate that the conductors inside a quality outlet are deficient for their intended function - or if they were, that the cryo treatment would render them significantly less so. If the outlet represents a 'bottleneck' at all, it is either because of the guage of its conductors or (more likely) the integrity of its contact with the plug, neither of which the cryo treatment can improve. If you have cryo'd all of your components and cables including power cords, you still cannot complain that an uncryo'd outlet would add significant distortion to your powerline, because it only represents the final inch of miles of untreated powerline, and therefore could only be responsible for an infinitesimal fraction of the distortion claimed to be caused by untreated conductors placed in this pathway. Unlike claims sometimes made for certain upgrade power cords, you cannot say that the treated outlet will somehow act as an additional level of powerline noise filtration.
Now, consider this as well: it is widely acknowledged and confirmed through controlled-audition testing that even skilled listeners largely lose the ability to reliably distinguish sonically among audio interconnects of various types if their lengths are kept artificially low, say down to only a couple or three inches (this is the basis for the Wireworld Cable Comparator's operation, and a good reason for keeping your cable runs as short as possible). And: that's taking into account that many of the biggest differences to heard among interconnects have mostly to do with things like geometry and dielectrics, not even conductor type - variables which either don't apply or don't get changed when comparing cryo'd vs. non-cryo'd, otherwise-identical AC outlets (sorry to keep harping on the 'otherwise-identical' thing, but from what I can tell a lot of what's been purported about the supposed virtues of cryo-treating outlets lets this vital point slide). And furthermore: interconnects operate directly in the audio signal path and must accurately transmit the full range of audio frequencies plus complex transient information, all at quite low amplitude levels; none of those handicaps apply to AC power conductors, which deal with a high-level near-sine-wave signal, the desired part of which consists mainly of one frequency (an uncritical 60 cycles) which by definition contains no transients and is not complex or particularly delicate, and which will be filtered and transformed before it is utilized anyway.
Therefore it becomes very tough to believe that altering the already entirely-sufficient electrical properties of a very short piece of the powerline conductor outside of the direct signal path, even if by a significant percentage when considered in isolation (though an insignificant amount when considered as a part of the whole pathway it resides within), will ever cause sonic improvements audible at the speakers. I might feel differently about this if the *whole* powerline conductor from powerplant to component could be cryo-treated, but I can't for the moment take too seriously the claims made about so treating less than one inch's worth of that distance. I might also feel differently about this tweak if cryo-treating did anything about staving-off the onset of contact corrosion within the outlet, but it's not claimed to do so.
Of course, all of the preceeding bias also constitutes a third reason, in addition to the two given at the top, why it will be impossible for me to render any meaningful judgements when I install my Porter Port. So I'll be happy just to have an outlet that grips a plug securely and doesn't require an adaptor for grounding. (And I hasten to add that I say all this as an audiophile who hears differences between cables in all system positions, who has heard the effects of powerline conditioners and uses one, and who has even heard remarkable differences among different varieties of resistors in identical values when inserted in his phonostage.)
But even if I suspect that the sound of my system gets subtly (or even markedly) better after switching the outlets, I'll blame that on the inferiority of my old outlet, and not attribute it to the high-tech treatment given my new one (although I'll not dismiss the placebo effect either). And I fully expect to retain the general opinion on this subject I have today in my admittedly cryo-virgin present state, which is mainly to say: A) none of the listening tests that I've seen described so far regarding cryo'd outlets do I consider sufficiently rigorous for drawing meaningful conclusions, EVEN WERE I TO DUPLICATE THEM MYSELF (so please no one take undue offense, because this isn't an indictment of your ears), and B) I feel that most of what has been reported on the plus side in this area is probably attributable mostly to psychological causes (which as I've stated at the top are nothing to be sneezed at, and which might as well be enjoyed by those whose listening pleasure benefits from them). Sorry true believers, but for the reasons I've detailed, I just don't feel there's any more plausible explanation to be had. |
All: Sorry to go off like this, but if you hadn't noticed, I haven't been posting to any new threads for what seems like two or three months now. So the audio pedant in me is a little on the bottled-up side. I have occasionally posted to threads I was already on, and this thread is a continuation of one of those.
Max and Stehno: The relevant part you couldn't stay awake to make it to at the end, which I'll repeat here is: If I like my new outlet's sound, I'll attribute that to the comparitively poor condition of my old one, not to the cryo treatment. This is the only honest and sensible position I'll be able to take absent a rigorous experiment which I'm not interested enough to bother doing. (But if I was to do that experiment, I expect my observations would be along the lines of Eldartford's.)
Hdm: I do believe shielding could be one of the primary factors in explaining the performance gains of aftermarket power cords, but not the only one. I think a big part of the equation resides in the fact that most aftermarket cords also offer heavier-guage conductors than do stock cords. If you compare the guages of both the in-wall and outside-the-house wiring to that of your typical stock cord, a case can be made for the last five feet's being the weakest link due solely to its lighter guage, never mind shielding. In this regard, I don't see upgrade power cords as necessarily being so genius in their execution, as much as I see the stock cords being not fully adequate for their task. The remainder of the improvements (or just differences) we hear with aftermarket power cords vs. stock cords, or the sonic differences between various upgrade models, I think would mostly lie in other areas like filtration effects, capacitance and inductance, and resonant tuning. So shielding doesn't have to be the whole ball of wax.
About the resistance-lowering issue: your assurances do not counter my argument that even if the resistance of a stock outlet can be halved through cryo treatment (you do not quantify the imrovement, so I don't know if this is in the ballpark, too low, or way optimistic, though I suspect the latter), that will make almost no global difference in the total resistance presented by the powerline to the components' power supplies. Since power cords represent a greater portion of the powerline signal path, and since even aftermarket ones are usually lighter in guage than the conductors out on the utility pole, I do not offer this argument against cryo'ing of power cords.
All again: I'm not trying to tell anyone not to cryo their outlets, not to use or buy cryo'ed outlets, or that they're crazy for enjoying them if they do. And though Max thinks I'm too uptight about the subject, I really and truly don't actually give a shit about any of this - which doesn't mean that I can't get off on thinking about the subject critically, and writing about it. I think Hdm among others understands this much about me: as long as we enjoy listening to our music, however we do it, the rest of all this hoo ha is simply for the added enjoyment of having a good, reasoned debate.
I think I've laid out a pretty good case that there is no plausible reason which can be put forth why anyone would reliably hear significant improvements by cryo-treating a new-condition outlet other than psychological ones, although obviously such psychology won't work for me personally. (And I'm perfectly willing to accept the equally-obvious corollary to that proposition, that my own psychology regarding this issue could prevent me from hearing a legitimate improvement if there was one.) My arguments are not against the efficacy of cryo in general, a topic about which I know very little, but against the likelihood that even if cryo is as effective as advertised, it still should make virtually no difference in this particular application.
I will be very interested if anyone can offer counter-arguments showing ways I might be proven incorrect in theory - in other words, describe a cogent technical argument showing why the alleged improvements resulting from cryo-treating otherwise-new condition AC outlets should be both probable and audible. I may be missing something important here, but please tell me not just the 'what' you're convinced you've observed, but the 'how' and maybe the 'why' of it that makes your observations not only possible but logical. I know you have your anecdotal arguments; you've already offered them (as well as arguments about why Eldartford's tests may not be valid). I find those arguments to be of debatable validity themselves, but that's not my point. What I'm looking for are good supporting hypothetical explanations of why I shouldn't ascribe your anecdotally positive results as being due to psychology as the only possible cause. Either that, or just admit that psychology could be it, and you don't care (as well you shouldn't, provided you're able to be honest with yourself about it), or at least admit you have no idea how cryo could audibly improve the sound of an outlet but you're still convinced it does (a position also known as the 'Mpingo defense').
Of course, failing all that, you could also just tell me to shut up and go to hell...Happy listening, Z. :-) |
Stehno: No 'disgrace' at all in taking on the risk of an experiment like this in public (would Maxgain?). And I wonder, philosophically speaking if you'd ultimately feel you really gained more at the end of the day, had you happened to choose the correct outlet instead?... |
[Ahem. Sorry again for the 'novel' here, folks...]
Hdm: I agree that it would seem self-evident that if switching to a cryo'd outlet could make an incremental improvement, then switching more than just one outlet within the system would presumably make a greater improvement. In my own case, since I don't really buy into this concept and am not therefore so curious about it as to expend large sums or much time investigating it, and since the outlets that came installed in my Power Wedge Ultra are obviously of much better physical quality than my old wall outlet is, the one outlet at the wall is all I'm going to replace. As I indicated before, if I hear an improvement I won't be terribly surprised given the lousy state of my old outlet - but of course if I do, there's no way in my circumstances I'll be able to attribute that to cryo per se. As promised, I will post my anecdotal impressions here, but nobody, including myself, will want to draw any grand conclusions from that.
One thing, though - above you say, "So do the results so far invalidate my (or other peoples' positive) experiences? Not in my opinion, I'm quite comfortable with what I have found and what I hear (whether it be psychological or not!)." And Eldartford says, "Stehno...As I said in an earlier post, there is a 50 percent chance of guessing right, or wrong, so one guy's test doesn't prove much, one way or the other."
I feel this is fundamentally incorrect. I'm compelled to point out, about Stehno's results, that had he succeeded in correctly identifying the cryo'd outlet based on his auditioning, it is true that the skeptics such as myself would have (rightly) maintained that since he had a 50/50 chance of doing so anyway, this would not have provided any supporting evidence that cryo makes an audible improvement in this application as advertised. However, the reverse is not true in the same way!
The skeptics' argument starts with the assumption that no real audible difference probably exists to be heard. Therefore, if someone claims to hear a difference and is proven correct in their identification, it can be based on nothing more than chance and psychology until enough blind-testing data is amassed to give the results statistical weight.
The argument of the cryo-advocates, on the other hand, is based on just the opposite assumption: that real audible differences do in fact exist, that we should be able to hear them, and that the improvements are significant and worthwhile. Therefore, if they can't be heard by a believer (as was apparently the case with Stehno's auditioning), something other than mere testing probability must be invoked to explain that failure, *despite this being only one trial*. This takes us down the slippery slope of resorting to wondering about all sorts of possibly-invalidating variables in the testing (see Lak 6/1 "In my opinion it can all be system dependent...There might also be an issue with how clean the AC power is including the noise on the AC line"), but the bottom line in this case is that Stehno reported easily hearing improvements attributed to cryo with the same system/powerline/ears/etc. in the past.
So, excepting day-to-day variability - something the cryo-advocates seem to assume is insignificant next the obvious improvements allegedly wrought - this one result should be enough to raise serious questions in objective observers' minds about the possibility of psychology playing a central role here. Although Stenho's results by no means conclusively disprove the audibility of cryo for outlets in all circumstances (and as I wrote about above, I find the design of the 'tests' themselves leave much to be desired), the two sides of this testing coin are *not* equivalent, due precisely to the differences in the claims made, and simple probability should play only a minor role in the outcomes if the cryo-advocates are right about its obvious efficacy.
Maxgain: You said:
"Zaikesman, so if anyone hears an improvement from a cryo treated outlet in your opinion they are deluded and foolish? But if a guy tube rolls for weeks that's science. Oh brother! Wow. I bet it would take several years of A/B comparisons to determine which of two pairs of IC cables "sounds better". I'm just glad you seem to enjoy your system. It shocks me that you own a tube amp at all. Are you sure that it sounds better than your old amp? It could all be in your head? But of course you did an A/B."
1) 'Deluded' possibly, but 'foolish' no (although I never actually said either thing) - as long as that individual is happier with their sound, who am I to complain? Yes, I would like to see both more modesty about some of the claims made and a more satisfying technical explanation of why a cryo'd outlet ought to sound better, but we're not exactly endangering lives here, just spending discretionary income however it pleases us. My main point is that a lot of the casual auditioning procedures that I'm seeing described as allowing people to arrive at their positive conclusions about the cryo'ing of outlets are just not capable of supporting the level of certainty portrayed.
2) The tube-rolling process, at least in my case, comes much closer to what I consider fairly reliable evidence for drawing conclusions and basing decisions on. Yes, I A/B tubes extensively before feeling pretty comfortable that I have a handle on most of what's changing, to what degree, and how important that is. Same with amps. Same with interconnects, where I also do bypass tests using the tape loops to compare interconnects A and B vs. no added interconnect at all, to see which model is the more faithful to its input. This is an extremely revealing and much less subjective method than only doing conventional listening for determining interconnect fidelity ; everyone should try it sometime (and not only with interconnects, but preamps themselves can also be bypass-tested, something addressed in an archived thread I started).
3) Maybe a lot of things about me would "shock" you, I don't know. But to me it makes a lot more sense that changing tubes - an active device within the audio pathway - would be audible than temperature-treating an otherwise-fine AC outlet. (And as I detailed before, that's independent of whether or not cryo actually functions as advertised in the technical sense, due mostly to the tiny fraction of the AC powerline pathway the metal bits in an outlet represent, plus a few other reasons such as the nature of the signal it carries, the fact that cryo doesn't address contact integrity, etc. that I broke down above. It also makes more sense to me that an aftermarket AC powercord could make differences like I've heard.)
Or to put it in terms of "shock" as you say, it doesn't shock me that different tubes sound different, and it doesn't shock me that Eldartford couldn't hear a difference between two otherwise-identical outlets where one was cryo'd - but it does surprise me just a bit that so many ostensibly intelligent and perceptive audiophiles apparently see no need to question themselves for thinking they hear differences in an area which they can't come up with a plausible technical explanation for, and they seem so ready to dismiss even the possibility of its being primarily psychological in nature. But at least you admitted that you "can't say it's the cryo or not" (and Hdm indicated he didn't care if it was psychology or not) that's responsible for your enthusiasm, and I will certainly go back and read through your blow-by-blow account on the other thread as you recommend.
But before you walk away shaking your head, know that yes, personal enjoyement of music and sound is primary with me as I assume it is with you, but I also place a high value on truth - both in terms of trying to figure out what is truly going on and being truthful with myself about my ability to do so (the 'truthfulness' of sound aside, a separate can of worms). I don't mind saying "I don't know" or "I can't hear it", or admitting my impressions could mostly be "in my head", bcause at this level and these days, high end audio is all about small subjective changes IMO. Of course all these small changes can be aesthetically important to an attentive listener, but I also feel that if any perceived change has a basis in reality, there will be an explainable cause for its action. We may not always know that reason, but it will exist. So the reasons given for the action of tweaks must be examined, and if they're found to be wanting in logic or technical explication - or absent altogether - the very real phenomenon of psychology's impact on auditory perception must be considered, if the truth is important to us.
In the case of cryo'd outlets the psychological explanation makes the most sense to me, and absent someone giving me a good technical rebuttal to my arguments against the likelihood of audibility regarding cryo'd outlets from above, I doubt I'll change my mind about that even if like my Porter Port as much as much as you do, again for reasons I've already listed. But no matter what I think about the sound of the Porter Port, I won't extrapolate this to form prejudices about cryo in all possible system applications (despite whatever my results might seem to portend for the trustworthiness of the cryo-enthusiasts), both because I know my 'test' won't be good enough, and because other uses for cryo might make more sense to me in theory. And that's the truth, Ruth. :-) |
Hdm: Cure for my skepticism? You're a bigger optimist than I thought! (Especially after the Eldartford and Stehno experiences above...What does it take to shake your faith that this tweak might not be everything you thought?) But I'll tell you what: convince me of why a cryo'd outlet ought to make my system sound better in theory - just one reason that makes sense is enough - and I'll do it (minus the fridge business).
P.S. - These old two-prong outlets don't have a green groundwire inside (just 2 black and 2 white), so I got a separate groundwire today (12ga.), should be able to install PP tomorrow...Anyone here have any tips on how best to check for proper grounding of the box (it's metal) without frying my ass? (Not that some of you probably wouldn't enjoy that about now... ;^) |
I thought you would say something like that about why your faith is still strong. Yes, it's only what you hear that matters to you, but maybe it's time to dial-back on the hearty recommendations for others or at least qualify them somewhat, and to take a second look at the conditions under which other adopters reported their observations of positive improvements. Stehno was one of those converted adopters before he added an element of objectivity to his testing, but I'm not sure what he's certain of today. Sometimes it does seem that the more ephemeral or debatable an 'improvement' in high end audio is, the more vociferous a group of audiophiles forms to support it. It's almost as if more concrete improvements would just be too boring and easily percieved by anyone with ears to seem exciting. (Or maybe it's just that concrete improvements are too hard to come by anymore in this hobby, so fetishizing minutiae blown-up to larger-than-life proportions is how we compensate.) Certainly Maxgain isn't the only audiophile to feel some degree of contempt for what he sees as overly-rigorous auditioning checks and balances ; I think there could be some attractive element of what we might call 'audio machismo' at work in seeming able to confidently proclaim one's sonic impressions, without injecting doubt or qualifiers, based on very subjective auditioning experience.
[This is a prefered mode of audio salesmen BTW - just the other day I was in a showroom where a guy was trying to audition two speakers against each other ; the salesman came in and asked which one he liked best. The customer said he liked elements of each and wasn't sure, but was leaning toward the one with the fuller bass. The salesman replied that it was obvious to him, one of the speakers sounded 'clearer' than the other, so that was it. I didn't say anything, but what was 'obvious' to me was that the one speaker he was trying to sell, a high-order stand-mount 2-way, 'clearly' sounded like a woofer and a tweeter working separately, whereas the one the customer seemed to prefer unmolested, a first-order floor-standing 3-way (I know, why compare these two?), sounded more coherent and yes, fuller in the bass, so of course the other speaker thrust more 'detail' at you more and could be said to sound 'clearer' even if it didn't sound as natural to me. The certainty tactic seemed to be working ; after the customer registered a meek protest, I decided I had to leave the room when he began letting his preference be swayed by the salesman's greater apparent confidence. I'll mention that the only reason I went into this shop, which I generally avoid even though I can walk to it from my house, was to meet with an Audiogoner who was buying a cable from me. That's karma for the bricks-and-mortar store for ya! But I did go home having purchased a $42 tweak...]
I've learned I can't always care so much what others say they hear. It's not a matter of trust ; I trust Albert Porter implicitly both to be entirely forthcoming and to assess sonic qualities (his appraisal of the tubes he sent me to try out jibed pretty much exactly with what I heard). But I told him when I bought the Porter Port that I didn't sign on to the cryo'd-outlet bandwagon in theory - to me, it's more likely there were other reasons in play if he heard an improvement. I trusted Stehno's hearing and opinions enough to take up his recommendation on auditioning a speaker cable (through purchasing it, I might add) which is now my reference. Also Psychicanimal, we've confirmed many of the same basic findings tweaking our 1200's with the KAB stuff, but I've told him flat-out I can't accept it when he says his audio-buddies can hear those same improvements when he plays his system for them *over the telephone*. Again, I think other reasons for such an impression are much more likely. (BTW, I don't personally find it beyond imagining that there might be some audible differences among various models of outlets, mostly because I'm willing to believe some variation in connection integrity could exist, maybe as well as conductor robustness, that could affect current capacity under high demand.)
Anyway, about the reason you give that cryo could lower an outlet's resistance: I addressed this above, but I'll do it again in more focused detail here (and in case you couldn't read my post that far :-)
Let's ignore all the wiring from the power station to the utility pole transformer and from the pole to the house. Let's just talk about the wiring from the breaker panel to the outlet. Let's assume this wiring has some resistance per foot we'll call X, and is 30ft. long yielding a total resistance of 30X. Let's also assume that the conductors inside our outlet have that same resistance X per foot, or X/12 for the one inch of conductor we'll say is in there. Ignoring the final five feet represented by the AC powercord and everything before the breaker box, our components are seeing a total resistance presented to their power supplies of 30X + X/12.
Now, let's assume that if we cryo the outlet, its resistance drops from 1/12X to zero, becoming a perfect superconductor for that one inch of powerline pathway (obviously an impossibility, so this is better than a best-case scenario in real life). This means the total powerline resistance under our definition is now just 30X. This is about the same thing as if we had simply shortened our 30ft. in-wall wiring run by one inch, or a reduction of 1/360 or under .3% of the total powerline resistance seen by the components' power supplies (and remember, this is for a totally non-resistive outlet, much better than I suspect can actually be achieved by cryo in real life). The outlet's connection integrity has stayed the same. Again, I ask: why should we think this trivially minor drop in the powerline resistance will cause such an effect on our components' power supplies' performance as to be clearly audible at the speakers? I think a better explanation is needed - or more likely that one doesn't exist (well, it does exist, but it doesn't have anything to do with the metal inside outlets, it has to do with the gray matter inside heads). But heaven knows I'm no electrical engineer, so if something is fundamentally amiss with my reasoning about this resistance argument, please somebody set me straight.
BTW, I'm curious to read further thoughts from both Eldartford and Stehno at some point here... |
I think I'll sign off from this thread with a few apropos lines lifted from a Blondie chestnut:
"No I don't believe in luck
No I don't believe in circumstance no more
Accidents never happen
In a perfect world
Precognition in my ears
Complications disappear" |
Eldee: I regret if there are any Jehovah's Witnesses out there reading along, but I was LOL at that analogy! Too true...I once did the same thing (invite them in) when I was just a teenager. A husband and wife I believe - got them something to drink and we all made ourselves comfortable in the living room. I guess they gamely tried keeping it up for about 10 minutes before realizing that they *really did* have a sincere atheist on their hands and it was going to be easier pickings elsewhere. I remember feeling slightly bummed at the time that they so readily gave up on saving my soul, but the whole exercise in retrospect seems a little gratuitous and unkind of me (then again, they *did* ask for it)...Can't accuse Hdm of being OK with seeing me burn in audio hell though!
Geoffkait: There are actually people out there cryogenically freezing vinyl records? (Don't think I'd do that to my valuable vinyl...) What's next, freezing the little wooden disks? Anyway, if I owned a cryo lab, I wouldn't be offering any explanations either. Around 10 years ago I drove a beer truck for a while, back when 'ice-brewed' beer was the latest industry fad. I remember the owner of the distributorship telling us salesman that he had consulted with master brewers at the breweries and been told that in reality, there was nothing behind the hype: the beer was the same as it would have been otherwise given the same recipe, with the sole exception that if you lowered the temperature enough to cause water to precipitate out of solution and then removed some of those ice crystals before allowing them to dissolve back out again into the brewing beer, you would slightly raise the alcohol concentration by lowering the water content. Big deal. Apparently the brewers didn't want this to be public knowledge because, among other reasons, they didn't want to be seen as promoting higher alcohol content of beers. Did that fact stop multimillion-$ ad campaigns from launching the biggest beer craze since light beers? Ha! (It didn't prove to have exactly the same legs though.) What could it be about the idea of freezing stuff that seems to give people such a kick?... |
Geoffkait: It was meant to be a funny story on a slimly related note, not really a perfect analogy. You read it slightly wrong though, it was the owner of the distributorship (who employed me - I was one of the salesmen) that visited the breweries periodically and was told this directly by the brewers. (Yes, there really are people with the title 'master brewer' working in breweries - had I stayed in that job longer, I would've also toured a brewery and met one. In fact, some breweries conduct public tours, but I doubt you'll get told the truth about 'ice-brewing' if you go on one.) Anyway, we were in turn told it by him, our boss. He had nothing to gain by being so honest and open about the issue with his sales force, but getting educated in beer was part of our job, and he was an intelligent, approachable guy who knew the official explanations were kind of fuzzy and that there was snickering in the ranks when the stuff was introduced, so he checked into it and gave us the straight dope. It does make more sense to me than the nebulous implications of the ice-beer ad campaigns did. Plus, my grandfather (who was still alive at the time) had been a brewing chemist at a consulting company in that industry for many years, and although he was long retired when ice-beer came out, he concurred that he could devise no scenario in his mind by which ice-brewing (as the method had been described to me, the details of which I've forgotten by now) could make any real difference. As to your question about whether ice-beer tasted different, there were confounding variables - it was not exactly the same recipe as any of the other beers. Which I'm sure was done deliberately, otherwise it would have tasted just like another beer, so it was really just a creative excuse to come out with a different beer with a different marketing angle. (And about whether cryo in high end audio is officially a 'fad' at this point, I don't know that we can define that one either, but I see elements of faddish behavior surrounding it, just like a lot of things in this hobby.)
Anyway, I just finished up installing the Porter Port and am playing the music I listened to last yesterday, Wayne Shorter's "Juju" (RVG ed. Blue Note CD) and Lorraine Ellison's "Stay With Me" (Warner Bros. W7 green label LP)*. Do I hear any differences? Who the hell knows? It's been almost 24 hours and I don't even know what my volume settings from yesterday were. But overall my system sounds about the same, maybe just a tad worse (could be nothing, could be anything, but it's true that the system, after being unplugged while I worked, probably isn't in the same state of warm-up as it was yesterday). This despite that I also polished the contacts of my wall plug and removed the 3-prong adaptor in addition to installing the new outlet and restripping and polishing new bare wire ends inside the box**. Of course the only thing this 'proves' is that I can't detect an overwhelming difference, not that I couldn't hear any improvement at all under different circumstances. But it sure sounds a lot like no improvement at all (does this support the supposed break-in requirement?). We'll see if I suspect any differently over the next few days...
*If you're a fan of Aretha Franklin's late-60's Atlantic work, don't pass up this little-known Jerry Ragavoy-produced gem from the same era should you ever stumble across it (or a reissue). The once-legendary but now almost forgotten title single (not the Faces tune by the same name) has an epic intensity to surpass Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" and a more magnificent pathos than "Layla".
**What represents an acceptable ground voltage reading across the neutral and ground terminals? I think I'm getting a little over 1v. |
I'm cryoing right now! OK, the best 'Replacement outlet' I ever witnessed was when their late, great lead guitarist Bob Stinson got so blind drunk on stage he turned around and took a whizz on his own damn amplifier (kept right on playing afterward too - it didn't sound any different... :-) |
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. |
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? :-) |
[...P.F. Sloan/Steve Barri, '65. Uh, mebbe I should've jumped off a bridge instead... ;^) ] |
Followup: I tried an informal experiment. My gear rack is on casters, so I repositioned it (from where it lives centered between the speakers) to a spot over to the side where the main AC cord could just reach both my normal outlet (now the Porter Port) and one on another wall that I don't normally use for the system. This other outlet is an old two-pronger like the one I replaced, and as with that one I used an adaptor to ground the connection. But this outlet is also on a different circuit than my usual outlet, so the comparison involves altering more variables than just the outlet quality and the use of the adaptor. (I moved one Quiet Line to whichever outlet I was plugging into, and doused the lights on that circuit.)
With the rack set up this way, I repeatedly auditioned one cut ("Dirty Old Town" from Rod Stewart's first album), played on CD instead of LP because my phonostage is battery-powered so I figured the digital front end could be more sensitive to powerline changes. Switchover between outlets was accomplished in under five minutes, allowing some time for the amps to re-warm. Upon first listening to both outlets, I was mildly surprised to think I did hear some slight differences, which I would describe as being between a more sharply defined, separated, brighter, and dynamic presentation with the Porter Port/normal AC line, and a more blended, spacious, mellow-balanced, and compressed presentation via the old outlet/alternate line.
At first I was almost thinking I might prefer some aspects of the sound using the alternate line (at least with that source material), but switching back and forth a few times made me much less confident that I was indentifying any real differences. I know this isn't an ideal way to test, but I quickly began losing interest as I became less convinced that there were any differences I could reliably track, or that really mattered. I could have been fatigued or bored, but by the last of about five rounds of auditions, I was ready to conclude that I couldn't tell the two outlets/lines apart by ear, or that if any differences did exist, they were too small and subjective for me to get worked up over.
So, I put the rack back to its usual position and powered-off for the night. Maybe I'll get curious enough some other time to try this again with more extended program material and listening sessions, maybe not... |
Followup postscript: Today (next day) I received a powercord I bought here on Audiogon, and threw it right into the system, supplying the power amp. Swapping it a few times with my reference cord, and playing one cut repeatedly in a similar test to the one described above (different CD though: Red Garland Quintet "All Mornin' Long", chosen because this test required me to run in one-speaker mono), I had little difficulty hearing changes in the presentation, which only got easier to identify with certainty as I went through about the same 1/2 hour round of casual auditions as with the outlets/lines yesterday. Take that info for what you will... |
Not so limited Kana813 - I must've seen 'em live at least 10 times, and they actually crashed at my house one night on their very first tour; we even jammed. However, you are correct in noting that any conclusion involving the sainted 'Mats may not be rationally supportable...
Anyway, you whizz on your amps; I'll whizz on my outlets ;^) |
