Cryogenic Tempering

Elgordo, I did not know about your hobby of shooting. It is one of mine too. I have a Schuman bull barrel fitted in my Carter Custom 1911 that has been cryo treated. Cryo was done prior to fitting and other work, so I did not get to run a before and after. I was assured that in addition to improved accuracy, the usable life expectancy would be increased. Wonder if this increase in life applies to stressed parts of audio equipment as well?

I am a believer in Cryo, having done this to cables, phono cartridge and the power supply of my Soundlab U-1's. I think that the excellent suggestion by Sugarbrie would be an inexpensive way to find out on your own piece of gear. Just keep in mind, at least from my experience, the break in process is reversed as well, requiring a whole new run in to hear the benefit of the cryo process. The larger the piece the longer time is required. I nearly went nuts waiting for the transformers in my Soundlab power supplies to settle in. I estimate it was nearly 3 months before the cryo job settled in to be better than before the process. So, please be patient about conclusions.

Kelly, the cartridge I got treated was done by a guy in Chicago ( I usually use Purist Audio ) who specializes in very small delicate pieces. The cartridge was a Benz Ruby 2, supplied by Musical Surroundings as an experiment. I do the photography for them, and we both entered into this to learn. The Benz was treated within it's original box, with the wood body left on. The idea was to reduce the shock to the rubber and glued parts and protect the delicate stylus. When I got it back and began to break it in, it took almost twice as long to get where it sounded right. There was an obvious change, and no doubt about the improvement. Most noticeable was in the transient response, the entire range of the cartridge from top to bottom and the speed with which it plumed the music was obvious. There was a completely relaxed and liquid character to the instruments, without any change to their position or to the image. The uppermost frequencies were greatly extended and increased in detail, but without the brightness that you might associate with this type of high frequency information. The only "downside" was in set up. It required even more obsessive attention to tracking and especially VTA. Missing the mark with all the additional information was brutal.

The cryo process for tubes has been experimented with to a great extent by Bruce Wenger of BWS Consulting. He has a web site, http://www.bws-tube.com/

If the information about cryo treatment is not listed at the site, you can ask via e-mail. Bruce does modifications, can repair older gear and is an excellent source for many of the tubes we audiophiles are looking for. He is very sensitive to the sound of things, not just an engineering viewpoint. In other words you can talk about the sound of tubes with him much like you can with Andy Bauwman at Vintage. Hope this helps.