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Cryo Treatment: does it provide improvements in sound or longevity?

I'd be interested in hearing from audiophiles that have actually tried Cryogenic treated tubes and listened to them vs non-treated. 

I would really prefer not to hear from folks from a theoretical point of view, or that have no experience.

The last time I bought a set of tubes for my amp, just for fun I got the Cryogenic treated ones. They are replacements on my Audio Research Ref 160s. My KT150s were approaching the end of life and I heard them getting hard sounding. So I switched them out. The new tubes immediately restored the amp to its beautiful normal sound. I heard no difference from Cryo... although if it was subtle... no way I would... this was no purposeful comparison. I guess I'll have to wait 3,000 hours to see if they last longer. 

Just wondering if someone with good equipment and a trained ear has done listening tests (not measurements) and made a conclusion. 

ghdprentice
slaw's avatar
slaw
26,520 posts
 

Always been unimpressed really. Seems more of a marketing ploy.

westcoastaudiophile
819 posts
 

"Cryo Treatment: does it provide improvements in sound or longevity?"

no, and no.

I designed SS analog circuits, used in large, up to few billion gates SOC (system on chip), to make sure there is no structural damage of different temperature driven materials expansion in whole devices, within storage / operational guaranteed temperature range.

Cryogenic temperature is outside guaranteed storage and operational temperature range, thus it will cause structural damage of tubes, mainly due to difference of TEC (temperature expansion coefficient) of materials used to build a tube! 

nice example of it: 

railway thermal expansion

ghdprentice's avatar
ghdprentice OP
9,466 posts
 

Great feedback guys. This is what I was hoping for. 

 

@erik_squires 

That is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking. You do get a bump from wiping all your connections. Not enough, for me, to do it religiously.

vinylshadow
556 posts
 

You might want to look into Townshend Audio's method of treating copper wires. Their Fractal treatment DOES make a big improvement to my ears. 

mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
6,506 posts
 

I bought the same exact pair of tubes, one pair cryo'ed and the other not.  The pairs were matched as close as possible, well within +/-1% of each other.

These was NO sonic difference in the pairs that I could detect.

Not sure about longevity, but SQ wise, a waste of money...

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