Dear All

After posting my comments on the P.W.B. discussion group (in response
to Keith Howard's reply in Hi-Fi News) I have received a number of E-
mails asking if I would expand on two points I had raised.
Unfortunately, my response to these two points will be quite lengthy
so I will respond now to the first point and will respond to the
second point at a later time.

The first point in my earlier comments is where I refer to the audio
industry sitting on a `time bomb'. - ever since the technique of
freezing was shown to improve `sound'.

To illustrate what I mean, let me use a hypothetical situation of a
manufacturer of a range of audio equipment (although many people will
realise that the hypothetical situations I use are very, very close
to the truth - I just do not name names). Let us call this
hypothetical company "Super Audio Ltd" and look at the dilemma this
manufacturer could face.

The manufacturer of Super Audio equipment has an annual turnover of
$24 million. Which means that if that is the figure which the
manufacturer receives, then that means that the actual buying public
must be spending over $3 million PER MONTH on Super Audio products.
Say the manufacturer has tried the experiment of freezing all the
components, wires and bits and pieces before the equipment is finally
assembled and finds that the equipment sounds so much better after
doing this.
Say at a board meeting in the September the senior engineers discuss
the possibility of beginning to freeze all the components and bits
and pieces so that by the following January, all the Super Audio
equipment coming out of the factory will sound so much better, will
sound so much better than their competitors equipment and this will
give them an edge over their competitors!! But, the engineers then
begin to consider all the implications.

What about all the millions of dollars worth of identical but
UNFROZEN equipment already in Super Audio's stockrooms awaiting
despatch? What about all the millions of dollars worth of identical
but UNFROZEN equipment already in the Retailers showrooms and
stockrooms? What about all the millions of dollars worth of
identical but UNFROZEN equipment in the overseas agents stockrooms
and overseas retailers showrooms ? What about all the millions of
dollars worth of identical but UNFROZEN equipment in containers, on
the high seas, on the way to overseas agents ?
What about the $3 million worth of UNFROZEN Super Audio equipment
which the buying public will buy that September? Ditto October.
Ditto November. Ditto December. What would happen when everyone
discovered that if only they had all waited until January, the
equipment they purchased would have sounded so much better ? Also,
the second hand value of UNFROZEN Super Audio equipment would
collapse overnight !! The manufacturer realises that there would be
a riot, that they would be lynched !! So, they decide to do
nothing, to keep quiet, so the buying public misses out, and the
manufacturer makes sure that the Hi-Fi magazines do not alert the
buying public to what could be achieved by the freezing process.

Now, multiply this one situation by all the manufacturers of audio
equipment and you realise why I refer to the situation facing the
audio industry as a "time bomb".

I have just read an article showing some reports of what happened
when a few enthusiasts (people who would be regarded by the audio
industry as "Amateurs in audio") decided to `freeze' interconnects
and CD players. And there was the earlier article in the New York
Times describing how quite a number of people were cryogenically
freezing musical instruments and perceiving quite remarkable
improvements.

The traditional Hi-Fi magazines should be full of such reports. The
readers of the traditional magazines naively believe that these
traditional Hi-Fi magazines are keeping them (the readers) informed
of all the latest developments, of the latest thinking etc. Little
do they know just what information is being withheld from them !! -
information which should be available so that they can make
informed purchasing judgements.

When the subject of freezing comes up from time to time in Tweakers
Asylum and Audio Asylum and other Internet sites, the ridiculers step
in and argue that freezing cannot possibly have any effect - end of
discussion !! All the discussion usually centres around freezing
Compact Discs. The Compact Disc is the easiest thing for most
people to experiment with so why so many people actually refuse to do
experiments I can never understand. Everyone who listens to Compact
Discs and audio will always have a Compact Disc that they do not like
the sound of, that they never play because they are disappointed in
the sound - I would have thought such a disc would be an ideal thing
to use as a test freezing. No one is asking these people to
experiment with their favourite Compact Disc, there are many non
favourite discs that they could use. In the UK, from time to time,
the Hi-Fi magazines will carry a free CD on their front cover, so in
the UK we have a useful source of identical and cheap Compact Discs
to experiment with. It is 10 years since Robert Harley's cryogenic
freezing article appeared in Stereophile and yet practically the
whole of the audio industry is silent. The ridiculers in the audio
web sites are doing a marvellous job for the audio industry. Can
you imagine the devastating effect on the audio industry if someone
came out in the audio magazines describing how they had `frozen' a
Krell amplifier and it sounded so much better than an identical but
unfrozen one. Ditto the wildly expensive Wilson loudspeakers.
Ditto this exotic, expensive CD player., that exotic, expensive pre-
amplifier., that exotic, expensive recorder. From that moment, how
could any UNFROZEN equipment be sold ?
And, when the thoughts turn to exotic interconnects and cables. How
can any UNFROZEN Audioquest cable, Monster Cable, Kimber cable, etc.
be sold ?

And, just to make matters even worse, when the buying public
gradually begin to do their own freezing experiments and realise that
after freezing their existing audio equipment, cables and
interconnects and can achieve an improvement in their sound, they
begin to realise that their existing (frozen) equipment now sounds
better than anything (unfrozen) which the retailer is trying to sell
them new !!! And this is before any consideration is given to any
P.W.B. treatments. Take those into consideration and the bomb just
gets bigger.

If members of the audio industry had been seriously interested in
investigating the freezing technique further after Robert Harley's
article, perhaps now, some 10 years later, more people than Peter
Belt would have had to come to the conclusion that the beneficial
effect of freezing has nothing to do with `affecting the audio
signal' - that there is something else `going on'. This realisation
only comes about when one realises that freezing something which
could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be associated with the
audio system and yet one can obtain a similar beneficial effect on
the `sound' !!!

May Belt.
11th August 2001.

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* http://www.belt.demon.co.uk
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