michael green wrote:

Hi Geoff

Is that who did the CD your sending to Bill?

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

Actually, the CD I'm sending to Bill was not cryo'd, only frozen overnight in my trusty home freezer. The working man's cryo. I would not have been able to evaluate Modern Times and post results in a timely fashion had I sent the CD off to Cryopro since there is usually a week or more turnaround from the time I ship to the time I receive. Cryopro does the run on Fridays and ships on Tuesdays. Then there's another week delay once I get it back until the thermal shock wears off and won't color the sound so that would have meant a two week delay, minimum.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

michael green wrote:

Hi Geoff

To refresh, how long did it take for the CD you freeze to stablize?

thanks

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

Good point. Since the temperatures are a lot higher in home freezer there is no severe thermal shock as there is with deep cryo, but there could be a little. So, you can play the CD as soon as it reaches room temperature. But I think it's a good idea to allow the CD to THAW SLOWLY by placing it in the WARMER refrigerator section for about two hours after removing it from the freezer, then take it out of the refrigerator and place on table until it reaches room temperature, which should be rather quickly. Be sure to WIPE the data side of the CD with clean dry lint free cloth or Kleenex to remove any residual water or any chemical that might surface during the freeze thaw cycle. Check surface with breath test.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Catch22 wrote:

Really, I do. Honest. The things that I find objectionable with Modern Times are the things that "aren't" in the recording to begin with. You can't tweak or tune them back into it. Those things no doubt existed at the time it was being created, and then they were obliterated out of the music to achieve some other goal. Perhaps the goal was to achieve the Dylan vocals that were rendered on the final CD and that meant all the other stuff had to be traded away into the black hole of compression?

Nobody is saying that you can't like a bad recording or that you can't tune a bad recording to like it even more. It just doesn't make a bad recording a good one.

None of this stuff we are talking about is new. This is how the whole loudness war issue started in the first place.

I suspect this might be the perfect time to introduce the Backfire Effect. The Backfire Effect is a psychological effect that is described as an *irrational reaction* to having one's strongly held beliefs challenged by contradictory beliefs or contradictory evidence.

From Rational Wiki: "The backfire effect occurs when, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger. The effect has been demonstrated experimentally in psychological tests, where subjects are given data that either reinforces or goes against their existing biases - and in most cases people can be shown to increase their confidence in their prior position regardless of the evidence they were faced with."

It is believed that the Backfire Effect is why you can never win an on-line argument and why you hardly ever see any audiophile conversions, you know, from staunch Naysayer to firm Believer. In fact, the chances of a Conversion occurring are about as slim as the chances of a camel being able to pass through the eye of a needle.

Let's take the present example of the data on the CD. Many audiophiles believe that what you see is what you get, that the data encoded on the CD CAN'T BE CHANGED OR MANIPULATED so that the sound when played back on a good system will reveal all of the data on the disc. Of someone says that you are not hearing all of the information on the disc, the reaction is usually not to investigate why someone might make such an apparently outrageous statement but to hold more strongly to the belief that one is hearing ALL OF THE DATA ON THE DISC. And that the wisdom of the original designers, like Gods, are infallible, and that the Reed Solomon Error Correction Codes are infallible. Whether the Backfire Effect comes from stubbornness, tweakaphobia, the refusal to listen to counter arguments, maybe they just want to be one the side that's winning, who knows?

Actually there are many reasons why you are definitely NOT hearing all the data that's on the CD AND why you are not even hearing what's on the CD CORRECTLY. Some of the reasons I say this include but are not limited to the effect of background scattered light on the outcome of all of the optical reading and analog and digital conversion in the CD player, the effect of vibration on the physical CD and how the Data is "contaminated" by the vibration, the effect of vibration on the electrical components in the player, including wires, fuses, etc., the damage to the sound produced by the RFI/EMI generated by the semiconductor chips in the player and the very deleterious effects of magnetic fields generated by the transformer on the sound. Notice I have only given physics reasons for why we're not hearing all the data, I haven't even broached the subject of mind matter interaction which, if I can be so bold, is a little beyond the scope of this forum, judging from the number of Backfire Effects I count here at the present time.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

JA, as well as others, have demonstrated many times that some things can measure bad and still sound good...without explanation. Sam was quick to notice the disc treatments having an audible effect on the sound. I remember him writing about the green pen treatment years ago.

I've never tried treating any CDs and so have no opinion really, but I do trust Sam's ears and I'm inclined to believe him when he says it works. The only reason I haven't done any experimentation of my own on the matter is that I've never found the CD sound objectionable in the first place. They make music to my ears and within my playback capabilities just fine. Well, assuming the recording is of decent quality, of course.

Do a "bit-perfect" rip of the CD to WAV or whichever format captures all of the bits, just like copying a computer file with CRC validation. Now the CD and player mechanism will no longer impede the sound.