Audio Tweaks - Tweak Ref. 412

Description		Disclaimer
Freezing your cds

Reference #	Submitted by	Submitter rating	Cost
412	Dustin Blythe	Very Good	$2.50

Source		Brand
Various including Stereophile, Soundstages, May Belt

Construction
Just a box of freezer bags.

Setup
Take a cd and put it in a freezer bag. Place the bag in your freezer for at least five hours. (preferably overnight) Take the bag out of the freezer and place it in your refrigerator for five to six hours. Then take the bag and place it in a cool area for another five to six hours. Repeat process twice. When transferring bag to refridgerator, place it inside a folded towel to help slow the thawing process. Transfer the bag to the cool area inside the towel.

Use


Performance
The theory is freezing the cds and slowly thawing them reverses internal damage done to the cd at the pressing plant by the high heat inherent in the process. After freezing a few of my cds I noticed that there is greater definition between the instruments and that the high frequencies were sharper. Vocals were also sharper; perhaps due to the clarity of the high frequencies.

Other

Comments

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Frank	The trouble we go through to make CD's sound like analog!

Au Heung	So does it apply to newly bought CD only or works also for old used CD.

Leon	Had your chakras balanced lately?

MAC	Not so sure about this one...... I live in northern Canada,and CDs rotate in and out of the truck regularly,sometimes staying there for days,cycling this freeze-thaw idea over and over.I have never noticed any difference.And it gets damn cold up here! But...that said,I just put a few in the deep-freeze,will follow the method to the minute,and see what happens! How's that for an open mind!

MAC	After much skepticism,well,lets just say I am very impresssed.This has got to be one of the top 5 tweaks of all time.Thanx.

Renee	I go a totally different approach. I purchased encoding software online-I extract the tunes from cd's, re-encode them in mp3 high level variable bit rates (varies from 550-740),then burn the tunes I want. Much better results I might add than freezing the cd's. Songs have better stereo separation, higher resolution, and overall sound better than the original cd. Just my two cents worth.

Russ	Renee, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it is impossible to get better audio quality by encoding a CD to an MP3. You are throwing away information......it is physically impossible to make something better by removing information from the audio. If you really think that making a CD into a VBR MP3 makes it sound better, take your VBR MP3 and expand it to WAV, then back to MP3. Do that a couple of times and there won't be much left....it will sound pretty horrible. Thanks, - Russ