Here's another thing not many people know, or are likely to believe (at least, in the beginning).... Your plain old domestic home freezer, while great for keeping peas frozen, is also a valuable tool for transmogrifying adverse energy fields into ones more beneficial to human senses. Peter Belt (of PWB Electronics Inc) discovered this some 25 years ago, following experiments with heating, and then cooling of audio signal cables. This method was actually well documented in various media outlets; the New York Times, Stereophile Magazine, Soundstage! Magazine (Online), and a demonstration of the effect for British tv was even put on YouTube. However! These all dealt with freezing at cryogenic temperatures, and the object being frozen was a CD. The understanding is that the process is changing the crystalline structure of the material frozen, realigning the molecules misaligned during the manufacturing stage. All well and good if the theory wasn't an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. The round hole is overlooked because proponents of the square peg theory have not gone further in their experiments, to try to get a deeper understanding of what is really going on. If they had, they would realize that you don't need cryogenic temperatures to get a similar effect of improved sound from freezing CD's. You also don't need CD's. You can freeze a book, a brass candlestick, kitchen cutlery, a set of dead batteries, a photograph of yourself.... all of these objects and more will have an immediate effect on your perception of sound. A permanent one, even, long after the frozen object has thawed.

In recent days, I've gone one step further with this. Two years ago, I detailed the freezing process on my website, "The Advanced Audiophile". It's a lengthy affair that requires 8-12 hours of freezing, and an even longer thawing time, because slow thaw is said to be the key to the improvements in perception of sound. In order to get an even deeper understanding of this, I tried experiments with very short periods of freezing time. How short? How about, 3 minutes? Too short? Make it two minutes then! And how long to let it thaw? Forget about thawing! Yes, what I'm saying is that I can freeze an object for as little as 30 seconds, and hear an improvement in perception of sound thereafter. Since this is a relatively new finding, I'm still not sure what the ideal time is, for this "flash freezing" process. To be "safe", I would try no less than 1 or 2 minutes. I do not claim the results are as good as using the full length process that the Belts advocate, which is detailed on my site. Probably not, and I don't know yet how it compares. I only claim that I can hear the differences using my shortened process, and with careful listening, perhaps you can too. If the experiment does result in a positive identification of differences, then for the observer, it would show that the given temperature and length of time in a domestic freezer would not be anywhere near enough to change the structure of the material, as the cryogenic advocates insist is the reason for the improvement in sound.

My flash freeze process should not be regarded as a substitute for the full PWB process, but it does make it easier to get immediate results from freezing objects. Which makes it easier to test for differences. Not everyone, I suppose, has an aural memory that can last the 16 hours it might require to properly "treat" an object under this full freezing process, and recall what their sound was like before they started the process. Like I say, any object can be flash frozen in a few mintues, and all have a chance of affecting our sound, whether they generate sound themselves or not. But I'd still say a good place to start is with things that generate sound; CD's, mp3 players, your car stereo, small speakers, remote controls, cell phones, etc. Listen to your sound, chuck 'em in the freezer, take them out, listen to your sound again. See if after the process your sound is a bit richer, less harsh, or more "musical", etc. Beltism could not possibly get any simpler than that!

This is an example, many actually, of members on an mp3 forum who tried my experiment of full-process freezing of an mp3 player. With great success.

Categories: Experiments