No disrespect Fishboat, but dropping items into N2 does not constitute "cryo treating" and I doubt if you'd be taking anyone's money after doing it with any audiophile gear/paraphanalia as you'd probably be destroying it. Proper cryo does require some fairly substantial equipment, but that does not mean that cryo needs to be expensive; it is not. I've probably spent a few hundred dollars having items cryoed; given the money I have invested in music and my very modest system (it is indeed very modest compared to many members' systems here), that is what I would consider to be a very small amount of financial outlay for a pretty decent improvement in sonics.
Advocates of cryo will say that it will change (and that change will remain following return to room temperature) the
crystal structure of metals, and both cabling and receptacles, for example, measure with lower resistance following cryo treatment (and without any heat treatment I might add). Whether this will result in improved sound quality is open for argument I suppose.
Whether Lak's terminology above on "melting" is correct, I cannot say, but he is correct about MOV's, although certain MOV's may be more prone to damage than others in my experience. I cryoed two identical line conditioners with MOV's that had different manufacturing dates and slightly different MOV's; one set of MOV's had significant damage (although that damage did not seem to hamper the performance of the conditioner) while the other had no such damage.
I can say that, in my experience, every piece of cabling that I have done, as well as CD's, has been a positive experience. I have also cryoed two budget DVD players, one that benefited greatly (Cyberhome) and one that did not (Toshiba) seem to benefit. Someone else, whose opinion I respect, also cryoed the boards out of the Toshiba, as opposed to the entire player which I had done, and reported to me that he preferred the non-cryoed boards in the Toshiba.
