I have never been the guy who walks into an Audio Store to look for equipment. My real world visits to Audio Stores have always left me disappointed, thinking my system sounds better than that!!! For my 40+ years in the hobby I have always dealt with private individuals, not retail stores. My education/journey started in the early 80's in Hobbs NM. There was a local, family owned camera shop that
had McIntosh Tube Amps in the window that grabbed my attention??? I went inside and asked about the Tube Gear? I was instructed to go the back of the store, where I found the Son selling High End Electronics. Over many visits and many demo's he starts to teach me what a sound stage was, and how to achieve it. Don't laugh at this, but it is funny. I buy my first set of Spica Speakers, take them home, hook them up, and put on Aldo Nova - Life is just a Fantasy. I turn it up way to loud and proceed to cook the woofers on both speakers within the first 2 minutes of listening. What a great introduction into High End Audio. I was 25 years old, young and stupid, making to much money in a small town. So what did I do next...go buy more speakers!!! Over time I bought a Conrad Johnson 3 Tube Preamp and a Hafler Power Amp. then I started my education on Wires. Not understanding anything about wires whatsoever, I had no idea where to start. The Camera Shop guy "gives me" a pair of Vampire Wire Interconnects ($40.00 Value) and a set of Randall Research Speaker Cables ($350.00 Value) to demo. OMG my world was rocked!!! Sound stage, bottom end, vocals, detail...everything I had not experienced prior to that. Move forward a few years, it's 1984 and I get transferred to Phoenix. At the time, Phoenix was a market full of independent, home operated dealers. I spent many hours, in may basements and man caves. I gained a ton of knowledge from many people. One of them was a guy by the name of Pat Oxford, an Old Hippie who built, and rebuilt Vintage Tube Gear. His life consisted of Coffee, Cigarettes and the smell of Solder, not to mention party favors. His brands of choice were Fisher and Dynaco. He had a set of Vintage 15" Tannoy Silvers for listening. Once again my world gets rocked causing me to move everything to the next level. Now I have a guy who will build my electronics to my wants and needs. I proceeded to buy a set of 12" Tannoy HPD's to try and duplicate what I'm hearing at Pat's house, and I move into a 100% Randall Research Wire loom in my system. Now I'm achieving a sound like I've never heard before, and I'm only 30 years old. Move forward again, now it's 1990 and I move to Michigan. I have an established system that I love listening to. I meet a guy by the name of John Seeberger who works for the school system and repairs electronics on the side. John is also a Dynaco fanatic, here we go again!!! New resource. new circuits, new ideas. He modifies my existing gear, and once again moves me to the next level. So what do I do??? I go and buy a set of Vintage 15" Tannoy Reds, and I'm in Heaven!!! Jump ahead to 2010, 30 years has passed. I took time out to raise my kids and now I have time on my hands, so let's go play with the stereo again. Now I have gear with IEC connections and I ponder the idea of a power cord upgrade. Again, I know nothing about them, or where to start. In my research I stumble across a Cryo Treated cord, I literally LOL thinking...what will they come up with next!!! I call John for his opinion and he tells me that it's the latest craze, again, it's only 2010. I buy an inexpensive cable to try, and I'm blown away by the results. I think to myself, I can do this on my own. So I buy some wire and a few plugs sets, have them treated by NitroFreeze out of Mass and put them in my system. WOW...what have I done!!! My first thought was...I can sell these, and just like that...Ice Age Audio is created. I started with buying plug sets 3-5 at a time and 25-50 feet of wire, having them treated, and selling them on ebay. Now I buy wire by the 1000's of feet at a time and plug sets by the 100's at a time. I changed Cryo Facilities in approximately 2012, and it changed everything for us. We now use Industrial Cryogenic Engineering out of Mt Pleasant Michigan. We have a proprietary treatment method through them, in other words, we are the only cable company that they work with, and their end results show a 10%-15% improvement in end results performance over the competition. Since they are in Michigan it removed the shipping fees, and his treatment cost was 1/2 of NitroFreeze. It's a win, win situation. Since running the company I have met many people within the industry, one of them being Don Sachs. He was so impressed with our results that we started building cables for him to use with his pieces. Don and I continue to work together to this day. Our company has sold 1000's of cables globally to all aspects of this wonderful hobby. We now offer a full line of products including Power Cords, RCA & XLR Interconnects, Speaker Cables, USB's and HDMI's, and all of them outperform the overpriced competition. I now have an understanding of Cryo Treating, and what it does to assorted metals. I now know that each metal has it's own sound signature in each application. And I'm happy to share this knowledge if you'd like to learn. Now my listening system consists of a Don Sachs Preamp, a John Seeberger Dynaco 70 Mod of his own design, from the chassis on up, and I had the entire amp Cryo Treated. I have a Shanling CD-T100 Tube CD Player, and an old Sony CDP-X777ES CD Player. All of this is running through a pair of Vintage 15" Tannoy Monitor Golds in custom, Spalted Maple, 10 cubic foot cabinets, built to Tannoy Specs. I currently own 8 sets of Tannoy's, 2 sets of mono blocks, 2 stereo amps, 4 different tube preamps. All of the main power pieces in my collection are either Don Sachs, Pat Oxford, or John Seeberger. Moral of the story...There are tons of independents out there that are offering products that will outperform all of the major name brands for a fraction of the cost. High Prices don't always equate to High Quality. Give some of us a chance, you'll be surprised at what we're actually doing for the industry. Rick Parker - Ice Age Audio
