NOVELTY - Treating heavy crude oil (HCO) involves combining the HCO with an alkane containing solvent to form an HCO/solvent mixture; sonicating the mixture at audio frequency to precipitate asphaltenes from the HCO/solvent mixture; and separating the precipitated asphaltenes from the HCO/solvent mixture.    USE - For treating heavy crude oil (claimed).    ADVANTAGE - The method exhibits improved solvent deasphalting, without excessive blending and dilution, by virtue of much faster deasphalting at low solvent to oil ratios, including separation of asphaltenes from deasphalted oil in contrast to prior art methods. This improved deasphalting is achieved by applying low-frequency, high amplitude acoustic energy to the HCO-solvent process stream (i.e. sonication of the HCO-solvent mixture) followed by separation of precipitated solvent insolubles (asphaltenes) via filtration, centrifugation, settling, or other appropriate technique. The method results in SCO product that meets pipeline specifications in terms of active pharmaceutical ingredient gravity and viscosity. The method provides simplified, accelerated deasphalting of HCO's with non-polar solvents, under low frequency acoustic sonication at an audio frequency that is well below the ultrasonic range which is approximately 20000 Hertz. The method utilizes vigorous sonication to enhance solvent extraction of the non-asphaltene fraction from the HCO through enhanced mass transfer as a result of the sonication and secondary effects such as cavitation. The sonic reactors are large (beyond bench and lab scale) low frequency sonication reactors that have sufficient processing capacity for commercial applications. The sonic reactors are readily transportable and require no anchoring once on site. The energy and fluid dynamic conditions and energy intensity produced by sonication devices, and in particular by the sonic reactors, is advantageous for chemical process operations. The sonication enhances process reactions by causing intense mixing and other fluid dynamic effects such that sonication improves the selectivity or efficiency of the desired chemical or physical reaction.