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It used to sound better late at night, but I now have a power conditioner, which has made a considerable difference for the better.
Is it the atmosphere? The power line? Your brain? Does your system's sound quality vary from day to day?
To paraphrase what is often said with difficult relationships, it's not the system, it's me. How I feel is probably the single biggest factor on how I perceive how my system sounds. I have learned not to adjust anything in my system until I've had a good night's sleep and cleared my mind no matter how bad I think it sounds at 10pm on a weekday.
Here are a couple of factors I have noticed about my electronics: late night listening is best (I presume because there is less line pollution), but if I am fatigued my ears just don't process the sounds well, resulting in a gritty unpleasant tone.
It sounds pretty much the same as long as I let it properly warm up before listening. Often however, it does seem to sound best after dark. Maybe that's because the world around me has settled down a bit and I'm more relaxed at that time. But there are times when it just doesn't seem to be up to par irrespective of the time of day, and when that happens I just stay away from listening for a day or two and like magic, it sounds great again. So I'm convinced that the differencs I hear are simply the results of my electro/chemical brain system acting up a bit.
I'm not connected to the mains (solar power and batteries) and live in a rural area that's very quiet. I use no power filtering, but the normal manner of converting battery power from DC/to AC and back to DC was altered by my technician to avoid some form of noise that's often associated with solar power generation. The exact explanation of that modification was way beyond my tiny brain's ability to understand but it appears to work. When I lived in the middle of a large city my gear always sounded best very late at night.
YES! An amazing amount. The biggest difference is at night—I've had many a late night listening session because the system just kept getting better and better. Is it power, as you infer, or is it the natural human instinct of hearing taking over from sight as our primary sense at night time?
I never noticed a change from day to day. However, I have tried a few different power cords and power conditioners and have noticed big improvements. I never considered any power line products until a local dealer loaned me a power conditioner.
Most of the above. Sometimes I'm sure it's the weather, sometimes it's me. It definitely changes though. And why not? After all, what we hear depends on the movement of air. If the quality of the medium (air) is in fact different (humidity, pressure, temperature) wouldn't it follow that the sound would be different too?
Sometimes it's the humidity, other times it's whether or not I have the window open, and the condition of my sinuses always affects the sound quality. The most important thing is that I have the opportunity to enjoy listening to some music. That's what really counts.