[whydontumarryit]

Do you find that your system sounds better on some days rather than others for no apparent reason?

[SoCalWJS]

Do you find that your system sounds better on some days rather than others for no apparent reason?

Yes. Until I started tracking things. Then I figured it out.

Environmental factors change. These include, but are not limited to: Time of day. Temperature. Mood. Mood Altering substances (traditionally Adult Beverages, YMMV). Personal Health (especially anything that is Sinus/Allergy related). Background noise. Cycling Appliances. Outside noise. Etc.

Also, I learned that the quality of the AC coming to my house varies. Power Conditioning made a difference for me.

[Jon L]

Yes. Until I started tracking things. Then I figured it out.

Environmental factors change. These include, but are not limited to: Time of day. Temperature. Mood. Mood Altering substances (traditionally Adult Beverages, YMMV). Personal Health (especially anything that is Sinus/Allergy related). Background noise. Cycling Appliances. Outside noise. Etc.

Also, I learned that the quality of the AC coming to my house varies. Power Conditioning made a difference for me.

Quality of power is at least something one can (try) to improve consistently.

I do think psychoacoustics has a lot to do with sound perception, much in the same way a certain wine/whiskey tastes WAY different depending on state of one's innards.

[Tyson]

Quality of power is at least something one can (try) to improve consistently.

I do think psychoacoustics has a lot to do with sound perception, much in the same way a certain wine/whiskey tastes WAY different depending on state of one's innards.

I noticed this too, back when I drank single malt scotch.  One day the Spring Bank 15 year old tasted amazing, another day it tasted kind of meh.  The scotch hadn't changed, I had.  It happens with music too.  Food as well, I guess, now that I'm thinking about it. 

[whydontumarryit]

Power conditioning: could be a non-apparent effect on the reproduction. However, pursuing this means of correction is as likely as my use of “room treatment”. But, if push comes to shove.

Mood: do you listen in a bad mood or do you listen to get out of a bad mood?

Temp.: monitored for 3 wks. 68 to 72F and 57 to 66% humidity with a couple (maybe just one) bad days. This can't be a factor in this case.

thanks

[Tyson]

If you set aside the emotional/physical variability aspects, then what's left is power conditioning.  I got PS audio P5s for both of my systems and a lot of that variability was eliminated. 

[Letitroll98]

Areas to investigate.

Temperature and humidity.  Sounds are transmitted through air, which last I checked is dramatically affected by these factors.

People.  Eliminating human variables are nearly impossible,.  Identifying which variables are critical and what their effect might be is only slightly less difficult.  Initial conditions, are you coming from a quiet or noisy environment?  Listening to TV, your kids playing, or bird songs before you started listening?  The only reliable method to mitigate these factors is increasing sample size.  Got a few hundred friends willing to be test subjects?

Changing ambient noise levels.  Measure the room before turning anything on.

Warm up.  Everyone knows about break in, but do you warm up your system before serious listening?   Tubes take a good half hour or more, capacitors 5 of 10 minutes, SMD components take 20 minutes of signal passing through to stabilize.

And the aforementioned power.  The whole thing could be as simple as your fridge cycling.  LED lightbulbs?  Neighborhood power usage.  Etc, etc.

Or stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.

[mick wolfe]

I noticed this too, back when I drank single malt scotch.  One day the Spring Bank 15 year old tasted amazing, another day it tasted kind of meh.  The scotch hadn't changed, I had.  It happens with music too.  Food as well, I guess, now that I'm thinking about it.

I've noticed the same over the years, be it food, drink and yes, even the audio system. Doesn't seem to improve with age either. 

[I.Greyhound Fan]

My son and I notice this all the time.  Once day the music sounds sublime and the next day the same music sounds like crap.  It definitely has to do with your state of mind with all things being equal. However, nasal and sinus congestion can change your hearing.
Even Steve Guttenberg wrote about this.

[zoom25]

Used to have that before and it would drive me nuts. Two things I did to address that. Now it sounds the same every hour/day.

1) Clean and enough Power

2) Leave the gear on 24/7

Stability achieved.

[FullRangeMan]

I dont recommend leaving a thousands dollars system on 24/7 because of power outages that can occur due to grid maintenance and lightning strikes during storms
But if want take the risk by a marginal improvement feel free..

[Big Red Machine]

Those unused electrons get stale when pent up inside your gear. You need to get them flushing through your system regularly so the sound is created from fresh electrons. The less I use the system, the higher the chance of a poor session. The more days in a row, the better it sounds in short order.

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Those unused electrons get stale when pent up inside your gear. You need to get them flushing through your system regularly so the sound is created from fresh electrons. The less I use the system, the higher the chance of a poor session. The more days in a row, the better it sounds in short order.

Yes, you need to get rid of the stray electrons.

[Letitroll98]

Residual magnetism.  There's a track on one of the Stereophile Test CDs labeled system demagnitizer, a steady tone slowly fading away that you play at greatly reduced volume levels.  My system always sounds better after I remember to use it.  I'm certain it works more effectively on my brain than my audio system, but there you go.

[mick wolfe]

Those unused electrons get stale when pent up inside your gear. You need to get them flushing through your system regularly so the sound is created from fresh electrons. The less I use the system, the higher the chance of a poor session. The more days in a row, the better it sounds in short order.

I've found that to be the case with both of my systems as well. Need to be played on a consistent basis to sound their best.

[ric]

Interesting topic. I find that usually my (tube) system sounds best after about 3 hours which puts it past the 8 oclock hour, which could have something to do with it. On rare occasions, probably due to my own inner whatever, nothing sounds good and it's hard to "relax" into the music.
     Same thing happens with playing guitar. There are some days when I tell myself, "hey, this guy's...good!" and there are other days when nothing sounds good, my playing sucks, the sound is poor etc.
   Again, probably some internal--could be psychological, could be bio-rhythms--who knows, but it definitely happens.
   BUT! I am at a point in my system where I do not feel the need to add anything, having dealt with system and room synergy, the system sounds good on a consistent basis--which made me think of another reason, that feeling when your system doesn't sound quite right. Where you may have upgrade fever or whatever, there may be a thread there of having that sense of incompleteness or dissatisfaction that rears its ugly head in the form of the topic at hand. Who knows?

[JLM]

Attended the first DecFest hosted by Steve Deckert and recall that the sound smoothed out after 11:00 PM.  Attributed it to nearby old/small industrial businesses shutting down for the night. 

[Early B.]

Last night, I cut my system on and let it warm up for a while prior to listening. When I was ready to listen, I turned up the volume and it sounded sluggish initially. I realized that warm-up has to occur at the listening level. Otherwise, it takes about 20 more minutes to warm up if the volume is lower at the onset. Is that inexplicable? I dunno.

Once the system warmed up, it was the most glorious sound I ever heard.   

[FullRangeMan]

I dont recommend leaving a thousands dollars system on 24/7 because of power outages that can occur due to grid maintenance and lightning strikes during storms
But if want take the risk by a marginal improvement feel free..

I should have said disconnect from the wall outlet. My building has no functional grounding or its not fast enough so I unplug the power bar from the wall just after power off the system.

In my area when energy returns it came with higher tension than normal about 225V.

[Big Red Machine]

I had a great 45 minute session tonight. My only delta was I changed the batteries in my remote.