Barometric pressure, temperature, moon phase?

And so after all that it turns out this was just another case of too much CNN.

the stereo sounds ever so slightly, not quite there.  It did the other day, but tonight, it’s missing some tiny bit of something.  Has this ever been experienced by any of you out there?  One day magnificent, another day, just ever so slightly not quite as good.

I used to think this was nonsense. Sounds better after warm up? Sounds better late at night? On and on. All pure, unadulterated BS. No way.

But I really, really care how my music sounds. So if there's any chance at all.... 

First I left everything turned on all the time. Did this for quite a while. Never noticed anything. Then after everything being on all the time for weeks for some reason everything got turned off. Oh well, whatever, like it matters. Only when I did turn it back on, wtf? What is that awful grainy etched crap that used to be music? Oh. So that's how I learned to hear the difference between cold and burned-in warmed up sound.

If you're noticing these fine differences I would suggest you try a few things like this. A lot of these things are subtle and change very gradually over time. The slow gradual improvement in performance as my gear was run 24/7 was hard to notice. Until I turned it off and then listened to it cold. Then it was obvious.

Other things that are now obvious-
Unplug something or even just wiggle the wires around its gonna sound bad for a while
If you just play music day after day the sound slowly degrades, but slow and gradual enough you will never notice, until you run a demagnetizing track and then Holy Smokes massive grain and glare disappears. 
Pretty much everything will warm up and sound better just by being turned on. Its not necessary to play music. Except for the cartridge. The first side never sounds all that good.

There's a lot more. Pretty much everything everyone above has said does indeed have a very real effect on the sound. In my system it all adds up to where it just keeps sounding better and better and unbelievably better until dang its late got to get to bed. Next day, crap. Relative to what it was.

Case in point.

Perceptions are NOT reality. They are just perceptions.

Science provides us with zero evidence the entire known universe is anything other than a lot of particles and charges just zinging around all over the place. There is in this world no light, no color, no sound, no heat- and certainly not any hard or soft, good or bad, pleasing or aggravating or anything else. There is no music in this world.

Them’s the facts.

Until, that is, any of these particles or charges interacts with our senses. Then and only then do the patterns of greater and lesser density atmospheric molecules become sound.


In other words, just to hammer the point home, it is not merely the case that there is no other reality than our perceptions. The fact of the matter is our perceptions create reality.

Learn something new every day, pwkmaven2.