Physco-acoustics baby. You would be surprised just how much your overall mood affects how something sounds.

Most of it is just your perception of how something sounds - and not that the sound actually changes

 

X3 for psycho-acoustics. physics would say that the change in atmosphere would be audibly negligable. Your mood, how dark it is, how busy traffic is, you're not getting any etc...

 

defro is correct by saying that his sound system sounds better at night, but the reason is that as it gets darker out our vision is less important as we cant see as well, so our body turns up the next line of defence, and that is our hearing, so yes as it gets darker and our visiability becomes more and more irrelevant our hearing will become more accute! when iam ready to tune my car or anyone for that mater i usually do it in a dark and very quiet room and close my eyes and just listen. the nuances that you here at night as oppose to in the day are amazing. damn all those yrs taking sport medicine in red deer colledge and this is the crap i remember!!!

 

Here is an interesting point, it may be in our heads... sinuses to be exact as the head has sinus issues (pollen, cold, dust, smoke, pollution etc) our hearing may in fact be changing on a daily basis! I know my sinuses are crap and it affects my hearing.
At 2 AM there is a lot less ambient background noise (this has been hotly discussed in high-end home audio circles). A good example for me was shortly after Sept 11 there was ZERO jet traffic around my house... the overall noise floor of my neighborhood dropped ~10db and the little transistor radio I listen to had more detail and impact not because its fidelity increased but because the ambient noise floor went way down.

The light vs. dark thing is interesting since that is more psychological… than physiological…. basically you are saying it is easier to focus on the music since there are fewer visual distractions.

[ August 25, 2004, 03:35 PM: Message edited by: JohnVroom ]

 

Defro the electronics warming up can also account for some of the 30 minutes till your system sounds better (not really all of that time though). Electronics do not like thermal transients, too cold or too hot can affect performance (better or worse). The smart manufacturer will make his equipment perform best warm. All performance tests (power, THD, cross-talk etc.) are run warmed up. You don’t hear much about people letting equipment warm up prior to listening since the passing of the tube age but it is still there …but unlike tubes cold transistors/ IC's don’t sound like crap on toast.
My much loved tubed amp has been giving me fits “Gee John your car sounds different every time I sat down in it today” and it has been driving me crazy... looks like the amp has crappy connections in the solder trace … sounds good cold but once it warms up is fuzzy… so of course I cant let the system warm up “quick judge me now!” So yeah electronics are not always as straightforward as I would like.

 

when i put my new battery in i could swear that it wasn't loud at all. It wouldn't even knock my radar detector off my windshield. But it turns out that i had messed with the crossoevers on my deck and turned my sub-level down 4db. haha. duh.

That was a quick fix.

 

its the temp. heat is your enemy. plus im sure that on hot days you roll down your window and others you turn on your ac. Your system probably sounds loudest when you have it cool(mornings when you first turn it on, or evening when it is cooler outside). We would always hit higher scores in april/may than in july/aug. Im sure that after youve played it all day in the heat, your toasty amp and warmed woofers have less output. As far as MegaHZ, it all those gremilns in his system(too much bc wacky tabacky) lol

 

I've noticed that some tracks/cd's don't sound as good as others seem to...

I've attributed this to increased dynamic range of those tracks, and the inability for me to listen at my normal level (cranked) without running into distortion.....

 

^Some recordings dont sound that good, remember a recording engineer is just a guy with an opinion on how the music should sound.
Also radio signals tend to blend in and out a lot with my current HU even in urban radio coverage (my old alpine had a better tuner than my McIntosh)

[ August 26, 2004, 02:20 PM: Message edited by: JohnVroom ]