Sound Quality and time of day

I wonder if there is an argument to be made that it's not just the amount of electricity usage but the type of usage? I would think kettles, hair tongs, and some space heaters would be the electrically noisiest items, but I also suspect that brass circuit breakers have some sort of interrupt effect on some aspects of electrical noise.

Given my constitution and my household, midnight to 6am listening will never happen.

brucew268 "Given my constitution and my household, midnight to 6am listening will never happen."

It ain't happening here either Bruce, I'm lucky if I can stay awake later than 10pm.

Strange, I don't seem to suffer the same when I'm abroad.  

Just testing out your observations Arke and also thoughts of others; it is now just about dark. So testing eyes closed or open. I recon eyes open in dark room is better. Listening to Nirvana live at Reading and it is getting better the later it gets, might also be directly proportional to consumption of beverages.

Will need to do further testing varying music being listened to, and separately, to keep tests fair, varying beverage.

In all seriousness though I am enjoying the music more the later in the evening it gets….. and enjoying the music is what counts.

pete Have a joint as well and it improves even more.

It's ambiance which allows your brain to "take it easy".

You don't sit in a cinema with the lights on, it'd be shi* as your senses are all on max.

Darkening a room focuses your senses so (when listening to music or watching a film), but when listening to music specifically, your eyes aren't doing as much and let's the ears take centre stage so to speak.


There is also some truth (in my opinion) in the power grid being quieter at night but how much of a difference this makes depends on other factors. Like how far away you are from the local power station/supply spur box etc.

Blocks of flats with air con etc are notoriously the worst.

If we're looking for reasons then a big drop in mains voltage could effect sound quality but that's very rare and most likely to happen around tea-time. Other than having your own generator nothing will fix that.

The mains is always very noisy, none of that noise makes it through rectification, that's demonstrable, so it's a non-issue.

We are the variable.

I usually have a long listening session on Saturday afternoon and another on Sunday. Sometimes it's better on Saturday, sometimes on Sunday. Sometimes it's about the same.

All depends on what mood I'm in - which depends on what I ate, how good a kip I had, other things on my mind, and so on. The sound coming out the speakers doesn't change, but I do.

Late night there's often less background noise - that could drop from 60 dB to 30db and suddenly you're hearing little details that were previously masked. Plus you've been awake 14 hours or more, the analytical part of the brain is shutting down, you're more relaxed, the music washes over you better.

And if you had a drinkie all bets are off anyway. Booze will massively upgrade all but the most terrible of systems. When I quit it took me a good year, maybe more, to fully relearn how to enjoy listening to music.

macca 9hrs kip.  

Very poetic 😁