Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Why Does the Music Sound So Much Better

The M100s are singing tonight. Sometimes, I do not love them as much as I expected. Sometimes, they sound awesomely good.

Why does a system sound so much better sometimes, and not others? It is not choice of music dependent or source dependent.

I am listening to Ludivico Einaudi's, Elements, and tonight the music is just stunning. Not so always.

Anyone else notice this phenomenon?

Weather changes are causing the distances between your cathodes, grids and anodes to change. Either that or your inner ear properties.

I've noticed when I turn my fireplace on and my multichannel room heats up, my audio quality goes out the window. For whatever reason, I don't have that problem with my 2 channel system when the furnace is on.

I notice that the dynamic range of some recordings is a big factor. Usually wider dynamics sound more present and natural. My 2ch room is more forgiving with flat sounding recordings than my HT.

Try the album Body and Soul by Joe Jackson. Good dynamics and a very open presentation.

You've stumbled upon the most important component in the audio chain: your own brain. I'm not saying this in jest.

The reason the music sounds different to you at different rimes is because your brain is not a computer. In addition to environmental factors such as humidity and air temperature that affect the propagation of sound waves through the air, your mood and general state of mind can affect your perception of sound.

When you say that it is not the choice of music department, you are totally wrong (in a sense)

It might not be that the music itself is not to your liking, but the recording of such music is sub standard. The Axiom speakers are your best friend and worst enemy when it comes to sound as they are very revealing and play exactly what is recorded without alteration.

I have some recordings that I totally love and reveal nuances of sound that I didn't realize were even there with my old speakers. But other recordings sound empty and lifeless by comparison. I have ended up flagging about 50% of my music as play upstairs on the old speakers as it simply sounds better. I have purchased alternate recordings of some tracks in hopes of finding a version that plays better. Sometimes in vein.

I am talking about the same recordings, same CDs.

It seems it's always at night that the music sounds better. I am in a low ambient noise area, so that shouldn't be much of an issue. But, there may be a correlation between perceived lower noise floor and the great sounding moments.

Depending on how austere your listening area is, you might be finding that seemingly trivial differences (books piled up on coffee table, doors open or closed) might be affecting the room.

I always wonder about things like humidity & temperature affecting speed of sound and subtly affecting room resonances, but all the charts stubbornly refuse to show significant differences at comfortable-for-human temperatures (60-80C is a different story though).

That said, I do experience the same "sometimes the sound is just better than other times" effect, although I have never controlled choice of recordings enough to be sure it is happening.

Late night clean electricity?

tough day at work. a bottle or two of red wine.

I was often surprised what a difference late night cold air used to make when driving. I imagine modern fuel injection has eliminated most of that (damn computers) but back in the carb days the difference in apparent power used to be quite noticeable (1st gen Ford Fiesta, manual trans).