No question. Systems always sound better late at night (like 2am). Not only is there less ambient local noise, there's less noise on the electrical circuits too. We rarely do critical listening in the daytime in Summer because the A/C noise is too high. As for that refrigerator groaning through the open archway behind my left speaker ... grrr!
Learned a valuable lesson about ambient noise
I've been kinda bummed the last few days because my turntable, well my system as a whole I guess, sounded really congested and just not as wonderful as it's been sounding lately. I figured it started July 3 when I was playing around with a possible new belt on my Amazon turntable. It didn't sound great. Then the old one didn't sound great and I've been trying to figure out what was wrong for half a week... what I had messed up. Turned things on late afternoon today and was still not happy. Now, four hours later, 9pm, everything is great again.... and all that's changed, I suddenly noticed, is that all the 4th of July holiday traffic and drunken people and parties and just general noise is gone. I live in a beach area and I just didn't remember how much noise there could be until it was gone!