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The Midnight Effect - Who-How?

You have high end equipment designed in a way to make it seemingly impervious to power line fluctuations. You add expensive conditioners and/or power line regenerators just to be safe.

You sit and listen to your system for a few hours and everything sounds great. Then, from nowhere, like someone flicked a switch…. the sound opens up… becomes more natural, more focused… the soundstage suddenly blooms and becomes more dimensional, more depth and more space around instruments. WTF just happened? The only clue is the clock on the wall and the empty wine flagon next to your chair.

I’m long past questioning whether the phenomenon is real. To what extent it exists depends on certain variables, but it exists. But how? I live in the boondocks, there’s no industry or commerce that suddenly shuts down at 23:00 every night. 
Do others experience this? Do you have an explanation? Perhaps even some empirical data?

Is it just the booze?

 

 

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Showing 2 responses by benanders

benanders's avatar
benanders
220 posts
 

Alcohol or late night delirium if no one else hears it, too.

One person on multiple nights is a repeated measure from a sample size of one. Not particularly conclusive.

OP, I’m not saying the phenomenon you describe isn’t possible; I’m saying it’s a sort of thing that’s extremely easy for people to assume whether real or not.

There is some evidence out there to suggest even very small (real) changes to the noise floor might be enough to trigger a “different/better/worse” perception from some folks. But add alcohol to that and I stay skeptical at most.

benanders's avatar
benanders
220 posts
 

Assertion of this “effect” disregards the a lack of correlation between two things that are assumed to (1) be real and (2) have a cause-and-effect relationship, while neither has been experimentally demonstrated.

At the same time, nothing to tease it apart from the aforementioned phenomena of how we work, often preferring to gradually increase volume, etc.

Hence that “push-back.” 😉

Doesn’t mean the “effect” is not real, just means it’s, at best, highly suspect.

One thing that hasn’t come up is temporal variation in atmospheric pressure, with resistance purportedly reduced in the wee hours.

Why do birds call most actively in calm dawn air?…

 

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