I love that quiet of a new snow! Good analogy to audio. Here I really don't notice enough difference between night and day listening clarity to give it attention, but I do have a highly tuned up, by sound, power setup. So it always catches me a little off guard when folks talk about night versus day.

But from a listener perspective, I do notice a pretty big difference. I love how the energy of life is simpler and quieter at night, accentuated by the dark simplifying perception and causing what I do interact with to be more engulfing. So I love dark room, late night listening, easier to get pulled into a mind altering musical experience for me.

Relative to power, my grid power is not clean, but I guess cleaner than many, being out in an area that is not densely populated, having a separate loop on our one way in and out community road, and having my own transformer.

So a pretty good start I guess. I remember being surprised how good my system sounded with just an Audio Brickwall for protection and minor filtering. But then I could sense some sound differences between day and night, figuring this indicated I should refine the power in general.

But more, I noticed that voltage changes were notably effecting my experience of the music, and voltage was not stable here, usually semi-gradual shifts between 119 and 123 as I recall... With Decware's simple designs, in a revealing system/room, that range creates some serious differences... from overstated signal power on the higher voltage side, to understated on the low side if the system is balanced in the middle somewhere. So system/room tuning and the quality of listening experiences were moving targets....to me, not good.

The biggest issue on the high voltage side for me was excess weight to a point of sluggish thickness, and higher up, textures and spacial information consolidating, this led to more hardness. On the lower voltage side, the sound, especially low, was faster and more impactful, but was a little too light... where on top, in this room, it was nicely more open and textured with better fine detail and spatial complexity.

On Steve's recommendation I experimented with a variac, which clearly proved how much voltage effects the sound. But I could hear some loss of clarity, the variac stealing some of the speed and translucency. Also, the variac was effected by the house line voltage, but here it was not bad for adjustability, my power usually shifting gradually over hours more than in minutes back then. But still, it was not regulated, so not an ideal solution.

After a lot of trying not to do it, I finally found a demo PSAudio P5, knowing it could regulate voltage, and hoping it would be transparent... The voltage proved to be true enough... close to stable, and a great tool for me, not just for stability, but for tuning the sound with the voltage I liked best in this room. The transparency was not there though... the unit having a sound to me I have come to pretty much dislike in audio design... to me, there are too many obvious attempts at creating "an analog" sound with excess smoothing and warming that does not sound real to me... sacrificing very fine information in the process that is needed for realistic musical complexity.

Not off the top, but it squelched too much open transparency and speed for me, and in this system. Trying lots of feet and power cables, I just couldn't quite get happy with it, almost deciding to sell it. Then, in desperation, I made a very resolving power cord to compensate, making the P5 promising. And feet still important, the cable made it easier to find optimal feet. Later I changed the IEC and some of the receptacles, while soldering a few things that had those slide on connectors. Now it sounds pretty great, especially after discovering how much adjusting the phase in the P5 can tune in more real sound.

The P5 challenge led to many cable realizations, how everything effects everything...  I found the input voltage into the amp or pre could be the same with the regulation of the P5, but with different cable gauge, materials, geometry, damping...variations in each could change the sound notably.... all else good, gauge was a main player in this.

This led to gauge tuning, too heavy cables having sonic results similar to more voltage, and too thin power cords, leaning down the sound too much if there is balance somewhere in the middle (same for speaker cables and ICs but another story).

Trying to get the P5 to sound better, I wanted to try a multi-strand cable, a number of various little wires used to make up the conglomerate gauge making some sense to me for sound potential... less smearing if lucky. And this turned out to work really well sound-wise, but another reason, I wanted to explore subtle gauge changes. I could tune the P5 sound by adding or subtracting strands of small wires I used to make the cable. And it did not take many experiments with minor gauge adjustments to find the balance that was not heavier and harder, or too thin and open....The gauge established, the sound was open, resolving, and fast throughout... on bottom the tighter/faster bass more impactful without thickness... just really nicely nimble, not muddled and not thin.... the whole was more spacious, resolving and fast while remaining smooth, but with less smearing, more fine detail and space.

The house line voltage, now through the P5, the same throughout this testing, I found this really interesting to think about, wondering what the influences are from increasing and decreasing gauge, a common thought having been that a bigger cable is "always" better to a point. But especially with lower power amps, I found we do not necessarily "need" a super thick cable to work well, and in fact, that depending on all else, they can do notable harm, thickening and hardening the sound. I tend to think of this phenomena as many fold. But fundamentally, I guess that with bigger cables, the power supply loads up, and stays loaded up more, effecting the amps similarly sound-wise to raising the voltage. Then the more obvious effect from higher voltage.... the amp's circuits stay at a higher voltage, effecting everything, from the power supply stuff, to all the tubes, to the output transformers, everything running harder, with more push.

And now, trying to refine my experience with the Swiss Digital Fuse Box, I am experimenting with different sluggo metals (solid metal fuse replacements), and playing with home-made "piggies" (the little power cable before the FuseBox). The differences in sluggo materials, and as much, cable ends, wire types, cable gauge, and cable configuration are obvious. So I am having fun as I seek the most neutral, resolving and transparent sound I can get.... This is another story, but points back to how everything in the power chain effects everything else.

The "moral of these stories" is that, at least with the power I started with, I have been able to make night and day sound differences too little to pay attentions to. Right now, my power is refined from so many angles it is a pretty complex matrix... years of playing around, and mostly adding things that helped over time.

It has nice fast and resolving receptacles, all nice cables tuned to sound, beginning component being a tuned up P5, followed by an also modified UberBuss, then a modified Brickwall... And lately, still on trial, I think overall, I am liking a Sorcer Apprentice I got a good deal on, which treats the environment and power with its frequency/wave pulses, doing an interesting thing with clarity and harmonic complexity.

These are the main things... but also there are bunch of little plug filters I have found to help over years. And lately, having been playing with them for quite a long time off and on, I am again exploring various crystal powders and tumbled chips.... something I dip into every so often as the system/room improves. And now, the system better than ever, they are showing their subtle but real and cumulative effects more and more clearly and quickly, different crystal minerals and sizes having different influences on clarifying and color-tuning the sound.

Interesting, I believe Eddie Van Halen used a variac to attain his "brown" sound.

You are welcome HK. Your compliment (thank you) set me on a fun little tour of concepts of alchemy this morning. That was really intersting... looking at the many flavors of ideas that take so many shapes while starting from the same place. A big thread though seems to be seeking to discover more and more how things work together from a very fine detail, basically energetic perspective, and I am definitely all for that.

It is really compelling for me to experientially explore things that are not necessarily well understood, not so much to learn, but to find... The pathways are always defined by need to discover more, the need and basis to explore further always triggered by the complex of past "discoveries."

Another thing I guess I share with the Alchemists, is I imagine the knowing that what we "know" should never be static since nothing in nature is static... So us being part of nature, how can healthy "knowledge" be held as static... stopping natural needs to explore further, and associated learning and growing.

This leads to an understanding that much of what conventional thought thinks is real, is often partially real, but almost never complete.... which rules out the basis of old "discussions" like copper wires of the same basic specs are the same, even now still held like a religious belief by some. To me, if we believe absolutist "doctrines" put forward forcefully by those who "believe" out of learning more than experience, they may or may not be more or less "correct," but if our own explorations cause us to creatively seek more, believing conventional "doctrine" too easily holds us back from discovery.

Like night listening versus day listening.... there are real patterns many of us share, but also we bring to that our own completely original self, perceptions, discernment, systems, rooms.... lots of variables to explore from. Another morning musing!