Today, the System Sounds...
Today, the system sounds better than usual—in fact, amazing: warm, detailed, powerfully present, remarkably true. But how can this be? Isn’t it more likely that my system, a well-considered but nevertheless inanimate, unfeeling collection of boxes and wires—NAD C 316BEE CD player, Arcam FMJ A19 integrated amplifier, KEF LS50 loudspeakers, AudioQuest Big Sur interconnects and Rocket 33 speaker cables—sounds today exactly as it did yesterday?
The system hasn’t changed, but something has. How else can I make sense of the fact that, today, my experience of listening to music through the hi-fiis different from what it was yesterday? Does it have something to do with the suddenly cold, gray weather? Or that I’ve been fighting the flu? Is it because I’m sitting at a desk, on…