Have you ever hated the sound of your system one day, and loved it the next?

Happened to me last night!
Usually when I first play a track on my system (Upgraded Di's and Vincent SV-237MK) I'm in awe. Had such a session on Friday night. It was an evening of bliss. (Wife was away and I played as loud as I wanted to and for as long as I wanted to.) Saturday night, I just couldn't get the same. (Yes, wife was still away. :o) After playing a number of tracks, I realized that maybe it's the recordings. So, I went back to some tried and true tracks, but still was not what I experienced the previous evening. I think by then my ears were "ruined." Definitely two vastly different experiences from one night to the other.

Like you, the problem for me is my ears get “ruined” too, and that carries over to the next listening session or until I hear something really good again.

It takes tremendous discipline to allow your brain to reject a reset.

I suspect big complicated systems are more sensitive to external pressures. A friend of mine has a big complicated system and will generally only listen to his system early Sunday mornings, and then only on nice sunny 😎 days. The rest of the week by comparison his system sounds relatively lifeless, uncertain, generic, unfocused, flaccid, unengaging, wimpy, electronic, bloated, two dimensional, like paper mache.

Any chance our systems sound better on nice sunny days because less people are in their homes sucking power from the grid?  More unrestrained clean power getting into your system?   Could be systems sound better late at night or early mornings when people on your power grid are sleeping and not drawing power.