A stupid question(s) about power cords

@ghdprentice  , as I have said before:  I always appreciate your perspective and the way you present it.

@audphile1 

Hopping back in for a listen late last night revealed a slightly harsh treble that I didn’t detect few hours prior listening to the same track. 

this is interesting.  Although I don't think for me it is the same thing going on as it is for you, there have been nights I have played a disc and the effect has been magical, or if not magical, at least very impacting.  Then, like maybe a day or two or three or a week later I go back and I want to repeat that magical or at least impactful auditory experience with the same disc (and no changes made to the system in the mean time) and it just doesn't happen.  What I heard last time is not there.  It can be quite disappointing.  

In other words, what brought me close to aural orgasm last time, often sounds worse the next time.  It could be that the musical notes do not seem as round or as full as the last time, or that the guitar work does not float in the air in front of me quite as spectacularly as I remembered from the last time, or I am not hearing the same subtle inflection in a piece of vocal work that I swear I heard the last time, or even, as you say, I hear a harsher sounding treble than I did the last time.  

I generally chalk this up to:

a) I really was NOT hearing what I  THOUGHT I heard the time before

or b) the mind works in mysterious ways and I need to enjoy what sounds good to me WHEN it sounds good to me.

I didn't mean to ramble on like this when I started typing this reply, but, and this is sort of unrelated, back in the mid '90s up until 9/11 I worked in a great shop (except it was a sheet metal shop, so it was often noisy) and I kept an old boom-box type radio at my work table and I listened to what I thought was a great public radio station (WYEP 91.3) because they used to play a lot of stuff that no one else played that I had never heard before and quite often I would hear something or someone and think, "That sounds great!"  So then when the weekend came, I would go to Camelot Music or The Wall and buy or order the CD, and frequently it did not impress me on my system at home the way it did on that crappy boom-box radio at my work table.

Oh well . . . lRamble On. . . .

Listen, to the " musicianship " and the " composition ". Everything else will follow. Why are listeners so involved in the acoustics of the performance, rather than the performance itself. Once an instrument or voice enters a mic or a mixing console, and is then manipulated by the producers, engineers and other studio folks, all the real and lifelike nuances are lost. Listeners keep trying to maintain the tone of the instruments/voices, and the localization of the musicians. It is all fabricated. If you listen to " what " the musicians are doing, the tones and placements become secondary, and your listening life will be simpler. This is the way musicians listen, and this is the way I listen. Over the years I have tried to communicate this way of listening to people with their audio rigs, but " give me that sound stage " and I am happy. Maybe because I was a singer in my earlier years and had a wonderful coach/teacher. Maybe, because I spent some time in recording studios (when it was all analog). I feel the simplicity of listening has grown so out of proportion. Matt, talk about babbling...well I seem to do it to, ad nauseum. My rant is over...for now, lol.....Enjoy ! MrD.

Well…you’re not the only one experiencing this.
There are a lot of factors that can contribute to you not being able to experience the same magic every time. Some are…mood, how stressed and tense you are, tired or rested, allergies/sinus pressure, power quality, streaming quality (I still think it varies periodically), noise in the house, etc.

So don’t sweat it. 

@audphile1 +1

OP as you know we both own marantz SA10.It benefits from quality pc if synergize. I use high fidelity ct1 , my Rubr is using Audioquest tornado . They benefited from the upgrade. Heimdall pc if your system is not on the bright side.