Is it just me?

All of the above, plus maybe the day-to-day voltage swings from your incoming power to your dwelling. See about getting a plug-in voltage meter (not very expensive I think) and examine readings the next several times to see if there's any variation that seems to reliably correspond to your listening involvement issues. If so, you can then think about doing some homework with various solutions like power conditioning or voltage regulation or even power regeneration and the like. There should be at least some kind of level of solution for your particular budget. This sort of thing I describe is not uncommon and is usually referred to as the "time-of-day" effect, but it can vary on a day-to-day basis as well. Hope this helps.

Regards. John

The emotion in music isn't controlled by power conditioning. It is conveyed through the musician and our state of mind at that moment. Otherwise, we could only be moved as such at a live performance. I've experienced it at various quality levels of reproduction- one such time was in my car in the 70s with an 8 track tape. Try as I might, that moment of feeling never happened again with that same song- even today with the vinyl version playing on my hifi; but I still remember that moment nearly 40 years later.

Tony, didn't mean to suggest that my post was the only possible interpretation of the OP. But, I know exactly the kind of experiences you relate to. In fact I think we all do...enough so that I imagined Mlman probably understood that as well and, likely as not, was originally prompted to post b/c he was wondering if there was some sort of technical reason for what he was experiencing within the context of his own system...of course, I could be wrong on my presumption...Mlman??

Point taken. My system can give me goosebumps now and then which I think is related to quality of reproduction but the emotional connection is all about the musician, I think.

Different days, different ways of seeing things.