Learned a valuable lesson about ambient noise

I've been kinda bummed the last few days because my turntable, well my system as a whole I guess, sounded really congested and just not as wonderful as it's been sounding lately. I figured it started July 3 when I was playing around with a possible new belt on my Amazon turntable. It didn't sound great. Then the old one didn't sound great and I've been trying to figure out what was wrong for half a week... what I had messed up. Turned things on late afternoon today and was still not happy. Now, four hours later, 9pm, everything is great again.... and all that's changed, I suddenly noticed, is that all the 4th of July holiday traffic and drunken people and parties and just general noise is gone. I live in a beach area and I just didn't remember how much noise there could be until it was gone!