decisions change at night

i've been mixing the same track all day.

during the day, a synth part, very wide and low-middy, needed more definition in the mix

to remedy, i had to sidechain compress 200hz on another synth in the middle, which is also low-middy, to give the synth on the sides more space to breathe

it's now night and i'm listening back. it doesn't need the help anymore. i took the multiband compressor off

there's more room in the speakers. before, you could barely hear the wide synth. now its clear to hear without any help.

power grid phenomena?

i feel like i should probably mix for the shitty daytime powergrid. lowest common denominator

 

Doesn’t human hearing get more sensitive at night?

 

Not specifically at night, but for most people your exposure to noise is high during the day and your ears go into "protective mode" where the muscles around your ear canal squeeze and reduce the amount of noise that comes in. These muscles take hours to fully relax. So yes, your hearing can be very different at night compared to day (or vice versa).

 

It's not that hearing gets more sensitive at night. It's that when it's darker more of your brain's processing power can go to hearing when there's less visual stimulation. Vision takes up something like 80% of brain power and the brain is adaptive in that resources can be reallocated as needed. If you think about it this makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.. at night when there's less to see, more acute hearing could keep you alive.

You can easily demonstrate this to yourself. Sit or do something outside and listen for a little while with IEMs during the day. After 15 or 20 minutes, go inside while still listening. As your eyes adjust to the lower light the music will seem to get louder.

George Merrill's Underground Sound in Memphis even had their main listening room in the basement.

 

I work in neurosciences ( I know that this is true of several others here as well) and I think what armaegis mentioned is possibly true if you have exposure to somewhat loud noises. The sensitivity of this is variable and can show individual variation so very difficult to standardize.

However, I don't think the brain repurposing existing real estate or circuits is fast enough to change in 15 minutes. Long term repurposing is certainly described over time in people in people who have sensory issues from birth and additionally in patients with stroke. Of course, I will acknowledge that our understanding of the sensory modalities is rudimentary and an evolving area. I would rather suggest that visual input removal heightens perception and focus of auditory stimulation- Its the difference between hearing and listening.

 

I agree with all of those statements.
My bet is on the tuning of our perceptions and the mode we are in. This is not the same as brain rewiring that would happen in weeks to months time.
It is the romance of tubes' glow (or synth lights or candles for the occasion), low light - less visual distractions and less background noises that makes you more tuned in to the activity at hand - not exclusive to music listening.

 

Everything said so far makes sense to me, but I'll add another vote for power grid, not to deny any of the others. I monitor my AC wall voltage with a variac/volt meter and it's consistently 3-5V lower when I come up to listen at 10pm than it is working on the computer during the day. It's enough that I would have to re-bias power tubes every night/morning if I couldn't keep things at a constant 117VAC with the variac.

 

I believe this has been studied extensively elsewhere:

 

Power grid operators have to work diligently to manage load and phase, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to see different characteristics at night.

That's an area that bitcoin mining has helped a lot, because they buy up excess power, allowing operators to keep the lines loaded near to capacity at all times.

 

@lithium, When I said 15-20 minutes I was guessing. Of the many times I’ve experienced it it was always after 2+ hours outside and I can see an equally good explanation being I was listening louder outside to overcome ambient sound and then noticing when transitioning to a quieter place. But I noticed back when I was still a teenager that I could hear “more” at night. Anecdotally regarding power line quality, I still hear a “night and day” difference even though I am off grid with a pure sine inverter so there is no variation (verified by monitoring).