Aging ears and Nuances

There is an awful lot more to music reproduction than high frequency bandwidth.  In my experience you can enjoy quality music reproduction and hear subtle component differences as you age despite a gradual loss of high frequency hearing.

As other posters have noted, with experience you also learn to be a better listener.

I believe our brains retain the experiences of listening in our younger years and "fill in" the missing frequency information even when our ears no longer detect them. We know what full range music sounds like and that knowledge is recalled by the overall sound such that we don't notice the missing frequencies.

At 75 even more capable to detecting nuance on a good system at least in base, mid and much of highs. One thing that I think has happened with age is an ever-increasing sensitivity to distortion. This happens in music systems but also on TV, movies, and loud places such as restaurants. Much if it is but sub-liminal, but if you want to know if your system is clean and clear, natural, un-electronic ask an old duffer.

I'm 74 and have worn hearing aids for the past 20 years or so; main problem was loss of high-frequencies; being hard-of-hearing runs in the family. As mashif says, our brains 'fill in' missing info, and hearing aids with audiologists setting the EQ, just make it that much easier for my brain to do so. I can even do a little EQ adjustment myself on them. 

Dear Mashif, being a medical specialist in ENT, You are so right! We have a "musical memory". You need to have listened for several years to for example acusic music to learn to rember the special spectrum of frequences that identify each instrument. When you get older and start to loose the upper frequences, your brain only need to hear the caracteristics of a part of the full spectrum of a special instrument to recognise it and fill in the missing frequences. This is natures way of letting us enjoy our music up through our age. Electronic music however can vary in so many ways making it much more difficult to find a special spectrum of freqwuences for the "instrument"to remember.

You also need to deal with these facts when judging the HiFi reviews from eldery experienced HiFi experts. Are they really hearing all frequences or is the brain adding more or less...?