Are you too old to be an audiophile?

I often find it interesting, and telling, to look at the posting history of participants in a thread; particularly when there is disagreement. In the case of this thread, there are two posters, Douglas Schroeder, and Farmajed, who share a strong dissenting view. If one looks at their posting history, one notices that in the case of Douglas there are many posts in threads about equipment and technical matters, and only three posts in threads about music. In the case of Farmajed, not a single post about music.

I should have also pointed out that in the case of the posting history of posters holding the other (majority) viewpoint, there is a far greater percentage of posts about music in relation to posts about gear.

Mijs, Bravo!

Farjamed, my observation/comment was not meant to offend. I don't know you, and I respect however you choose to participate in discussions on Agon. However, I will say that my experience is that, IN GENERAL, participants who seldom discuss music tend to also be ones who rely on specs, and are prone to want to declare this component as "the best", or "better than that one", without focusing more on aspects of sound reproduction that are more elusive, and harder to quantify.

Wether a component makes sound that resembles music or not has much more to do than with technical accuracy in the high frequencies. So, the ability of a person to accurately hear in the upper frequencies is only but one of many aspects of judging sound that matter. It is also interesting to me that while even the most open-minded audiophiles, who acknowledge that measurements don't tell the whole story, seldom acknowledge the limitations of the equipment doing the measuring. IOW, I am not willing to concede that because some piece of electronic equipment tells my audiologist that I can't hear anything above 14K (not the case), that my ear/brain are not processing that information at least to a degree that it is still relevant. Case in point: the 20hz-20k hz standard. It became the standard on "determination" that humans could not hear anything above 20k hz. It is now generally acknowledged that the standard is very inadequate, and that humans can, in fact, process information well above 20k hz; and that the presence, or absence, of such has a profound effect on the perception of information much lower in frequency. The brain also has a tremendous ability to fill in the blanks.

There is a lot about this stuff that we don't fully understand. And to a degree, I like it that way. I think that focusing too much on the technical detracts from the ability to put together a system that makes music; at least MY idea of what music should sound like.

You state that your Dad loves music, and that you can't understand why he can't hear the difference between two sets of earbuds. I suspect that it is not so much that he can't hear the difference, but that he just doesn't care; and that the act of trying to determine which one "sounds" better, detracts from his experience of listening to the music.