Your audiogram and your preferred sound

Had the test a few years back, apart from a very minor loss of the deepest tones in my left ear my hearing was normal for someone my age (early 50's, at the time). AFA warm/bright equipment goes, all of that is among people who compare (or should be comparing) their gear to the sound of live music. That is, they are doing both using the same set of ears, right? If they always, or for a long time, have heard live music with a little hearing loss in the high frequencies, for example, then, if their gear is accurately flat (or nearly so), then they will still perceive their gear the same as they perceive their live music, naturally, tone-wise. Usually, hearing loss is very gradual. If age related, it may not be quite the memory of live music they had when they were in their 20's, but, until the hearing loss starts to become profound enough to, say, begin to warrant a hearing aid or something like that, then I don't think it's really the limiting factor in perception. 2 things: first, "warm" or "bright" are strictly relative terms in that they mean certain frequencies are either being emphasized or reduced *in relation to the rest of the spectrum*. What I mean is that, unless hearing loss is *too* profound, even people with typical age-related hearing loss can easily perceive this effect because it's a matter of the relative frequencies involved, not merely the upper limit alone. Second, for hifi purposes, I don't put too much stock in audiograms until there is a perceptible imbalance of hearing *all the time*. Our ear/brain combo is actually pretty good, considering. We may not be able to hear beyond a given high frequency after some point in our lives, but this particular test can reflect rather little on how we perceive sounds. Often, much more important are the temporal aspects. For example, just because we may not hear above a given high frequency does not usually mean we can no longer distinguish such things as "air", "openness", "transparency" or 3D effects because things like timing issues and low-level details are still the main fallback for how the ear/brain works. Which in part is one reason why better amps and other equipment are made with higher frequency responses (far beyond 20khz) - not so much for what they can do for our perception in the audible *frequency* domain, but for what they can do in the audible time domain - better soundstaging, image placement, imaging and air and so on. Hope this helps.

Differences in individual hearing no doubt helps account for the wide variety of gear out there that is generally judged to sound good and be of high quality despite the fact that chances are two individuals are not assured to like the same thing by any means.

I sold a lot of good complete systems years ago part time in college (when buying a complete high fi rig from source to speakers in one shot was still a very fairly common occurrence, especially in "College" towns). Certain models/brands were more likely to appeal to more, but individual listening preferences varied. Few bought exactly the same thing.

Individual hearing changes as well over time, as do most other more obvious aspects of our bodies. Ears do become better trained to recognize things but also loose their ability to hear higher frequencies. By the time you pass 50, there is a good chance you will not hear well above 12khz or so even if you did hear clearly up to 20khz when young.

Thanks for the responses. I recognize there are a lot of factors involved. I was just curious to see what others thought. Perhaps as we age, our ability to sense pressure increases which offsets our hearing of the frequencies?

01-21-14: Pgawan2b
Thanks for the responses. I recognize there are a lot of factors involved. I was just curious to see what others thought. Perhaps as we age, our ability to sense pressure increases which offsets our hearing of the frequencies?

Actually there may be some science behind that. It is well proven that humans ability to hear, especially in the higher frequencies, fades as we age. I suspect that is why many pieces of high end gear sound bright to me. In general, the emphasized treble region probably increases sales for aging audiophiles.