Have you tried matching a stereo to your hearing?

There was a study a few years back in a Japanese journal of physiology that documented that although the accepted upper limit for human hearing is 20KHz (although most of us come no where near hearing that high up), the human brain actually responds to signals up to 45K. Although not 'heard' in the traditional sense, there was increased blood flow and cellular activity in the auditory lobe. When these ultra high frequencies were present in audible music the music was perceived and reported as more pleasurable/enjoyable.

Having been hearing impaired since birth, I have a lot of experience with hearing aids and audio. Needless to say, current SOTA hearing aids, some costing over $5K each, try to match a hearing curve to the device. The problem is that few aids, even costly ones, do it effectively. I do think it is a good idea for any serious audio person to get a comprehensive hearing test. Watch out, typical tests don't go over the 8K band. So, find a real professional audiologist and tell them you want a 'broadband' test. If they ask what is that, move on quickly.

I think that three different things are being talked about here, which are not being adequately distinguished:

1)Adjusting the system to compensate for the Fletcher-Munson Effect. This is what I interpreted the original question as referring to.

2)Adjusting the system to compensate for particular hearing deficiencies an individual may have.

3)Adjusting the system to compensate for deficiencies in the recording.

Regarding item (1), in general you don't want to do that. If the goal is for the system to recreate a live performance as closely as possible, and assuming that the listener has reasonably normal hearing, and assuming the system is playing at volume levels close to those of the live performance (as perceived at the listening position in both cases), any compensation for high or low frequency rolloff that our hearing will have at that volume level will cause the reproduced sound to be perceived differently than the live sound.

On the other hand, if circumstances force one to listen at much lower than real-life volumes, then perhaps some electronic compensation for the Fletcher-Munson Effect can be appropriate, if the particular circuit implementation is of sufficient quality to not do more harm than good.

Regarding (2), electronic compensation would certainly seem to be appropriate for some listeners, who may have significant hearing issues.

Regarding (3), there is no one right answer, and in previous threads lots of diverse opinions have been expressed about this. It comes down to individual preferences, and the kind of material that is listened to.

Best regards,
-- Al

Al - I wouldn't have come up with the Fletcher-Munson Effect specifically, and I'm not sure that it's exactly what I was thinking. Let me propose an option (4) and see if it is different from the option (1) you describe.

(1) adjusting the system so that the audible frequency response curve matches that of a particular listener. There isn't an audio system that produces a perfectly smooth frequency response, especially when room accoustics are introduced. Ideally, one could adjust the nearly infinite EQ to allow the complete system to have a response that would match the hearing response curve for the listener. The goal would be to eliminate "loud" or "soft" areas in the two curves compounding.

This is similar to what the room optimization software doesn't now to match a system to a particular room, this would just be the next step requiring specific user input. Essentially, the user would provide the "goal" for the system to match rather than whatever baseline Audyssey or other company used.

Bad idea in my opinion.With the system equalized to your hearing,that is going to be your reference for everything.You will adapt to it and call it normal.Then if you listen to anything live,it will sound wrong.Even live unplugged music. We all hear live music and sounds with these flaws.Our body is used to it.Keep the live music as a reference,not a adjusted audio system.Nature takes care of this for us.