Are you too old to be an audiophile?

Hey, who you callin' a kid?! I turn 51 on Friday my friend. Over half a century of valuable experiences up for grabs...what a valuable resource...get it while you still can. This is a limited time offer. In a few more years I'll be partially deaf and poppin' pills to raise the family flag. I'll have to turn in my Audiophile Decoder Ring and ID badge. Between the pension from Audiogon and selling off the system to some young buck who can better appreciate it, I'll have enough to buy me a Bose Wave, a years supply of Depends™, and a hearing aid. Maybe the government will have implemented the Soylent Green program by then and I'll have that to look forward to instead.

Well, you may not be a kid, Jax2, but you're a bunch younger than my son. BTW, I just bought a new cart and a spare armtube for my JMW 10.5i arm today.

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.

As a general observation, hearing acuity does diminish over the years. In consequence, a twenty year old with "normal" hearing for his age group will hear more of what a good audio system has to offer than an eighty year old with "normal" hearing for his age group. The eighty year old, however, can still hear significant differences in equipment. Senior citizens can still obtain useful guidance from good audio reviews. And they are well advised to try components in their own systems when possible. In brief, they can still be audiophiles at their advanced age.

What does this mean? I am not old and I have my hearing, but I am offened for the older people. I saw a program where a 76 year old guy made it to the top of Everest. What's so special about an audiophile? What's the thinking here, that when you're older, you can't do anything, just waiting around to die? Aren't there young people that have hearing loss? Aren't there musicians that have hearing loss and still play? I consider my self an audiophile, but some of these posts are creepy. An audiophile is probably way at the bottom of the list as a way to identify who I am.