How good is your hearing ? And how do you know ?


Sometimes I have a big laugh when reading this forum. There are clearly people whose hearing is, shall I say, very special. So why buy good stuff ?
inna
Dunno If I have good hearing or not, I am just glad that I can hear with both ears and can appreciate sound.
I would agree that the equipment of the 70's had something special. Musicality. But the recording process is so different now- I doubt that modern recordings would sound so great on that old vintage equipment.
Using a tone generator, I'm good from 7Hz to 18kHz. Sometimes audio quality is how it's delivered though, like a CVT vs Automatic in car terminology.
Who cares? Why would hearing loss affect my ability to hear differences between speakers or amps or dacs and prefer one to another? I hear what I hear. Whether it’s the same as what someone with “perfect hearing” hears doesn’t matter.

That said, I know I’m better at listening and pay more attention than the average person. I’d say my perception is above average.

I have a good friend who is a professional jazz violinist and his hearing isn’t great but he can hear things in music I’ll never hear.  He knows exactly what instruments are playing and can transpose it into sheet music or pick up his instrument and play each part for you.  He can also tell exact differences between audio equipment.  I have no doubt he has more hearing loss than I do.  

Which is to say, the natural world doesn’t have a lot of sound in the frequencies where we lose hearing... so.. who cares?
I remembered this article, about high-school students having their cell phone ring at a high enough frequency so the adults can't hear it:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/06/13/new-york-schoolkids-use-cell-phone-ring-tone-teachers-cant-h...

I think just the opposite of inna though regarding hearing quality vs. equipment quality.  As my hearing is going down, I'm wanting my equipment quality to compensate as much as possible for it.

Of course, the other problem is when you're young and can hear perfectly, you can't afford the better equipment, so I listened on "The Record Eater" turntable.