Older And Wiser or just Tighter and Deafer?


I’m 63. I’m not wealthy but I have a tolerant wife and I still love to pursue great sound. But I find myself increasingly reluctant to spend significant amounts on new gear. I know my hearing acuity is not as good as it used to be, but my love of music and good sound is not diminished. When considering a purchase, I find myself factoring in cost versus life expectancy (mine!) and auditory function. I’ll even have some guilt about spending my kid’s inheritance. Is something wrong with me?
jdmccall56
jdmccall56, regarding hearing aids ... I'm age 64 and have been using them for about 5 years now.  It's one of the best things I've ever done for myself despite the cost.  I was professionally measured and found I have significant hearing loss above 3k. The hearing aids brought back great enjoyment of my system and made it much easier to be part of conversations and understanding dialog in movies.  For a while I would do A/B comparisons with them in and out, thinking there was no way having them in could provide a realistic sound. I decided I just enjoyed my system so much more with them in and moved forward with this decision.  Is it as good as it used to be? Probably not - but I don't care ... what matters is that I get tremendous enjoyment from my system now.  I've upgraded speakers during this time (about $8k in Legacy Audio speakers) and happy to still be 'in the game'.
I'm a bit older than you and would not consider adding (as in buying) any component of reasonable or greater cost that I could not audition in my system.
FWIW, if you are presently healthy you could easily outlive any components you might now buy. What I would do (and actually have) is to redirect my attention to simplifying my system using quality components to facilitate the ease of use when you start to 'lose' your mind (as well as hearing) in case someone else has to turn it on for you, and I would have a component which has effective tone controls to compensate somewhat for your projected hearing loss (or buy a good quality add-on tone control :-).


bloom, I suppose I'll eventually give in to hearing aids.  I'm just not there yet.  I guess I'm still living in denial (not the river in Egypt).
newbee, I think we're on the same wavelength.