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Golden Ears?

Elsewhere I have discussed by recent audiology results.  To summarize I have a fairly severe high frequency loss and have ordered hearing aids.  I was not surprised as for years I have had problems understanding people in loud environments such as crowded restaurants.

  I asked the audiologist how this would affect music appreciation and she said basically that bass and midrange would be relatively well preserved but treble loss would occur.  I tried to console myself with the knowledge that my speakers are considered “bright “ so I was probably ok.  The day after the test I was at a wind band concert that featured a lot of percussion.  One piece very prominently featured a triangle, with the player being spotlight on the stage and whacking the thing with great fervor, and I’m sitting in the third row and didn’t hear the instrument at all.  
  Listening to music, I still seem to be able to distinguish between levels of piano and forte, to be able to appreciate the overtones of brass and string instruments.  I have to acknowledge that while oboe and clarinet seem relatively unimpeded, solo flute has sounded comparatively muffled.  Piano, my favorite instrument and one with lots of treble, still sounds ok, but I must be missing a lot there. 
  So all that is under discussion in a different thread, and I summarized it for those who may want to participate in this thread but haven’t seem the previous.  My point of this thread is is to ask an uncomfortable question.  Given that most of us here are contemporaries, and have spent a lot of time listening to music, I know that I am not alone with this deficit .  A while ago there was a thread demanding that people post pictures of their systems.  The tone of the thread was that people who did not do so must have substandard systems and therefore were somehow unqualified to venture opinions on all audio matters.  While I was one of the naysayers who found this assumption dubious (I posted my system anyway), doesn’t it make more sense to require people to post their audiograms?  After all, what good is owning a million dollar system if the sensory organs to which they feed the information cannot adequately process it?  Or does this not matter, and if so, why not?

  

mahler123
dougsat
374 posts
 

You do what’s best for You!

With all due respect Worrying about other people systems / opinions is really just 

a waste of time. 

coralkong's avatar
coralkong
650 posts
 

Really?

I have the audio components that I do because I enjoy them, and they sound excellent together. At least in my opinion.

I really couldn't care less how my hearing measures, nor (honestly) how your hearing measures.

Buy what you want and enjoy what you have. 

mikelavigne
2,199 posts
 

there is a physiological aspect to listening, which results in diminished high frequency audibility as we age. but there is also a learning aspect to music listening with more practice. and the process and refining of listening critically is something that can be improved.

yes; maybe at 60 or 70 we lose above 15k hz or 12k hz or even 10k hz, but it’s interesting that even at that age we can somehow tell whether the musical signal extends up to 40khz or just 20khz. we don’t actually hear it regardless, but we hear the effects of it in overtones and balance at lower frequencies. or maybe our other senses are able to tell, just the vibration in our bodies? don’t know exactly why, but i do experience this.

so yes as we age we lose things, but also can gain things. and our ability to sense things we don’t obviously hear directly is part of our evolution as a species.

so no reason to over think how our hearing varies. there is just too much going on to focus on it. to me it's an enjoyment question, making our lives better......and keep doing it if it's fun.

newbee
4,767 posts
 

Yep, we all lose some HF as we age. Some fix it with hearing aids, some with tone controls, some just adjust their system set up. All work to some degree. But, FWIW, a good headphone system, for me, is far more feasible. With my main system I note the loss of HF clearly and it diminishes the music as well as the sense of spaciousness. But not so much, if at all, with my headphone system, which does not (!) reduce the music to a more mono signal. I get good channel separation, and while it's not as good as I used to hear my speaker system, presently it is not only better, it really allows me to get lost in the music. But the key, I think, is that it is a headphone system, not just plugging any headphone into a component. FWIW.  

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