Your audiogram and your preferred sound

Differences in individual hearing no doubt helps account for the wide variety of gear out there that is generally judged to sound good and be of high quality despite the fact that chances are two individuals are not assured to like the same thing by any means.

I sold a lot of good complete systems years ago part time in college (when buying a complete high fi rig from source to speakers in one shot was still a very fairly common occurrence, especially in "College" towns). Certain models/brands were more likely to appeal to more, but individual listening preferences varied. Few bought exactly the same thing.

Individual hearing changes as well over time, as do most other more obvious aspects of our bodies. Ears do become better trained to recognize things but also loose their ability to hear higher frequencies. By the time you pass 50, there is a good chance you will not hear well above 12khz or so even if you did hear clearly up to 20khz when young.

Thanks for the responses. I recognize there are a lot of factors involved. I was just curious to see what others thought. Perhaps as we age, our ability to sense pressure increases which offsets our hearing of the frequencies?

01-21-14: Pgawan2b
Thanks for the responses. I recognize there are a lot of factors involved. I was just curious to see what others thought. Perhaps as we age, our ability to sense pressure increases which offsets our hearing of the frequencies?

Actually there may be some science behind that. It is well proven that humans ability to hear, especially in the higher frequencies, fades as we age. I suspect that is why many pieces of high end gear sound bright to me. In general, the emphasized treble region probably increases sales for aging audiophiles.