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Aging and Treble and Income?

I'm in my late 50s; been listening to, and playing, music for most of my life. I still occasionally haunt the salons, but these days not to buy new gear; more just curiosity about developments in our wonderful hobby. These days I just buy music; records, CDs and the odd download.
I was listening to a very expensive system recently, a combination of an excellent digital front end, feeding an exotic tube array of components, and outputting via a beautifully constructed set of English high-end speakers.
A very impressive sound to say the least. Not like real music though: very very good hi-fi, but not real.
One of the obvious oddities was the frequency response above maybe 4k. Just incorrect. Very clear, very emphasised and incisive, no doubt, but not right.
And it occured to me that this isn't unusual. And then a set of questions came to me. For the purposes of this debate I will exclude the 128k iPod generation - their tastes in listening are their own, and as much driven by budget as space constraint as anything else. I prefer to concentrate on the generation that has increased leisure and disposable income. It's a sad fact that this generation is plagued by the inevitability of progressive hearing loss, most often accompanied by diminished ability to hear higher frequencies. But it's this generation that can afford the 'best' equipment.

My question is simply this: is it not possible (or highly likely) that the higher-end industry is driven by the need to appeal to those whose hearing is degrading? In other words, is there a leaning towards the building-in of a compensatory frequency emphasis in much of what is on the shelves? My question is simplistic, and the industry may indeed be governed by the relentless pursuit of accuracy and musicality, but so much that I have hear is, I find, very difficult to listen to as it is so far from what I believe to be reality. Perhaps there has always been an emphasis in making our sytems sound "exciting" as opposed to "honest": I can understand the pleasure in this pursuit, as it's the delight in technology itself and I see nothing very wrong in that. But, all this emphasised treble....I just wonder if anyone out there in cyberspace agrees with me?
57s4me
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
I read once that Wilson speakers have become more accurate with respect to timbre as a consequence of David Wilson expending substantial effort in visiting the worlds major orchestras.
I suspect this points to the root of the problem more than a deliberate effort to color the sound in an effort to offset hearing loss.
I'm also in my late 50s. While my hearing has not changed over the last 20 years, my reference remains live orchestral and chamber music. Most of what I hear in the salons I visit don't get the music right, and no one seems to know it but me.
I can remember one system in particular. It sounder just great with Elton John. It was a complete mess with a shostakovich quartet.
gshepardbuster's avatar
gshepardbuster
620 posts
 
I'm 38 and been spending way too much on this stuff since about 19 or so. I agree about the tilted up treble. In the 90s I was at one of the high end chains of that time and walked by a "flagship" pair of electrostats playing thinking "wow too bright" and the salesman said "that's how real music sounds". Resently I've made some system changes because what others thought was ideal tonality to me was too bright. To each their own as each of us likes what we like and that's O.K. It seems much of the touted "best of" class is what I would consider bright, and is nothing new. IMO the brighter systems demo well as the illusion is that there's more detail but once in home becomes fatiguing.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,210 posts
 
That's a very interesting question.

Would not surprise me a bit if top ends are tipped up by design for various reasons in many cases, including to appeal to aging ears with $$$s to spend. There are ways to produce results like this in a system even if individual components are more "neutral" in nature.

At a recent audio show I attended, I noticed some very expensive and well received setups like this that had that sparkling and detailed hifi kind of sound in spades. Lots of large exotic tube amps even in some of those.

Sound is like ice cream. Not all like the same flavors. How good can vanilla ice cream get? Until it becomes something else perhaps similar but more unique or exotic? That's usually what sells to those seeking a new thrill or something unique or different, so wouldn't surprise me a bit if true for high end audio as well.
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