High End Audio and Your hearing as you get older

54, I believe that the quality of one's sound system becomes more important as we get older. Our hearing, mine anyway, has become more sensitive to harsh and overly bright sounds. This is why "Sound Matters" to me. Now as we get much older and our ability to hear deminishes to the point that hearing aids are required, well, I do not wish to think about that, all bets are off.

There's a difference between "hearing" and "listening". Even though our ears may not be able to hear as well as we age, our mind is able to listen and comprehend better. It's similar to being smart vs. being wise. ;)

As for our mind and mental skills fading as we get older, well, that's another issue. :(

There's a great presentation by Evelyn Glennie at TED that addresses this issue. Even though she is deaf, she is a world class percussionist. I'll find a link and post it.

Here is the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

Great presentation!

I have wondered if as we age, do we hear familiar things differently without realizing it? For example; do we narrow in on some frequencies such as treble sounds that we can hear, and yet because we don't hear all the harmonics that are generated from the those frequencies, hear them differently to the point that we now perceive them as brighter because they are incomplete?

I'm 81 and still buying hardware and software like there's no tomorrow (maybe there won't be). Does that answer your question? And no, I can't hear a thing over 10kHz, but it really doesn't matter to me.