High End Audio and Your hearing as you get older

Unsound, I do believe we hear things differently as our hearing diminishes. The balance of the sound would almost have to change some but, with our ears and brain being more sensitive to the midrange frequencies, it may not affect our hearing as much as we might think. The brain has an amazing ability to compensate for that sort of thing.

On a related note, I have often wondered if much of us older folks' appreciation for LPs is due to the fact that we can no longer hear as many of the crackles and pops that used to irritate us in our younger days.

Yes, your hearing range and depth does change for the worst, but each person is different. One of the pluses from listening over the years is that you train your ears to hear better, so it is some compensation for the fall off in range.
Audiologist will tell you that loss of hearing is part of the aging process, but with the advances in hearing aids you will be able to capture much of what your hearing loses.

Dhohnson54, thank you for your thoughtful response. I really don't know for sure whether or not what I suggested is true or not. I suspect that it might be akin to losing one's taste (or sensation thereof) of oil in a salad, without that counter balance the ratio of vinegar would seem to be too acidic.
Your point about "older folks appreciation for LPs" is worthy of consideration. The same might be true of analog tape hiss. I would also consider the thought that "older folks" have adapted to such surface noise and acquired the ability to hear past the surface noise long ago, due to necessity. Something that younger listeners might not have been required to adapt to.

I am 62 and have tinnitus and can still enjoy my system. I agree with Tpreaves, that I can critically listen better now than 30 years ago. That is a function of experience and experiencing many systems, say at audio shows.
I do believe part of that training is listening to multiple systems, to hear how different they sound and choosing the sound you like. For example, listening to Wilson speakers just leaves me cold, I do'nt get it. There is nothing wrong with them, but they represent the antithesis of the sound I like.
I would only add and not to alarm you oldsters, but hearing decline goes way below 10khz, I would say to 6Khz, with presbycusis. No reason at all you can'nt enjoy your music.
As an aside, I live in the UK and shops here, have begun using very high frequency noise generators 20Khz+, to drive away kids who are hanging around making a nuisance of themselves. It is said to sound like mosquitos. Are they in use in the US?

DJohnson54 is right. When I started my high-end journey 29 years ago, I was 18 years old, and my mentors were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. I remember being shocked that my buddy in his early 50s could not hear the hiss and cracks on our favorite LPs. But he knew how to listen to music and appreciate the best things about recorded music, and he educated me accordingly. Another mentor told me repeatedly not to waste too much money on equipment, as the average man's hearing begins to fall off gradually at about 20 years of age (mostly high frequencies) and gets downright bad in his 50s. Interestingly, women's hearing does not start to decline until late 20s and their ability to hear well extends quite a bit later into life than the man's. These are, of course, general statements of scientific concern, and each one of us ages differently. But it used to make me smile to myself when some of the aging editors of TAS and some other publications would wax on about minute differences in equipment, and I felt rather sure that I (in my 20's)was hearing significantly more detail than they were. This point has been driven home to me so many times that I consider myself more of a music lover now than a 'sound buff.' Lessons here: Enjoy the music; trust your ears; find the system which complements your life, not controls it.