High End Audio and Your hearing as you get older

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.

"Are they in use in the US?"

There were some businesses that were giving it a whirl but the media jumped all over it - you know, child abuse and all that. In retrospect, they were probably right to do so; between the attitude of indifference and disrespect that I see so many teens directing towards adults, it would be far too powerful a weapon in our hands.

At 56, my hearing ability has suffered as evidenced by my inability, at times, to hear someone talking directly to me in a noisy environment. But put me in front of a system and all bets are off concerning the limits of my hearing. Just like speed reading is nothing more than training the muscles of the eyes to focus on a larger portion of the page, one's hearing acuity is improved over time and with practice. We hear things about 50 milliseconds before we see things when they are less than about 10 meters from us. Our hearing developed long before our vision did all those many years ago. We react faster to sound when startled. Sensitivity to sound decreases as we age but acuity can and does improve. All it takes is a 'hint' of the sound and our brains fill in the rest.