Good and important discussion.
The issue of
"age-dependent hearing decline, especially in high Fq" and
"how to compensate it" have been already frequently discussed in ASR Forum.
At least for myself, very fortunately, I have considerably better hearing ability over the average ability of my age group; I periodically check my hearing ability using a free software audiometer with nice headphone (I use it only for audiometer check of my hearing ability). I well know and understand, however, my hearing ability in 7 kHz to 20 kHz (or
ca.up to 15 kHz?) is now a little bit inferior to average of younger people; by younger people, I mean people of age 40 or less.
My post
here and
here would be of your interests.
Also the specific post here in my project thread;
- A serious jazz fanatic friend came to my home for audio sessions using my multichannel multi-driver multi-way multi-amplifier stereo system: #438
would give you the background of
"safe and flexible on-the-fly relative gain control over SP drivers" which you may easily incorporate in your audio system (even with headphones) by using DSP(XO/EQ) software and/or multiple "integrated amplifiers"; you can also achieve it even with multichannel DAC, such as DAC8PRO, if it has relative gain control functionality.
For the rather big scale (heavy duty?) multi-driver multi-way active audio system, I believe that my
"multiple-HiFi-integrated-amplifier" solution would be most convenient and safest for flexible on-the-fly relative gain control.
Just for your reference, I always
set -48 dB/Oct high-cut (low-pass) DSP filters at 25 kHz in my setup, and I usually play all of my music tracks in 88.2 KHz or 96 kHz PCM by JRiver's on-the-fly format (bit rate) conversion. Please refer to;
- Summary of rationales for "on-the-fly (real-time)" conversion of all music tracks (including 1 bit DSD tracks) into 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz PCM format for DSP (XO/EQ) processing: #532