No, Aging Does NOT Disqualify You From Being an Audiophile

[phoenixdogfan]

Once you get old enough to yell "get off my lawn!" you've earned the right to criticize anyone you want

So you had to tell Taylor Swift to get off your lawn? She's everywhere!

 

[Mr. Widget]

And I think we should stick to well-established definitions.

Great, we agree then!

 

[HalSF]

The virtually universal loss of the ability to hear the highest frequencies as people move past middle age into their older years, and the prevalence of we gray-haired folk among hi-fi music lovers, is a combination of factors sometimes seen as a kind of scandalous embarrassment worthy of mockery and belittling and a diagnosis of listener incompetence.

As if we all can’t still enjoy the wonder and pleasure of great music and great musical reproduction, as if it’s not an ugly thing to turn the inevitable disabilities of aging into a disqualification from full and equal participation in the musical discussion.

Leveraging the negative connotations of “audiophile” as part of this essentially cruel ableist snark makes it even worse.

So yeah, count me in among the undisqualified.

 

[Oddball]

I am not an "audiophile" any more, must have picked up a cure somewhere along the way. Still love the good tune and great sound, but mostly spend my time relaxing with HT content which I guess gives me a red card from the audiophile world.

What I find so unfair in life is that we should all have more means early on when we can enjoy them more fully. I do find the stereotype of ageing with proportionately more means comforting, but would have preferred if that was actually reversed, or at least put to a straight line.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

Aging Does NOT Disqualify You From Being an Audiophile​

This is a good thing for the HiFi business because if age did disqualify you, it would wipe out 90% of the customer base!

View attachment 418131

You could probably mount those horns differently and save some money!

Spoiler: It's a joke! :)

 

[MattHooper]

Renowned sound designer (Star Wars) Ben Burtt is 76 and still active.

Sure, we lose some discretion in terms of high frequencies. But there’s a vast amount of Sonic information still to be discerned in reproduced sound, even as we age.

 

[Punter]

Let's face it, with most music there's much less important information above 8Khz. Practically all lead instruments fit into a range that's easily heard by an ageing set of ears. However, the insistence by some equipment and accessory vendors that there's important components in music above 20KHz means that no matter how a HiFi system "resolves" the average high-end customer (over 50) doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of perceiving it! I guess it's a good thing that these types of assertions about very high frequencies are all bullshit and the over 50 audio buff isn't actually missing out on anything.

 

[OldHvyMec]

No, it doesn't. It's your stuff, and you can call yourself anything you want.

What would you call a person who likes tinkering with gear, music, and likes to listen to music in general?

A person who gets up and dances to the music is called a dancer, no one said they were GOOD or professional dancers.

I have an 9-year-old grandson who is definitely an audiophile and has been for a while. If you can't be too young, you surely
can't be too old. Heck, my Granny was 99 and still plinking away on a piano, Just sayin'

Regards

 

[MattHooper]

It really depends. As we age, the ears tend to wear out faster during music sessions. You might not notice it immediately but the next day one ear may feel slightly less receptive to sound or a little numb. You can typically relate it to a previous day of over indulgence in higher SPL music playback or a loud environment. It's best to give your ears a recovery period. If things get worse you may develop tinnitus where you continually hear ringing in the ear. It may be minor at first but if it grows more frequent and louder you can notice it's harder to understand what's being said and aggravation is not uncommon.

It's estimated that 20-24% of people 60 years or older have tinnitus and there's no real cure. People use various tips to attempt to mask the noise but there's no way to completely roll back the clock. So while you may be able to still enjoy music in your later years, be cognizant that your hearing mechanism is no longer 20 years old and should be treated with care like any aging muscle. Everyone's hearing degrades with age. The variation in degradation can be quite different for those over 60. Not everyone immediately acknowledges the changes. Watch for closed caption preference on TV and louder TV playback than you find is comfortable from those around you. It happens slowly and many won't acknowledge it as an issue until they can't hear important safety clues or conversations. It's best to address early if possible, as hearing loss can eventually impact mental acuity.

Oh, believe me, I don’t need to be told about tinnitus. I’ve had it bad since the 90s. Though it usually doesn’t affect my listening to music. However my Tinnitus reached screeching levels last winter, and I haven’t been able to listen to music since :-(

 

[Chrispy]

Oh, believe me, I don’t need to be told about tinnitus. I’ve had it bad since the 90s. Though it usually doesn’t affect my listening to music. However my Tinnitus reached screeching levels last winter, and I haven’t been able to listen to music since :-(

Sorry for your loss, any "cures" you've pursued?

 

[dualazmak]

This topic has been already intensively discussed so many times in ASR Forum, I believe.
Just for example we have interesting thread entitled "Audio Listening With Age Diminished Hearing".

Nevertheless,...

Indeed, loving and understanding music does not deteriorate with age. Hearing ability does, but can be compensated to some extent using tone control aka EQ and listening at higher volume. Most of the musical information is anyway below 8 kHz.

Yes, I essentially agree with you.

Your point/perspective is one of the many reasons for my implementation of flexible on-the-fly (while listening to music) relative gain controls (tone controls) not only in digital domain but also in analog domain throughout my DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier fully active audio project; you would please find details of my present audio setup here #931 on my project thread.

As for the flexible relative gain control in high-Fq zone (say around 6 kHz to 22 kHz) shown in above diagram to compensate age-dependent hearing decline in high-Fq, you can find my typical approach in my post #643;
- Excellent Recording Quality Music Albums/Tracks for Subjective (and Possibly Objective) Test/Check/Tuning of Multichannel Multi-Driver Multi-Way Multi-Amplifier Time-Aligned Active Stereo Audio System and Room Acoustics; at least a Portion and/or One Track being Analyzed by Color Spectrum of Adobe Audition in Common Parameters: [Part-11] Violin Music: #643

Furthermore, in my post #931, I wrote as follows sharing again here under this spoiler cover;

Spoiler

Here in this post (#931), please let me emphasize again about the pros and merits of relative gain (i.e. tone) control not only in digital domain but also in analog domain using pre-amplifiers or integrated-amplifiers (in my setup). I recently wrote again in my post #56 on a remote thread like these;
Yes, as for safe and flexible tone controls (or I can say "relative gain controls among the multiple SP drivers"), my stance (policy) at least, is that we are encouraged to utilize the "best combination" of "DSP configuration in digital domain" and "analog domain tone controls using HiFi-grade preamplifiers and/or integrated amplifiers".

We need to note (and to respect for) that analog domain tone controls (relative gain controls among the multiple SP drivers) give no effect nor influence at all on the upstream DSP configuration (XO/EQ/Gain/Phase/Polarity/Group-Delay). I believe that this is a great merit of flexible tone controls in analog domain. We know well, on the other hand, in case if we would like to do the "tone/gain controls" only within DSP configurations, such DSP gain controls always affect more-or-less on "XO" "EQ" "phase" and "delay" of the DSP settings which will leads you to possible endless DSP tuning spirals every time; within DSP configurations, XO EQ Gain Phase and Delay are always not independent with each other, but they are always interdependent/on-interaction.

Just for your possible reference, my DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier active system has flexible and safe analog level on-the-fly relative gain controls (in addition to upstream on-the-fly DSP gain controls) for L&R subwoofers, woofers, midrange-squawkers, tweeters, and super-tweeters, all independently and remotely. My post here shows you a typical example case for such safe and flexible on-the-fly analog-level tone controls. This my post (as well as this post) would be also of your interest.

Of course, I know well that I (we) can also perform such relative gain control using DAC8PRO’s 8-channel output gain controllers. I do not like, however, to change the DAC8PRO’s output levels frequently on-the-fly (while listening to music) due to safety and inconvenience concerns; I like to keep DAC8PRO’s analog out gain level always at constant -4 dB which should remain to be usually “untouchable” in my case.

One of the very unique aspects/features of my multichannel audio rig is that I fully utilize four HiFi-grade “integrated amplifiers” plus L&R active subwoofers, each of them have its own gain (volume) controller for safe and flexible relative gain (tone) control in analog domain even on-the-fly i.e. while listening to music.

In this perspective, my posts #438 and #643 should also give you better understandings. Furthermore, my posts #317(remote thread), #313(remote thread) would be also of your reference and interest.

My post here #532 is also partly related to the specific topic here on "Aging and hearing decline";
- 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

 

[MattHooper]

Since you asked… and please don’t take the following as a “ woe is me” story - everyone has their problems. (and doubtless some here have health problems worse than what I’m dealing with.). But in the spirit of sharing experiences that might be of interest to anybody else on the topic of Tinnitus…

Sorry for your loss, any "cures" you've pursued?

Yes, and no.

I’ve dealt with the waxing and waning of tinnitus generally quite well over the years. It could be astonishingly loud and yet I just ignored it I would habituate again. Pretty much like I think anyone else here who has tinnitus.

As for treatments, there is one that I want to pursue when I can. I had an event that caused what is called “ catastrophic hyperacusis” in 2018 where it was difficult to even talk because it hurt my ears. I underwent a therapy that is similar to TRT (tinnitus retraining therapy), which involved wearing small hearing aid like devices that pumped carefully modulated white noise into my ears to essentially retrain the nervous system. It usually takes around 18 months to two years, it took me a little longer, but in the end, my ears were more robust than they had been for decades, and I was happily listening to music and watching movies comfortably louder volumes than I had before. However, that said my threshold for loud sound or music is still below the average person, before I suffer consequences.

Unfortunately around last February, I was starting to crank my stereo system really loud (for me). And I spent one night with it really cranked listening for maybe six hours, and ignoring the growing ringing in my ear because I thought “ it will just go away like before.” But it didn’t. It got crazy loud. And sleepless nights ensued. It’s really nuts, even trying to listen to music quietly on my iPhone speakers leaves my tinnitus screaming at this point.

I believe that one big reason I haven’t been able to rehabituate to the ear ringing is due to my having Long Covid, which has been getting progressively worse over the past three years. Tinnitus is highly associated with Long Covid to begin with (if you want to avoid tinnitus, try and avoid getting Covid!). LC highly disrupts the nervous system, putting you in a sort of permanent fight or flight mode, and so it’s hard to calm the system stress that can be contributing to tinnitus.

So back to the treatment… I intend at some point to take up the TRT again which had helped with my hyperacusis, but this time focussed on my Tinnitus. Unfortunately the progression of my LC has debilitated me physically and I cannot make it to any of the necessary appointments. (that’s why my posts are being voice dictated on my phone with all the typos and errors as I can’t sit at my desktop computer). So I have to deal with recovering somehow from LC first, putting the tinnitus treatment on the back burner until then. Based on the experience of other people who got better from LC, tinnitus issues tend to improve along with that.

I’ve also consulted recently a couple times with one of the USA’s leading experts on Tinnitus. His view is that it’s really habituation or bust in terms of dealing with Tinnitus. But I think some people can use a little help with habituation, which is why certain therapies can be helpful. (This doctor tends to concentrate more on CBT for tinnitus).

On the bright side, my hearing for my age remains really good, probably because I started protecting my hearing starting in the 90s with earplugs at loud events.

Cheers

 

[krabapple]

https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/12/aging-not-disqualify-audiophile/

Whatever. But it should be yet another thing giving one pause about one's claims of sonic difference...or sonic excellence.