Are you too old to be an audiophile?

@Altbrewer You bring up a very interesting point about "live music." I feel like this is completely different topic unto itself but a very interesting one. In my experience, a recording sounding "live" or like "real music" has more to do with how it was recorded and people's natural "expectations." By "expectations" I mean, how your brain subconsciously expects it to sound in the room you are currently in. I say this because I am a musician and record music. There have been times I have recorded things (with cheap equipment) and played it back over my "system" and thought it was real. As in, when I heard the voice I literally thought it was in the room with me. When I say cheap, I mean the mic on my laptop, or an inexpensive condenser mic, and when I say "system" I mean my computer speakers. I have accomplished this with "good" equipment too, but to me the ability for a recording to sound "real" has much more to do with how it was recorded than how it is played back.

As for hearing loss, I totally agree with you.. it sounds good to you.. that truly is all that matters :)

I often find it interesting, and telling, to look at the posting history of participants in a thread; particularly when there is disagreement. In the case of this thread, there are two posters, Douglas Schroeder, and Farmajed, who share a strong dissenting view. If one looks at their posting history, one notices that in the case of Douglas there are many posts in threads about equipment and technical matters, and only three posts in threads about music. In the case of Farmajed, not a single post about music.

Dan_ed, I'm not sure why you find it so difficult to see that for some of us the question of hearing acuity and age is important. You say, "...I do think this is a topic that is hard to take seriously. It sounds more like some of you guys who are just starting to realize that you are getting older are starting to worry. Most people are much more interested in what their health will be, or what sex will be like. ;-)"

This IS an audiophile forum, not a general health or sexual health forum. It is perfectly natural for a person who is keenly involved in music and audio systems to wonder about age related effects on listening and enjoyment of the system. That is especially so if the person is younger, getting interested in establishing a rig, and has reasons to wonder about the guidance he might receive - as seems to be the case with our OP.

Seeing approximately half of the audiophiles who have passed through the door of my listening room and turned out to have significant hearing loss (shared in discussion, usually only after I point out some nuances in the music/system which they cannot hear, but which others who hear the same music readily discern) the question of the impact of potential hearing loss arises.

The difficulty of this issue of hearing loss does impact real world decisions on setting up systems. About 7 years ago I stopped at an audio shop which was steeped in the Quad/Naim tradition. The two store reps were helpful and showed me some CL-3 rated in-wall cabling I could use to wire my surrounds in my HT I was building. I appreciated the discussion but was quite surprised to see that they were using the very same in-wall cabling for their main two channel rig in the store and I questioned it.

Their response was that they had conducted comparisons; the CL-3 was as good as any higher end speaker cable. I mentioned my speaker cable at home and they fairly dismissed it. I decided that since it was not terribly cheap and the amount I needed was nearly the entire spool I would buy it all and use the few extra feet to conduct a test of my own between my speaker cables and the CL-3. I had come to the conclusion years before that cabling was significant in influencing sound, so this would be a good price/performance test.

The CL-3 was crap; it had the effect of turning my system into a giant boom box, worse in every appreciable way. Reinstalling my speaker cables was like breathing life back into a dead body, the difference was that profound. My conclusion was two-fold; those men could not hear for sh_t, and I would never go to them again for anything related to advice in establishing an audio system. It seems they believed they were really sharp, avoiding the costly cable in order to get what was to their ears the same result. They thought they were doing me a favor by giving me such inside information.

I learned through that relatively inexpensive lesson that anyone in the audio industry can be subject to grave error in their recommendations and or handicap in hearing. Having such an experience I vowed that I, from conducting listening tests, would be the arbiter of what form my rig would take. Had I been a newbie and simply accepted their conclusion based on authority my system would have been compromised and had I not put their advice to the test it might be compromised indefinitely.

Perhaps there is no perfect standard somewhere, but in the real world of audio system building when someone gives you advice which worsens your rig it becomes a perfectly good reason to avoid their advice. They said they had listened and done the comparisons and could hear no difference. My only logical conclusion is that they were hearing impaired, leading to a poor recommendation. After all, they seemed sincere; they could have sold more expensive cables to customers they said. It seems they literally could not hear a compelling reason to do so. All their customers were shorted in helpful system building advice.

It was the very kind of experience that perhaps Farjamed dreads, getting guidance from someone who is incapable of giving the best guidance. It is a real possibility.

Does hearing acuity matter? You bet. Would I take unweighted system building advice from someone I suspect has a hearing impediment. Absolutely not.

I should have also pointed out that in the case of the posting history of posters holding the other (majority) viewpoint, there is a far greater percentage of posts about music in relation to posts about gear.

I believe the mark of any music lover leans toward trained hearing, not (necessarily) top hearing performance. Most of us have no better or worse hearing than the average person. However, unlike the average person, our ear-brain connections have become more discriminating, focused, and appreciative over the years.
An analogy: We can SEE everything that a crime scene detective sees, but unlike us, he immediately recognizes clues and valuable information. His vision is no better than ours, just well-trained.
That said, at 56 I can still hear butterflies land in my neighbor's yard. ; )