Aging and Treble and Income?


I'm in my late 50s; been listening to, and playing, music for most of my life. I still occasionally haunt the salons, but these days not to buy new gear; more just curiosity about developments in our wonderful hobby. These days I just buy music; records, CDs and the odd download.
I was listening to a very expensive system recently, a combination of an excellent digital front end, feeding an exotic tube array of components, and outputting via a beautifully constructed set of English high-end speakers.
A very impressive sound to say the least. Not like real music though: very very good hi-fi, but not real.
One of the obvious oddities was the frequency response above maybe 4k. Just incorrect. Very clear, very emphasised and incisive, no doubt, but not right.
And it occured to me that this isn't unusual. And then a set of questions came to me. For the purposes of this debate I will exclude the 128k iPod generation - their tastes in listening are their own, and as much driven by budget as space constraint as anything else. I prefer to concentrate on the generation that has increased leisure and disposable income. It's a sad fact that this generation is plagued by the inevitability of progressive hearing loss, most often accompanied by diminished ability to hear higher frequencies. But it's this generation that can afford the 'best' equipment.

My question is simply this: is it not possible (or highly likely) that the higher-end industry is driven by the need to appeal to those whose hearing is degrading? In other words, is there a leaning towards the building-in of a compensatory frequency emphasis in much of what is on the shelves? My question is simplistic, and the industry may indeed be governed by the relentless pursuit of accuracy and musicality, but so much that I have hear is, I find, very difficult to listen to as it is so far from what I believe to be reality. Perhaps there has always been an emphasis in making our sytems sound "exciting" as opposed to "honest": I can understand the pleasure in this pursuit, as it's the delight in technology itself and I see nothing very wrong in that. But, all this emphasised treble....I just wonder if anyone out there in cyberspace agrees with me?
57s4me
What you're hearing on the Monkees' albums are the best LA studio players, so there is some good playing in there. Excellent playing, actually. Not sure I would enjoy listening to those tunes at this point, but to each his own.
Mapman'
Michael Nesmith was the only musician in the group...
tho, he was also unable to ride a unicycle without training wheels...
If you haven't heard them for a long time, I bet you would. Micky Dolenz had a great voice.
While driving the other night I tuned in to one of those psychedelic radio hour shows and heard a song I hadn't heard before. When the set was finished the dj identified the unknown song as one by The Monkees. It was an excellent song from the era.
My sister had one of their albums back in the day. I would agree with those who believe they don't get credit for their music contribution.
Michael Nesmith was the only real musician in the group and a pioneer in music video. Remember "Elephant Parts"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MGtgbe917M