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
Micky Dolenz appeared at the CNE I think a couple of times after their demise. I was much too old by then.
The OP has but an interesting concern at our feet .
Are hearing does start to drop off as we age , even if we take good care of are ears , but I think for most of us it is very gradual .

I think we spend to much time listening to ones own system . When I hear a system that I think is too bright , is it too bright or just brighter than what my ears / brain are used to ? What made me think of this was when I was listening to a live Jazz band and heard many things that seemed wrong , was this the environment we were in or do we just become to used of one type of sound , a sound that we designed ?
I think there's a bit of confusion in the op's last statement that applies to all of us in that the variables introduced by the engineer and the ability of the system overall to reproduce a 'real' image are two very different issues. The cues that convince us of reality are component performance related and the engineer's take on the information is truly the only thing that is subjective in regards to that question. Also, sounding 'real' doesn't care about circuit topology. The tube guys don't have exclusivity on what is pleasing reality and what is not. I have to answer the op's question with a no. Simply because audiophiles' ears are also very discerning and the competitive nature of the industry dictates that without a flat frequency response there is no hope in competing. Unless of course there is some sort of conspiracy going on which is highly unlikely.