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Diminishing hearing ability?

I believe my biggest challenge in pursuing a great listening experience is my diminishing hearing ability. I have assembled a $50k system through Audiogon (for about $30k) that should knock my socks off. Once and a while it does but most of the time is less enjoyable than my first "higher end" $5k system 30 years ago.

Just had to remark because it's rather frustrating at times. Not that my hearing is that bad, it's just not what it had once been.

I suppose we're all challenged by this to varying degrees. Hmmm, anyone ever have an "ear tune-up" (short of a hearing aid)? May be the best tweak of all!!!

rbschauman

Showing 2 responses by lloydc

lloydc's avatar
lloydc
734 posts
 
Obviously you need to have your hearing tested, then consider good hearing aids - which run around $6K/pair - just another component in your system. They are equalizers with some digital processing.
lloydc's avatar
lloydc
734 posts
 
Stingreen, agreed, up to a point, I often do without them. But with "high frequency hearing loss" - which means above 2kHz, when we're talking about hearing aids, which is around the frequency of tweeter crossovers - without hearing aids, cymbals do not shimmer, overtones are not heard, and so on. Behind-the-ear aids affect only the "high" frequencies, there is a big difference between the top-of-the-line aids and the others (my Oticon 10's have 10 bands of eq, vs. around 4 in many starter models), and they keep getting better.
You could of course eq your stereo, but then it's unlistenable to anyone in the vicinity, and hearing aids, being less susceptible to some of the other variables, may produce a more "natural" illusion.
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