High End Audio and Your hearing as you get older

Djohson54,

I was being facetious. No, make that snarky since I don't believe test tones are the end all when it comes to measurements on what and how we hear. You are right that with a great set of headphones, I could narrow down the actual limits to my 'hearing' of test tones but when it comes to music and all the harmonics inherent in music, those test tones can be set aside.

Nonoise, sorry, I missed the sarcasm. Yes, I agree about the harmonics and as I said earlier, frequency response isn't nearly everything. Unsound is correct about the noise and it even goes beyond that. Audiologists use sealed headphones with a known frequency response. The headphones don't have to be flat or even totally accurate; they just have to have a frequency response that is known and reproducible. That way the deviations from flat can be compensated for with loudness during the test. This is the same principle that the Rives test tone CD uses with the known and (hopefully) consistent deviations from flat response of the Radio Shack SPL meter.

I think I just may get my hearing tested to see where the gaps are.

This exchange we've had makes me wonder if we've all been mistakenly mislead in our appreciation of certain things audio. A lot of reviewers cite HF rolloff or softening at the high end when it appears a lot could be occurring in the upper mids. Think of all that wasted money on diamond encrusted tweeters and crossovers in the most sensitive area to our ears.

It may explain why I like widebanders augmented by supertweeters best.

Djohnson54, do you really believe RS had such quality control that all their meter had deviations of the same amount? That would be pretty tight non-quality control! ;-)

I have a RS SPL meter that I've used for years, but only for measuring relative values, never absolute.

Pryso, no, no such beliefs about RS. That's why I added the "hopefully" in my comment. However, the Rives test CD does rely on that consistency as you're supposed to measure the absolute levels and then add/subtract the known deviations from flat OR use the set of test tones that are pre-calibrated to those deviations. I'm sure it works reasonably well even if it's not perfect, and it's certainly cheaper than the alternative of a professional, calibrated meter.