[Leica]Off Topic - Point of Comparison

[Frank Dernie <FrankDernie@compuserve.com>]

B. D. Colen wrote =

"Not wanting to get flamed by the audiophiles out there...

Don't forget that whether you buy a $9 speaker cable or a $9,000 speaker
cable, the real question is - do you have the level of hearing that will
allow you to discern the difference? Most of us can certainly hear the
difference between a $500 system and a $2000 system, but I doubt that man=
y
of us past the age of 30 have the hearing that will enable us to hear the=

difference between that $2000 system and a $10,000 system. But that's jus=
t
an opinion...:-)"


This is a common misconception. It is true that one loses sensitivity to
higher frequency as one ages but, if one's reference is live sound, then
the loss applies equally at a concert or listening at home. If your stere=
o
is accurate it will sound just that. Boosting any frequency to compensate=

for the loss would create a system which did not compare favourably to li=
ve
sound either to oneself or anybody else, although it may be able to make =
it
sound to you the way it did when you were 16, if your aural memory were
that long

In a photographic analogy, if you had a particular type of hypothetical
colourblindness that could be corrected for you using filters the resulti=
ng
prints would look odd both to you and everybody else, but may have the
benefit of giving you an impression of how everything looked to others.

Frank