Equalisation and HF hearing deterioration.

[mah]

There is a view that such hearing loss should not be compensated for in music reproduction in order for the reproduction to sound like the performance as it would be naturally heard.

Any thoughts?

Marshall.

[bfish]

I'd have to agree. For a recording to sound natural, it has to sound like the original source, in other words, a flat response. If you need to EQ to get flat, do it, but over-compensation = unnatural. If you can barely hear the tiss of a real high hat, (barely) hearing it at that same relative level in a recording will sound natural.

[thinking]

I'm thinking that those sorts of corrections need to be made on the hearing aid level, where they can be individually adjusted. Everyone hears a little differently, but reproduction should attempt to be just that, reproduction.

[martyh45]

I agree, you hear the real world with your own ears and whatever comes out of your speakers should sound as close as possible to the real world.

One nice thing about really high fidelity high efficiency systems is that you can turn them up without getting a heavy dose of electronic glare and typical cheap speaker distortions. That way you get a sense of the upper harmonics you might be missing at lower listening levels.

Careful though, these systems can be hazardous to your hearing. I?ve noticed that many people take their cues from the distortion to identify ?loud? reproduced music. In a typical home listening room Altecs with high quality amplification and sources can play loud enough to smoke your hearing long before they get into the type of gross nonlinearities and compression you get from more pedestrian rigs.