I wrote:
To which you replied:
To dismiss my post with no is arrogant. I tried to politely explain why older listeners might favour bright speakers, but you arrogantly dismissed my comments without thinking.
I’m not an expert, but unlike you I take into account research by experts. As one ages, ones hearing acuity degrades , and in particular one has lower sensitivity to higher frequencies.
Take a look at this graph:
It comes from this research paper in a medical journal:
The graph shows the average hearing sensitivity as a function of frequency for a range of ages. Note how the hearing sensitivity decreases significantly with age, and that the effect is greatest at higher frequencies. The vertical axis is in dB, a logarithmic scale. 3 dB equates to a doubling of sound pressure, and 10 dB to a subjective doubling of the sound volume. As early as the early fifties, average hearing declines by 10 dB at higher frequencies. In your early sixties, it can be down 30 dB, a huge amount. These are averages, someone with some hearing loss would be worse off, and about one third of people in their sixties have some hearing loss beyond the natural decline.
Hence my statement that
I have a suspicion PMC are tuned to suit older listeners. In other words, it isn’t that older listeners prefer bright speakers, rather their hearing is such that for them bright speakers sound neutral. And as noted earlier, PMC are usually very expensive which puts them more in the range of older people with more wealth to their name.
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