So these room correction packages like Dirac are great. But what about human age related hearing loss which I have read can be over -30db @ 12khz @ age 50+ ?
So the argument I have is do we tune our rooms for a proper flat response regardless how it sounds?
Some people add a house curve because it sounds better. Is that OK?
And finally do us older folks need to compensate for our hearing losses? (note this does imply the room may not be right for guest listeners).
What's the consensus here?
Most people don't like sound over 12kHz or vinyl wouldn't have been so popular compared to "harsh" CDs. My Carver AL-III ribbon speakers naturally start to roll off above ~10kHz so I wonder if that's part of the reason why I always thought CDs sounded just fine.
You also have to wonder if some of the older mixing engineers were unable to hear very well in that range and thus simply didn't realize it sounded harsh to teenagers and 20-30 something adults (you can't turn down what you can't hear).
What really makes me think that's a real possibility is that I work on industrial sorting machines and one day we had this horrific high pitched sound I could hear halfway across the building and our older technicians would walk right by as they simply couldn't hear it.
I'm now in my late 40s and I can hear to 17kHz well in one ear and only around 13-14kHz in the other ear, which is still pretty good for my age, I suppose, but I used to be able to hear ultrasonic alarm systems in stores when I was a child (22-27kHz?). It used to drive me nuts at the mall. No one else could hear it, but I could locate the hardware making the noise every time.
I wonder if there's an anomaly in my ear shape or something as I can still hear 20kHz tones, but not 18kHz or 19kHz, but the 20kHz tones sound like a beat frequency closer to 10kHz in actual pitch. I don't have any higher tones to test if it continues up further, but I've tried the 20kHz tones on several loudspeaker and earphones over the years and it's always audible. Anyway....
I've noticed Audyssey's flat curve is artificially boosted compared to my PSB speakers' natural room curve with no correction and those speakers are flat to well above 20kHz and more importantly it just sounds HARSH on many music albums so I think there's a very real difference between flat near-field response and Audyssey (and REW measurements) measurements and thus tuned response at the listening position and perhaps that is why "flat" sounds so bad to so many people in the first place.
It's not naturally "room decay" flat in reality. It's boosted to be flat at the listening position as if you were listening 1 foot from the speaker or something. I suspect this is why something like Genesis ARC, which is so much more popular with some people for music than Audyssey and even DIRAC as it doesn't change anything above 5kHz.
Perhaps the goal should not be MLP "flat", but perhaps room curves that are known to sound great (like perhaps popular acoustic performing venues)?
As for your question, I think the brain compensates for hearing loss in odd ways so you don't notice it as much (It's often hard to convince people they have a problem for that reason as they don't notice it directly, only indirectly.
I would guess that even if you corrected for your own particular hearing loss, your brain wouldn't readjust instantly and it wouldn't sound good at first and if you didn't use it everyday (hearing aid tuned for loss), it would be counteracted as soon as you stopped listening to the system by everyday sounds. It would certainly sound bad for everyone else.