I think it will also help to understand what you wish to achieve. Do you just want to be able to test/review continental equipment without having to replace the plug in which case a Schuko socket strip with a 13A plug fitted would be sufficient? If you are trying to compare the effects of UK and continental mains supplies there are a lot of differences to consider including the use of lower rated three phase supplies to the continental buildings.

Actually, it's surprising. Even though we all lose our high frequencies (at the very least), there's lots of other aspects of hearing - I suspect particularly special positioning - that, providing we don't actually go deaf in one or the other ear, we do keep, and it does make a huge difference. As well as playing music I listen to a lot of live acoustic music, and the recorded version hardly ever actually sounds the same even with my 64 year old (and battered with loud music and power tool) ears. But I recently visited my 80 year old brother, who has possibly the best audiophile sound system I've ever heard (and as you'll gather I've heard rather a lot), who played a solo violin recording and it was extraordinary. With my eyes closed it did genuinely sound like they were there in front of me. (Of course it was also fantastically recorded which was why he was playing it to me.)

The ears themselves might deteriorate, but the brain can even improve it's ability to process sound over time given practice. On a related issue, by accident I've found myself helping fellow musicians of my sort of age move from playing from sheet music to playing by ear in sessions, which involves really working the way the brain processes sound. It's shown - and I know form my own experience - that it's amazing what you can learn to do in terms of processing sound. Which I guess is why it was promoted recently that one good way of delaying dementia etc is to learn a musical instrument late in life (makes me feel justified for having picked up three new ones in the last few years!) 

P.S. Not that I'd ever advocate spending huge amounts of money on a home sound system unless (like my brother and the OP) it's the thing you enjoy doing. When I was in the industry, and people asked my advice on buying hifi, I'd generally advise to just spend enough until you find a system that doesn't actively annoy you. Personally I probably could have afforded a reasonably expensive sound system at home long ago but all my money went on musical instruments instead...

Andy Millar said:

.S. Not that I'd ever advocate spending huge amounts of money on a home sound system unless (like my brother and the OP) it's the thing you enjoy doing. When I was in the industry, and people asked my advice on buying hifi, I'd generally advise to just spend enough until you find a system that doesn't actively annoy you. Personally I probably could have afforded a reasonably expensive sound system at home long ago but all my money went on musical instruments instead...

So true. Most people can tell a really bad system, I can't listen to music on a mobile phone. When I couldn't really tell the difference between my Dual 505/NAD system and my flat mates Linn Sondek/Naim system (I'm dating myself here) however I stuck with the Dual (now replaced with a Denon system) and spent the money on my rally car.

Andy,

Super interesting! Thank you. I love the perspective the founder of your company had. It’s refreshing.

For the reason you describe so well, I also left HiFi forums many years ago. I don’t know of any other subject where people get so horrible so quickly. It’s also why I have tried to avoid “but can you hear a difference” here.

Perhaps privately, I’d be intrigued to know the company you worked for. I’ll then tell you who I write for!

Thanks again 

Paul

No great secret, it was on the recording side rather than the listening side, it was SSL (Solid State Logic). In the late 80s and early 90s I was one of the two lead analogue designers there. I left when that world went digital, not because I objected to digital but just because the opportunities for interesting new analogue design were obviously going to be very limited, and indeed 30 years later SSL are still producing analogue equipment incorporating my designs - as well as digital clones of my designs, which rather amuses me. Personally with all the opportunities that the digital world offers I wouldn't limit it by cloning analogue designs which were heavily limited by what we could achieve in the technology. But there you go, it's nice that people still like them. Anyway, I moved into the rail industry which being many years behind the times still needed analogue audio frequency design expertise!!!

So a lot of the perspective was that we were producing a recording tool, and its sound could not get in the way of the recording process, it had to be as transparent and faithful as we could make it. Although interestingly our only real rival was Neve, and Rupert Neve's products did have a very distinctive sound which he liked, and George Martin liked, but of course people who didn't like it didn't like it and were stuck with it. We sold a lot more desks than Neve did... 

Sadly the only desk that we designed that I'd really want to use for an absolutely top quality acoustic recording never went into production, because vanishingly few customers could have justified the cost (at 1990 prices £500,000+ against our normal system prices of £200-300,000). For that sort of recording you don't actually need all the features a desk of this size has, you might as well use something smaller which can be vastly cheaper for the same quality. But we learned a huge amount getting there. 

Cheers,

Andy

Andy Millar said:

I was more impressed when a few years later we borrowed some fantastic people at the old BBC research centre to give us a second opinion on one of our designs, and one of them (again, someone rather well known back in the day for a certain loudspeaker design) picked up a very slight phase shift

Andy – in the period you were mentioning I worked at the BBC on the periphery of loudspeaker design with the people at the Research Department you mention, along with others in Radio and Television Studios well known in the industry. It was a hugely enjoyable time (sadly no longer).The aim was to have loudspeakers that sounded like the original sound. One advantage was that we could listen to the live sound in the studio and compare it directly to the reproduced sound from the speakers. That seems to have been your aim at SSL, but as you mentioned, other companies took a different approach, producing a “characteristic sound”.

Off at a slight tangent, I love my cathode ray tube televisions because they are analogue - though of course the set-top boxes are not. We do have a modern television, but I find it a bit sparkly. It is difficult to put it into words, but I suspect that it has to do with contrast.

Chris Pearson said:

I find it a bit sparkly. It is difficult to put it into words, but I suspect that it has to do with contrast.

I had the same experience going from vinyl to CD, but overall I preferred CD.

Now, the quality of sound with surround system with relatively small speakers is brilliant, and good enough for most people at home - and I don't think I will return to analogue audio. It's great to reminisce and look at the old album covers. I've not thrown away my vinyl albums, and now my son is listening to some of them on his vinyl player ... and enjoying the artwork ... as part of the recent revival.

gkenyon said:

Now, the quality of sound with surround system with relatively small speakers is brilliant, and good enough for most people at home - and I don't think I will return to analogue audio.

Yes, it is amazing what small speakers can achieve. Then again, the ear drums are only about 1 cm in diameter or about the size of the tip of your index finger. (Slightly larger than a BS EN 61032:1998 finger tip.)

gkenyon said:

It's great to reminisce and look at the old album covers. I've not thrown away my vinyl albums, and now my son is listening to some of them on his vinyl player

Forget vinyl, what about your 78s?

Chris Pearson said:

what about your 78s?

I'm old enough to remember the setting on the turntable, but I never owned any of them. Not that I don't admire a wide variety of music, but the reality is people were burning their "radiograms" and grammophones in the 1970s when I was a toddler, and people were smashing the Bakelite '78s.

Andy Millar said:

The ears themselves might deteriorate, but the brain can even improve it's ability to process sound over time given practice

To add to that, this is a great book I've just finished this book...

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442453/this-is-what-it-sounds-like-by-ogas-dr-susan-rogers-and-ogi/9781529114010

...that expands on what you said. Amongst other things, it explores what authenticity (in music) means to individuals.

Andy Millar said:

The ears themselves might deteriorate, but the brain can even improve it's ability to process sound over time given practice

To add to that, this is a great book I've just finished this book...

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442453/this-is-what-it-sounds-like-by-ogas-dr-susan-rogers-and-ogi/9781529114010

...that expands on what you said. Amongst other things, it explores what authenticity (in music) means to individuals.