Yes, it’s a message to you Rudy, or perhaps I should say ‘Audy’ – I’ll explain.

For those that don’t recall, ‘A message to you Rudy’ was a song by the Specials relating the term Rude Boy (origin: young Jamaican street gang members) to the youth in the UK at the time. ‘Stop your messing around. Ah-Ah-Ah’ – remember?

I’m making a similar connection to today’s ‘Audiophiles’ for two reasons. One, I love the song and miss Terry Hall and the other band members that have sadly passed. Two, some of the audio enthusiasts I’ve met are really quite rude with their strong opinions – and herein lies the point to this particular ramble.

To digress a little, I had a particular audio enthusiast twice visit my demo room. After the first visit he verbally rubbished all of the loudspeakers I had at the time, to my face! Some months later (and in a new demo room with some product changes) he called again. He said he was surprised to be allowed a second visit when I mentioned I didn’t appreciate his tone previously, and this time brought his wife. She said “you know his hearing has gone, he can’t hear the birds in the morning!” He again didn’t like the speakers he’d asked to hear, as they didn’t do what he expected by surrounding him in sound. (stand mounts with upward firing mid and tweeter into a wooden cone) I asked what music he mostly listened to, to which his wife replied “BBC Radio 4 and a little jazz”. When they left she added that he had listened to maybe over 100 speakers and still couldn’t find ones he liked. I stopped short of making a suggestion…

Karma restored, now lets consider a few aspects to this.

The audiophile, according to Google’s new AI feature is ‘someone who is passionate about high quality sound reproduction’ and comes from the Greek words ‘audio’ meaning sound and ‘philos’ meaning lover. My research tells me that in general audiophiles are in the 45+ age group (excepting the headphone collective which at shows tend to be younger). My research also tells me that hearing can start to deteriorate from a similar age and more so after the age of 60 – Can you see where I’m going?

I have seen (or heard) it mentioned before, by a reviewer, so I wondered if people actually do go for regular hearing tests. I think if I was going to invest some serious cash in equipment that, as we all know can sound very different, then it’s probably a prerequisite – unless of course the individual is just an expensive toy collector, who probably has the hyper car for a quick shop at the local supermarket – which is fine by me of course, each to their own.

Even at the level I invest at I thought it worthwhile to at least have a test. Maybe some people are too nervous in case the results are negative, you know, that bloke thing…

Undeterred by the prospect of the results suggesting I have wasted my money, I am going to get a test. First however some more research.

It’s no good if the test just says that you do or do not need a hearing aid. Also if the results just cover the need for ‘amplification’ rather than the ability to hear across the known frequency range it will be of little use in this case. Therefore I set out to explore what’s available.

There are a number of options available. You can do an online hearing test (presumably with your new headphones that you have just purchased) but that just seems like a quick and dirty yes/no for hearing aids. You can also go to a high street optician that also has an audiologist in house. Some do a quick test first before you get the chance to have a full exploration so maybe check what’s on offer. The two I found were both free so why not try them both to compare results. Wouldn’t that be a typical audiophile thing to do!

Next are the specialist audiologists. Fortunately, for me at least, a new hearing centre has opened where I live and they do a range of hearing tests that can be adapted to suit your needs. Starting at £50 this still seems a bargain, especially when you consider what some people are spending on mains fuses these days!

So, I am going to be a brave little boy and give them all a go.

Feedback, and hopefully some charts will form Part 2 of this post, as soon as available.

Maybe none of this will turn out to be relevant, but like checking out that pain in your chest, you’d rather know for sure – wouldn’t you. At least then you can satisfy your prerogative and continue being a ‘rude boy’ safe in the knowledge that at least your hearing health is in order, if not your manners.