I’d say there are people working in this domain, but they are not the kind who publish reviews. There is a large universe of measurement based perception and psycho-acoustic research, but much of it is proprietary (e.g., Bose).
Strong subjectivists DO NOT WANT technicalities, just a pure and pleasant experience. Some objectivists have poor hearing and rigidly believe that everyone else does too. Both might have similar underlying personality flaws or traits.
The sad reality is that cognitive ability, athleticism, and perception (to include hearing) decline with age. The older groups who argue strongly are likely less able or unable to truly distinguish between nuances.
When was the last time a 50 or 60 year old won a medal in sprinting, downhill skiing, or anything physically challenging? 
The younger, opinionated aficionados may in fact hear better and hear things others do not hear at all. Even if they are jerks, as young people often are.
Yo, watch it, dude!
Next time, come riding bicycles with me. Or you can come downhill skiing anytime. Chugash in Alaska sounds like a nice place.
Riding up Stelvio, Mortirolo, Alpe D’huez etc., isn’t that bad.
Can you keep an under 8 min/mile pace running? Or bench press your weight? Squat 1.5 x your weight?
May not be good for Olympics, clearly, but be careful of underestimating “old” people.
I wasn’t excluding myself from the old category…
Etc… 
Not my point. I am definitely fitter now than when I was 20, for all sorts of reasons. There is no doubt that if I had the training knowledge at 20 that I have now, I would have been much faster, stronger, etc. But at my age, I can still get some arrogant whippersnappers to take notice.
And I can assure you, that I am most likely not even in the top percentage of my age group. You have to see some of the bike riders around here, or the skiers in Jackson Hole…
My mental hurdle is when I can’t run anymore in under 8 min/mile. My reconstructed shoulder will impact my bench press sooner rather than later.
By the way, those charts are misleading. A person that weighs 60 kilos cannot bench press the same as someone that weighs 90 kilos, assuming they are both equally fit. I used my weight as an example as I once heard Arnold state that if you can bench press your weight you were in good shape. This works for someone that is 5 feet 4 inches or 6 feet 10 inches.
This is mainstream fitness/aging data and based on group averages rather than individuals. Yes, all sorts of factors such as weight, ethnicity, etc. can also be considered but the same patterns hold up across age groups. However, I never intended personal offense and do not wish to continue to aggravate or agitate you. I’ll therefore discontinue the discussion.
No worries. It is all fun. I just want to make sure that people don’t assume all old foggies are the same.
You should se my mom playing golf at 80!
I will say, that my experience follows the average trends thus far. I’m also lazy and haven’t worked out nearly as much as I should. 
What a wonderful thread I have missed during the past day of MAXIMUM ALLERGY. Objectively, what’s the difference between a rain of water and one of tree pollen? Subjectively, the latter made me want to open my skull like a Monty Python animation and fill it with antihistamine. Dejectedly, I can’t really listen to music on headphones because one of my ears won’t clear the 35 PSI mucous.
I love to hear about recovering audiophiles. And any other tales of woe. I’m a recovering word weenie. and it does me good to see so many of us writing DACs as the plural of DAC and avoiding the gratuitious apostrophe “DAC’s”.
Subjectively I made the internal connection between DACs and DTDs. This is because I have been unable to completely stamp out the urge to be a word weenie and well, Robin Cover - probably the Jungian archetype of word weenies wrote a treatise on plurals and apostrophes. I point you to its magnificence below. Has nothing to do with audio, but I made a subjective connection, objectively non-rational, and will be dejected if nobody peeks.
http://xml.coverpages.org/properSpellingForPluralOfDTD.html
My excuse is that I’m still full of antihistamines…
I don’t work out as much as I should either, I’m trying to get back to fighting weight of 215(ish) currently at 225lbs…it is always that last 5to10lbs that are a mother to lose though…now that spring/summer is showing up I’ll try and add some running to the mix…probably need to hit the gym more than 3 times a week too…working on revamping my workouts to better accommodate…as the great running company says…”just do it” lol
I’m a chubby old guy that likes to fly stunt kites. It’s often not strength but technique.
It’s fun when the young whippersnappers want to take a shot at it. One day I was flying a Flexifoil two stack. (That will date me in the kite world).
The high-school athlete did try and pay attention to how you need to brace yourself when the kites get near the middle of the wind window. I gave him the handles at the edge, and he proceeded to be dragged about 40 yards across a field on his stomach before crashing the kites…
I can certainly relate to that! I used to do some stunt kiting myself, starting quite late in life (late twenties). The first time I flew a kite in “too much” wind, I was dragged down the beach, face down, much to the amusement of my wife and son (who was about 7 at the time!) 
I fall in the Subjective camp—my personal standards being my own ears & past experiences hearing live music in concert halls, opera houses, clubs, and other venues. I have noticed (both in trad 2-channel audiophile circles & in headphone audio) a strong preference for detailed, high-resolution, “accurate,” “neutral” sound that in no way resembles any live music I’ve heard. If this were just a sonic preference, it could be accomodated as such—but instead, this sound is often pushed by those in love with measurements and “objective” characteristics of audio.
So it was with great interest that I read Paul Seydor’s March, 2019 review of the Harbeth 40.2 40th Anniversary loudspeaker. In the review, he mentions that often, updates of existing/successful audio gear are done to push detail/resolution:
“…It typically takes the form of a rising top end for a more etched, articulated, analyzed, and detailed presentation that is almost always slightly to considerably wrong when it comes to the correct reproducdtion of voices and acoustic instruments. But it must appeal to thousands…of listeners because so many contemporary speakers exhibit it, despite the fact that almost no venue where music is actually performed exhibits it. On the contrary, the response in your typical concert or recital hall drops quite precipitously above 4kHz, and sometimes the drop begins as low as half that frequency )see Robert E. Greene’s invaluably informative TAS essay, “Records and Reality: How Music Sounds in Concert Halls” at: http://www.regonaudio.com/Records%20and%20Reality.html).”
IMO these comments definitely pertain to headphone audio as well as speakers. I’ve never heard live music that sounds as hyped and etched as some headphones. In fact, live music often has a natural weight in the lower midrange & bass that can be felt as well as heard, and is rarely conveyed to a satisfying degree by even the best audio gear.
Detail and resolution of live music varies so much based on where you are located. Steve Smith, the jazz drummer, explained his Drum Art in a gallery in Las Vegas.
http://stevesmithdrumart.com
He had his drums set up in the small art gallery in Cesar’s Palace, and demonstrated how the works were created for a group of 25 or so people. Five feet away from a Sonor drum set being casually worked on by a master gave me an appreciation of detail, high resolution, accurate sound. Likewise, the few occasions where I have been able to hear good musicians and instruments in a living room, or even listening to my neighbor, a local jazz keyboardist and piano tuner “testing” our full-size upright after tuning it is a uniquely detailed sound.
And that’s what doesn’t sound wrong on a high end speaker system.
But get back 30- 100 feet in a crowd, or amplified system, in a large music venue, and you are quite correct. You never hear that etched sound. I’m no recording engineer. I would guess - and I’m sure some here could confirm or correct me - that a top quality headphone or speaker should be able to approximate that kind of sound if the instruments are closely mic’d. And should not give that sound if the recording is done from back further, as in an audience.
I venture no opinion (because I don’t like to argue from ignorance) about what the charts and graphs say about either condition.
This seems like a good place to let off a little rant. I’m feeling allergic, helped my wife with a burst pipe in basement issue last night. Had great time with plumbers and race to re-wrap old glassware and china so it didn’t get moldy… So I’m in a great mood to start with.
Plus, I’m a word weenie. Was reading Campfire Audio’s pages and saw their description of their Polaris headphone as “Bombastic”. If that’s the manufacturer’s claim, I don’t think I’ll be buying.
Most of y’all know that I don’t particularly care for:
This has given rise to a particular sort of cognitive dissonance. I approached this with @Torq in a post a week or two ago. My favorite IEM so far is the single dynamic driver Sennheiser IE 40 Pro. I do appreciate cheap, but hear the cheapness in ultra cheap IEMs.
A number of you, whose opinions I profoundly respect, like IEMs. Usually expensive ones. I’m not willing to just assume that you’re all somehow weird. (Think Seinfeld, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Started reading on higher end IEMs, and they’re even screwier (screweyer?) than like normal headphones. Dynamic, BAs, multiple BAs, hybrid, with and without crossovers. Sometimes all from the same company!!! At least STAX does electrostatics, and some other companies do Planars. But IEM companies try everything.
And I really wonder about the margins in the business. Should I know or care if cheap parts come in expensive IEMs? You couldn’t pay more if you filled them with Saffron. Harrumpfh!
Sputter. Cough. I’m going into the corner to listen to some speakers now.
Wait wait. Why am I ranting? I can’t audition these things around here, I work and I don’t get to cities with shows often. And when I do, I’m not usually in control of the schedule. So if…IF, mind you, sometime in the future, I wanted to torture myself by sticking some of these into my ears, what should I try and audition? I really don’t want to take advantage of overly liberal return policies on expensive merchandise by certain retailers that may be in earshot.
I agree that Iem companies seem to cram in what they can get away with sometimes. At least that’s my opinion. It used to be how many drivers you can ram into an iem whereas now it’s how many different types of said drivers (Hybrids) you can use. Done badly these approaches are gimmicky at best. But done well they are great. I think this is what the boutique makers at the expensive end can do well. But, I do think that they charge far too much for them. I love iems and would love to own multiple TOTL pieces, but price is restrictive if you aren’t independently wealthy or have a very well paid job.
That’s not to say that the cheaper end doesn’t produce fine iems because we all know that they do. And for some that’s a great part of the hobby or should I say passion for iems, in so much as they can try multiple Chi-fi iems and hear all the different types of driver and nuances of sound.
Thanks, but as you say, the speaker equivalent would be a
“Ported bass-reflex, transmission-line electrostatic omnidirectional reflecting sealed horn enclosure.”
One option, at least to get to a point where you can understand the impacts, behavior and characteristics of the various technologies/drivers/configurations involved, is to look a the dirt-cheap Chinese IEMs … of which there are hundreds.
Not a perfect analog, but if you were curious about the difference in, say, bass texture, impact or slam between a dynamic driver and BA, it’s a cheap and easy (and quite entertaining) way to do it. And the options start in the sub-$20 realm.
ASR believes measurements are the end all, if it measures better it has to sound better right? I prefer the more reasonable approach that SBAF takes. ASR hates Yggdrasil, for example, which I consider an end game DAC for me. Don’t rely on just one website for advice, and it is always preferable to try before you buy if possible. If you can’t try buy from companies with liberal return policies. You can find the other major audio enthusiast forums listed with latest posts at Daily.Audio.