There are many things like this. Coffee people, for instance, who will straight faced insist to you that they can tell the difference between stirring the coffee grounds with a tiny metal "distribution tool" 5 times or 10 times, and who will post "recipes" for soaking ground up beans in hot water.
Just let people have their thing. They like it.
It seems like how one packed the grounds would matter more. If it’s slightly uneven, one side will get more water pushed through it.
If you already had perfectly even flow, it's not going to improve anything. That might be true with great equipment or a very forgiving bean. It might also be true if WDT isn't enough to fix your channelling alone so there is more left to fix. This leads you to watching slow-mos of your pulls and inspecting pucks :)
Claiming that bits are not bits is on a flat earth level stupid.
Yes, but unless the analog error reaches some certain threshold, the 0 will still read as a 0 and the 1 will still read as a 1. The bit is still a bit. The bits only cease to be bits after they reach the DAC.
It's at least as likely as the coffee scenario.
I would bet money on a blind taste test on a well pulled shot of espresso vs just dumping some water on some ground beans would show a substantially bigger difference than these people using an audiophile grade network switch or a different version of memcpy. The two aren't even in the same league and it requires some real magical thinking to come to any other conclusion.
Not necessarily, just a statement from the starting end of Dunning-Kruger. Try 0.1 + 0.2 with enough decimals and you'll see what he's trying to say. It's not that stupid of a thought if you think about it.
Something else that might seem equally stupid the first time you hear about is the fact that 1s have weight compared to 0s. Don't believe me? Look it up.
You comparing him to a flat-earther despite domain knowledge is worse than him having enough outside-the-box thinking to entertain the thought.
Want to explain the 1 and 0 comment? Because depending on your silicon design and encoding either could be…
Outside the box thinking is great, but being bounded a bit is essential.
You're doing the same kind of "affect wisdom by alluding to the elephant without mentioning the elephant" hand-waving that conspiracy theorists do, but as yet you haven't shown a meaningfully concrete example (other than your misapprehension that the same sort of implementation-specific inconsistencies that are found in floating point calculations exist in the fixed-point math used in most audio systems).
It was an example I don't know how audio works and don't claim I do. But I do know moving bits doesn't always end up the way we expect, and different functions has different outcomes.
I shouldn't have to explain sort and sort-reverse has different outcomes, it's implied and not my point. All I'm saying is don't call people without domain knowledge idiots when they're on the right track, kind of. The rest are strawman arguments I'm supposed to explain. I'll give you an example:
> ME: 1s and 0s in the same order are the same, but some data may be lost in the transfer
> Poster: Please explain? If the 1s and 0s are still in the same order, what data has been lost?
What I say: 2 files 1010 and 1010 are the same at start, but might be 0101 at the destination. How is irrelevant, there are a million ways.
What I'm asked to explain: If 1010 is 1010 at destination, how are they different.
Then I mentioned transfer, oh-oh. Now we're going into transport protocols and not just moving bits no matter the means. Incredibly frustrating and ironic given the context. I see the misunderstandings, I just can't seem to explain it. It's not hand-waving I just don't get why I have to explain things I never claimed.
Look at my first post. I'm trying explain how I read "bits are bits" and that it doesn't necessarily mean that he's stupid. Are bits always bits?
Tell me where you're confused instead.
> Then I mentioned transfer, oh-oh. Now we're going into transport protocols and not just moving bits no matter the means. Incredibly frustrating and ironic given the context.
How is it still happening. Did you read the post? Do you see the irony?
I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
OK
> All I'm saying is don't call people without domain knowledge idiots when they're on the right track, kind of
What makes you think you're on the right track?
> But I do know moving bits doesn't always end up the way we expect > What I say: 2 files 1010 and 1010 are the same at start, but might be 0101 at the destination.
Your assumption is wrong. Moving bits around is very well understood, and uses error checking where needed. 1010 does not turn into 0101 at the destination.
> How is irrelevant, there are a million ways.
Your explanation is inconsistent with the knowledge and experience of millions of engineers and users, so it's up to you to explain how.
I'm not claiming I am. Read the first comment I made. I'm simply stating the quote "bits are bits" is misunderstood because the one who made it doesn't have domain knowledge. I'm discussing in general terms but people expect details and proof of concepts.
I'm not arguing anything, everyone is reading me as if I was. Then I'm supposed to explain how TCP will fail and so on. Never even mentioned TCP, I said transfer.
People are too literal. But it's fine I've given up trying to explain it, this discussion has turned into the special olympics of misunderstandings. And you're all winning, congratulations.
> Your explanation is inconsistent with the knowledge and experience of millions of engineers and users, so it's up to you to explain how.
Since you insist, explain what, exactly? Quote the claim you want an explanation of.
Things you said:
> But I do know moving bits doesn't always end up the way we expect
> What I say: 2 files 1010 and 1010 are the same at start, but might be 0101 at the destination.
I'd like to know what makes you say these things. The reasoning behind it, or maybe experimental data.
When audio data is digital, it works in exactly the same way as all other digital data, something computer scientists, electrical engineers, network engineers, etc. happen to have a lot of knowledge about and experience with. We know how it behaves, we know bits don't just change. Therefore I say it's up to you to explain how bits can move in unexpected ways, and how they can be different at the destination than at the start.
You can't just say you're discussing in general terms as a defense for using unfounded assumptions.
Like that one time I set all RAM in my phone to 1s and couldn’t lift it anymore. /s
I'm not sure if RAM would have extra weight, as I know less about how it works.
[1] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/505361/how-m...
1s don't have weight compared to 0s, electrical "high" has mass compared to 0V. Which is "1" and which is "0" (if any) depends on the particular electrical specification of the protocol. E.g. with Ethernet signals are differential, ±3V, with 0V only ever reached momentarily as the + and - switch. There are also lots of cases where the "active" (i.e. "1") is the 0V value, and the "passive" (i.e. 0) is the nonzero voltage. Most reset signals are active-low.
Which is exactly my point with 0.1 + 0.2. Depending on the methods it will give different outcomes, some more precise than others. Guess it wasn't as obvious as I initially thought.
1s and 0s in the same order are the same, but some data may be lost in the transfer and I don't see why that has to be explained, here of all places. And that's where the Dunning-Kruger reference came from, he thinks it's the bits, when in-fact he would mention the transport had he had more domain knowledge.
Please explain? If the 1s and 0s are still in the same order, what data has been lost?
0001 == 0001. But 0001 + 0001 does not necessarily end up being 00001. Do you see my point now? You're missing the forest for the trees. 2 things are being discussed, not the outcome. Transport and bits, at the same time, but as separate things. Another analogy in another comment was analog wires, also good, break that and the resistance changes etc etc etc.
This many comments for something so simple. Breathe and stop going out of your way to misunderstand me. Ironically exactly how this thread even started. You clearly understand the subject since you already explained floating point arithmetic.
I'll give it one last shot: The person being referred to as flat-earth level stupid mentions bits, while he should've mentioned transport. And not taking into account his lack of domain knowledge and using the wrong lingo to misunderstand him and calling him stupid when he is right, just not wording it correctly is the problem.
Except all of the transport-layer protocols before the DAC are working in digital logic and have checksums applied to them. A bit flip is going to be detected and corrected or the packet will be dropped and resent. So the transport isn't going to have any impact on the bits whatsoever (barring effects like a packet arriving too late to emit the sound on time).
I won't go into your description of why those may be lost in transfer, others have commented on that, but NO, data may not be lost in transfer. Send data whichever way you want, over Ethernet, fiber, pidgins (POaC, RFC 6214) - it doesn't matter, as long as it's TCP and it's transmitted faster than the audio output - the transport and bits and all that doesn't matter. It's all buffered at the endpoint before being slowly (relatively speaking) ending up in your audio speakers if it's audio, or if something else - in its final destination, every single bit in its correct place.
This is a simplistic view how memory and data transmission systems work.
Even in days of yore it took a schematic to figure out whether bits were being stored as "lots of electrons means a 1, few electrons means a zero", or the inverse.
Modern memory systems and fast serial buses often use whitening to reduce noise and improve clock recovery. A 1 is a 1 when the CPU decides it's a 1, and even then its physical representation is not necessarily static.
Distribution tools are for espresso, not pour over or immersion brewed coffee. In espresso, you have extremely high pressure, so if there is a density differential in the coffee cake, you will get most of the water flowing through the spot that has the lowest density, and the rest of the cake will not be visited, making for a weaker drink.
Also, the "recipes" are usually just a ratio of coffee grounds to boiling water by mass, a rough idea of how fine to grind, and a brew time. If you take these parameters and vary them by any reasonable amount, you will definitely taste the difference.
Overall, it's not an apt analogy. There is no "fidelity" for coffee like there is for audio. There is a quantitative loss function you can define for audio quality - just the sound you're trying to replicate versus the sound that your system actually ends up generating. For example, no human ear can hear frequencies above ~22kHz, meaning anything over the normal ~44kHz sample rate provably makes no difference.
When you have different beans, especially from different climates, regions, and preparation methods, and taste them side-by-side. You'll notice characteristics that you would not otherwise notice drinking from day-to-day; and the ability to taste and emphasize those characteristics is why coffee nerds use different techniques and forms of equipment.
It's easy enough to make a quality coffee that is tasty (a sub-$10 of supermarket ground coffee, a sub-$10 french press, and a pot of boiling water can produce a good coffee). But to emphasize things like fruity and floral notes requires extracting coffee in particular ways to bring them to the forefront; like ensuring that coffee is constantly exposed to fresh unsaturated water, for particular amount of time, with a certain surface-area, within a narrow temperature range.
The real fun is when "audiophiles" give you music with high sample rate (e.g. 384kHz) and it sounds objectively worse on a standard playback device because the playback device only supports e.g. 48kHz natively and has to resample internally, with a resampling algorithm that's worse than what you would get if the audio was resampled with a high quality resampling algorithm and directly stored as e.g. 48kHz.
Many human ear can hear pure ~28kHz tone under ideal condition [1]. Some can hear higher.
[1] Ashihara, Kaoru (2007-09-01). "Hearing thresholds for pure tones above 16kHz". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 122 (3): EL52–EL57
I can hear bats, which I have been told is impossible.
The electrical whine from a crt used to really about me...
I can't hear much at all in a noisy room and sometimes miss whole conversations, which can be bad for one's relationships. I was recently diagnosed with 'auditory processing disorder'. With my 'perfect' sonogram (is that the right word?) in hand, a hearing therapist suggested that I may have lost a tiny bit of my exceptional hearing and that may have triggered my brains confusion with sound.
I once debugged a switchmode power supply this way. I was in my late 20's-early 30's and walked into a room where an engineer in his 50's was testing a power supply. First thing I said, was "what's that annoying noise? Oh, it's coming from your test bench." He blinked at me, but immediately realized that I could hear a high frequency noise he couldn't and that it was related to the problem he was troubleshooting.
IIRC, the problem was that his oscillator was running at a lower than expected frequency: it should have been well outside hearing range but was actually just barely within mine.
>The example is loosely based on an event in Fisher's life. The lady in question, Muriel Bristol, claimed to be able to tell whether the tea or the milk was added first to a cup. Her future husband, William Roach, suggested that Fisher give her eight cups, four of each variety, in random order. One could then ask what the probability was for her getting the specific number of cups she identified correct (in fact all eight), but just by chance.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea
interestingly.
For the undiscriminating palate (mine?) you probably wouldn't notice a difference. But someone who pays attention could, especially if they have a particular tea they're drinking regularly.
It's just physics, and something you can check for yourself in 5 minutes or by asking any chemical/food engineer who knows the basics of extraction.
For instance, there was a time where if you had told me that the number one thing that would improve my coffee was the purchasing of a conical burr grinder, I would’ve raised an eyebrow. Now? I find it is almost more important than the beans I buy. Even my first cheap $50 one elevated my coffee to a whole new level. Despite years of people complementing the quality of my cold brew, I still have to insist that they buy even a cheap burr before anything else. And every single one of them that has followed my advice has thanked me later! All because someone else told me first and I said “screw it why not?”
Anyway, the point of the above is not to brag about my coffee at home (which I’m sure isn’t even that impressive). It’s mostly to illustrate that sometimes what sounds ridiculous does actually matter. We just don’t know it.
You also can’t wrong going with an aero press. They’re like $30 and super easy to clean. Only good for making one cup of coffee at a time though.
If you’re looking for beans, mammoth espresso and cherry coffee roasters are both incredible.
Who am I to judge? I will fight you over spaces instead of tabs and don't you dare remove my trailing commas. If it's not supported by the language I'll write a transpiler and add it to the CI flow just before deploy, because git history.
I could probably distribute the coffee by simply shaking and tapping the portafilter on the counter, but stirring it makes it more even and I'm less likely to make a mess that way.
Sure stirring grounds to break up clumps seems like a good idea. But it's mind boggling someone managed to name the technique after themselves and get everyone to refer to it by an acronym with their name in it.
No idea if it impacts taste though.
I definitely stir my espresso grounds after grinding for this reason, but the symptom of not doing so is very evident in how long it takes to pull the volume of the shot I'm making. A distribution tool may help do it faster, but I'm not at the point where I'm willing to invest in more than the toothpick I currently use.
Smile & wave boys!
Could say that about your comment, right? Let the coffee fans enjoy the process of improving their coffee. Unless they start gatekeeping shit or insulting my (very pedestrian) taste in coffee, I don't care.
What if my thing is making fun of such people?
With religion being the biggest of all.
Humans are predisposed to believe in something even if it makes no sense.
There are some silly things and not all are required -- I don't do espresso or distribute my grounds, for example. I just Chemex with too many beans and let the flood of taste flow. And the little things really do make a difference (proper filter to catch the oils, blooming, light pour on the water, burr grinder (!!!!), freshness of the grind and the right age for the beans, etc). I'm not the snobbiest of snobs but I can tell! And at a certain point, its like looking at a painting. Even the littlest 'off' brushstroke can ruin a whole piece of something like the Mona Lisa.
A lot of roasting software is computerized these days too, so there is some precision in the process and in very particular roasts from certain boutique manufacturers these days. It's pretty nifty stuff. If you want to nerd snipe yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0t8DZ2yHs8
So at that level, basically we are super far up the log curve of diminishing returns. But then again, if your coffee is an experience, pulling away some not-insignificant-% of those last notes of bitterness is really and truly helpful.
On the audio side -- Yes, I'm an audiophile, but a very practical one, and I try to stay by the very old adage (as it were) that music enjoyment is 90% our emotional state and 10% equipment. That said, I can tell the difference pretty clearly between 44khz and 88khz on TIDAL -- it's really not that hard for me personally, at least. Both sound great but the 44khz feels like it's projected onto an awkward hexagon, whereas the 88khz is very semicircular and doesn't 'feel' unnatural. I really have to be into the music to be noticing though. It really is worth it for that 'art museum' experience (and yes, I did check to see if I could tell 24 bit 44khz and 24 bit 88khz apart. It's a very very clear difference to me! Above it is harder and I really can't say tbh). I do have a good DAC and lower mid-tier headphones (well-worn 598s, well over a decade at this point! :D got my originals somewhere between 7th and 10th grade. man, these have been around a while, dang). So anyways I know what I like and I get to have access to an experience that I haven't been able to before. It makes me want to cry, some songs are so beautiful. I'll go downtown to live jazz just to vibe if I can, that's the best. But here, I get to get a little bit closer to that experience, and I can tell when I'm not there. The emotional side can cover the gap, but...man. The little things do matter.
So that's why I think maybe it's not so silly that some people distribute their coffee grounds. If you're interested, there's this extremely practical bloke named James Hoffman who uses it as part of his core routine, he has some phenomenal coffee videos as well. Here's a great video where he discusses some of the nuances of the different methods here, and I think he has a pretty great, balanced opinion on it! (Usually I defer to him, tbh. He does refer to at least one method as 'incremental gains'): https://youtu.be/xb3IxAr4RCo?t=239
Hope that was interesting to you. This was interesting to write, many thanks for reading and greatly appreciated for whoever stuck it out to this point! :D <3 :)))) :D