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Comment by jarek | Hacker News Reader

Not that I love the gold-plated set, but:

"Your suspicion is likely wrong though - I have no science to back this up but am 100% sure in blind tests people with normally developed ears would pick the gold cables from the copper one. The difference in sound is just too big to ignore (or at least the difference between the gold vs copper I have here at home is). Unlike the improvements you compare them to, which can usually not even be measured with devices, let alone described."

Either you measure it and do a double-blind or it's just another subjective perception. See those tests that suggest people can't tell expensive wine from cheap wine without context.

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http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-t...

Also includes the hilarious "white wine with food colouring" test -

"In one test, Brochet included fifty-four wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn’t stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines."

[edit to undo monospaced text]

I get what you're saying, although while I personally am far from a coffee aficionado I certainly can tell the difference w/ a lot of their tomfoolery. The same can not be said w/ the audiophile stuff, not at all.

I dabble with fancy coffee now that I've got a few solid shops on my commute to work (the rest of the times I'm stopping at Dunkin Donuts, lest you think I'm more of a snob than I think) and my own personal policy is that for whatever variable X is involved that I'll only continue with X as long as I can tell a noticeable & pleasant difference. So for instance, I'll only get pourovers at places where I notice a difference between that and the standard (which implies quality of technique, according to the coffeenistas), or whatever beans they're using for a pourover if my reaction is "meh" I'll not get it again but other times I'll get it multiple times a day until they run out.

Agreed that this is all anecdotal and not double blind, and agreed that short of nuking things from orbit that double blind is the only way to be sure. However, as someone with very little skin in this game other than sometimes I want something better than Dunks, I can tell you that some variables matter to me and some don't.

Either you measure it and do a double-blind or it's just another subjective perception. See those tests that suggest people can't tell expensive wine from cheap wine without context.

I'm not sure if that is entirely comparable to what I meant. I am not claiming freshly grounds tastes better or has some other pretty subjective property. My claim is rather that I believe when doing an experiment where you'd for instance take a couple of pre-ground coffees and one fresh ground one that people would pick out that one as being different. Whether they like it more is up to them. With much more likelyhood than being able to pick out expensive wine out of a set of mediocre wines or so. Again, I believe solely for the reason that the freshly ground I drink has a completely different taste from all other pre-ground ones I drank in the last years. So yes you have a point in calling that subjective :]

> Again, I believe solely for the reason that the freshly ground I drink has a completely different taste from all other pre-ground ones I drank in the last years.

Well, you say "completely different", but if two kinds of coffee are completely different, how would you describe the difference between coffee and lime juice? There must be some degrees.

For better or worse some of the people who buy expensive cables and AC filters believe the sound is substantially different. I don't know if they'd say "completely different" but "completely changes the way the album sounds" seems likely...

But as with other things based on taste: the perception matters most, not a scientific double blind study. If my perception makes me prefer one coffee over the other, I am happy.

Of course, but if we fall back to perceptions and tastes, noone gets to sniff at people for using week-old pre-ground coffee if they like it well enough.

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