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It always makes me question whether it is good to have a well developed taste. Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfactio

It always makes me question whether it is good to have a well developed taste. Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction from a meal or a drink.

jiggawatts 5y ago
> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction I have carefully avoided trying excessively high quality things because once I've experienced something truly luxury then it becomes an ongoing expense to keep up that level of experience. The irritating part is that before I was perfectly happy in my ignorance of something better being available out there, but aftewards I feel like I'm "ruined" because I'm constantly disappointed and frustrated if I can't keep up the level of quality. I have had headphones ruined for me because I tried the Sennheiser HD 800 once and then there was no going back to cheap plastic cans. I've had monitors ruined for me a long time ago because I got Dell PremierColor 4K display. Food as per my previous post. I've had such great food in so many fantastic restaurants that I'm upset with mere "pub food" that used to make me perfectly happy before. I am now incapable of eating certain fast food unless literally starving to death. Etc... Thankfully, I'm still okay for wine. I believe it comes in two or is it three colours? Whatever, I'm still happy with a random $10 bottle. My boss for comparison now has to buy the $250 bottles at company dinners. Ouch.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  >I have had headphones ruined for me because I tried the Sennheiser HD 800 once and then there was no going back to cheap plastic cans. It's not really the same as being unable to appreciate anything but a glass of Petrus or DRC. For a one time payment of $1k the HD800s will easily serve you for the rest of your life. If you prefer fine food and wine that $1k might not even get you a single meal.
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    I've had the HD 800 for about ten years, but it's starting to fall apart. To put things into perspective, I've had to replace both the cable and the padding twice, and each of those spare parts cost the same as a typical pair of "decent" headphones. Then I had to get a dedicated headphone amp PCI-e card, because it turned out that "regular" soundcards are not good enough. I've easily spent over $2K so far. When I replace it, I'll have difficulty resisting the temptation to upgrade to the "next level". Planar magnetic or planar electrostatic headphones are the next logical step. Those start at $2K and go up from there. I'll be lucky to escape this with less than $10K spent...
- dotancohen 5y ago
  For me it was music. Till this day I cannot stand MP3 audio, and can detect when it's played on the radio, because of one bored afternoon in 2002 experimenting with MP3 and CD audio quality. Sure, you _could_ rip an MP3 with near-undetectable quality loss for most types of music (The Wall, yes. The Downward Spiral, no). But nobody does that, as apparently it was not the default on anything back then and today Youtube and Spotify and all others still use those horrible quality settings as people have gotten used to them.
  - yanokwa 5y ago
    I’m curious, have you done an ABX test recently? My wife swore up and down she could hear the difference too. An ABX test with expensive headphones in a quiet room across a few different genres and bitrates showed that she couldn’t.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      I tested only with the headphones that I had at the time, with the types of music that I listen to. I'd actually be interested in trying again, but with my normal headphones (typical Sony over-ear), not something expensive. For reference, I listen to mostly Pantera, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, early Nine Inch Nails, Led Zep. It's not too diverse, but there is a short period from about 1990 to 2005 where music recorded in that period does not transfer to MP3 well. Maybe because the digital artifacts that we cannot hear in the published recordings are amplified in the compressed MP3 - but after that period producers began to optimize their recordings to account for that.
      - rsynnott 5y ago
        How old were the MP3 files you were using? Early mp3 encoders were generally Not Very Good.
        dotancohen 5y ago
        They were brand new, ripped myself and compared with the CD still in the drawer. Using different bitrates and other settings, whatever was documented for the CLI tools at the time. I was using some Red Hat variant, but this was before Fedora. In 2002 I believe. Though I'm sure that the encoders got better, really, the quality of the common rip has not.
- rob74 5y ago
  Makes me glad to be a simple person with simple tastes - sometimes I taste a more expensive wine, and it's good, but then I ask myself "is this really worth paying 3x or 10x more than for a regular glass of wine?", and most of the time the answer I give myself is no...
jackmoore 5y ago
Hedonic adaptation
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction from a meal or a drink. I don't know. It's not really the same level of satisfaction. Eating well is very enjoyable. I think food is one of the product categories in which spending just a bit more raise the quality drastically. Buying fresh vegetables from the market and butcher meats from time to time rather than everything from a grocery store was transformative for me and it's not actually that much more expensive. I guess I could sustain myself on canned peas and frozen chicken but it wouldn't bring me much joy.

It always makes me question whether it is good to have a well developed taste. Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction from a meal or a drink.

jiggawatts 5y ago

> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction I have carefully avoided trying excessively high quality things because once I've experienced something truly luxury then it becomes an ongoing expense to keep up that level of experience. The irritating part is that before I was perfectly happy in my ignorance of something better being available out there, but aftewards I feel like I'm "ruined" because I'm constantly disappointed and frustrated if I can't keep up the level of quality. I have had headphones ruined for me because I tried the Sennheiser HD 800 once and then there was no going back to cheap plastic cans. I've had monitors ruined for me a long time ago because I got Dell PremierColor 4K display. Food as per my previous post. I've had such great food in so many fantastic restaurants that I'm upset with mere "pub food" that used to make me perfectly happy before. I am now incapable of eating certain fast food unless literally starving to death. Etc... Thankfully, I'm still okay for wine. I believe it comes in two or is it three colours? Whatever, I'm still happy with a random $10 bottle. My boss for comparison now has to buy the $250 bottles at company dinners. Ouch.

FDSGSG 5y ago
>I have had headphones ruined for me because I tried the Sennheiser HD 800 once and then there was no going back to cheap plastic cans. It's not really the same as being unable to appreciate anything but a glass of Petrus or DRC. For a one time payment of $1k the HD800s will easily serve you for the rest of your life. If you prefer fine food and wine that $1k might not even get you a single meal.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  I've had the HD 800 for about ten years, but it's starting to fall apart. To put things into perspective, I've had to replace both the cable and the padding twice, and each of those spare parts cost the same as a typical pair of "decent" headphones. Then I had to get a dedicated headphone amp PCI-e card, because it turned out that "regular" soundcards are not good enough. I've easily spent over $2K so far. When I replace it, I'll have difficulty resisting the temptation to upgrade to the "next level". Planar magnetic or planar electrostatic headphones are the next logical step. Those start at $2K and go up from there. I'll be lucky to escape this with less than $10K spent...
dotancohen 5y ago
For me it was music. Till this day I cannot stand MP3 audio, and can detect when it's played on the radio, because of one bored afternoon in 2002 experimenting with MP3 and CD audio quality. Sure, you _could_ rip an MP3 with near-undetectable quality loss for most types of music (The Wall, yes. The Downward Spiral, no). But nobody does that, as apparently it was not the default on anything back then and today Youtube and Spotify and all others still use those horrible quality settings as people have gotten used to them.
- yanokwa 5y ago
  I’m curious, have you done an ABX test recently? My wife swore up and down she could hear the difference too. An ABX test with expensive headphones in a quiet room across a few different genres and bitrates showed that she couldn’t.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    I tested only with the headphones that I had at the time, with the types of music that I listen to. I'd actually be interested in trying again, but with my normal headphones (typical Sony over-ear), not something expensive. For reference, I listen to mostly Pantera, Beethoven, Pink Floyd, early Nine Inch Nails, Led Zep. It's not too diverse, but there is a short period from about 1990 to 2005 where music recorded in that period does not transfer to MP3 well. Maybe because the digital artifacts that we cannot hear in the published recordings are amplified in the compressed MP3 - but after that period producers began to optimize their recordings to account for that.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      How old were the MP3 files you were using? Early mp3 encoders were generally Not Very Good.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        They were brand new, ripped myself and compared with the CD still in the drawer. Using different bitrates and other settings, whatever was documented for the CLI tools at the time. I was using some Red Hat variant, but this was before Fedora. In 2002 I believe. Though I'm sure that the encoders got better, really, the quality of the common rip has not.
rob74 5y ago
Makes me glad to be a simple person with simple tastes - sometimes I taste a more expensive wine, and it's good, but then I ask myself "is this really worth paying 3x or 10x more than for a regular glass of wine?", and most of the time the answer I give myself is no...

jackmoore 5y ago

Hedonic adaptation

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction from a meal or a drink. I don't know. It's not really the same level of satisfaction. Eating well is very enjoyable. I think food is one of the product categories in which spending just a bit more raise the quality drastically. Buying fresh vegetables from the market and butcher meats from time to time rather than everything from a grocery store was transformative for me and it's not actually that much more expensive. I guess I could sustain myself on canned peas and frozen chicken but it wouldn't bring me much joy.