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Are audiophiles similar to wine tasters? My understanding is that wine tasters cannot reliably pick an expensive wine by taste alone. Is audio similar to this o

by daenz 5y ago

Are audiophiles similar to wine tasters? My understanding is that wine tasters cannot reliably pick an expensive wine by taste alone. Is audio similar to this or is there merit to it?

dmitriid 5y ago
There's merit, but only to a point beyond which only magic and unicorns can explain the belief.
zaphod12 5y ago
The study that pushed that thought about wine tasting was looking at amateur enthusiasts, not professionals. The top folks can identify, in all common cases, the vineyard that a wine has come from. Some aspects of this are surprisingly straightforward to learn. Smell is an incredibly powerful sense when you train it, but most of us don't. It is not pseudoscience, though you can have a pretty solid debate about whether it's truly a useful skill or not.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  Haven't several blind taste tests been done with professional sommeliers where they've failed to pick the "good" wine against the "bad" reliably? Or they've been given the same wine several times and given it different ratings each time?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Indeed, even failed to distinguish white from red.
acomjean 5y ago
I believe so. I remember when CDs first appeared, we used to makes tapes of them and then A/B test. With Dolby Noise Reduction(C) over speakers nobody could tell the difference and I had young ears back then. The quiet parts of Jazz or classical on newly recorded stuff through headphones there was less hiss, but for rock little difference. But they were always advertising new Xbit Digital to Audio conversions. Even my headphones had a "for digital" sticker on them (Sonys MDR-V6s and I don't think there was anything digital about them...) I think its about feeling you have something special. Of course now we've come full circle and records are the new best sounding thing.. I remember having to clean them and hearing pops and skips... but here we are. but I'm old and my ears are happy with mp3s....
GuB-42 5y ago
Wine tasters can't pick an expensive wine by taste alone because price is mostly related to marketing. There are some excellent cheap wines and no-so-great expensive wines. Professional wine tasters are like human spectrometers. They can tell you each component of the wine (aromas, sugar, alcohol, tanins, etc...), using that and their knowledge, they can identify characteristics of grapes and vineyards, process, and defects. The audio equivalent would be a sound engineer, who can listen for bad mixing, noise and distorsion. Both work with producers to improve their products. Audiophiles have more in common with wine "connoisseurs", who have some knowledge but are sometimes influenced by marketing and the placebo effect and are mostly driven by enjoyment and sometimes social status.

by daenz 5y ago

Are audiophiles similar to wine tasters? My understanding is that wine tasters cannot reliably pick an expensive wine by taste alone. Is audio similar to this or is there merit to it?

dmitriid 5y ago

There's merit, but only to a point beyond which only magic and unicorns can explain the belief.

zaphod12 5y ago

The study that pushed that thought about wine tasting was looking at amateur enthusiasts, not professionals. The top folks can identify, in all common cases, the vineyard that a wine has come from. Some aspects of this are surprisingly straightforward to learn. Smell is an incredibly powerful sense when you train it, but most of us don't. It is not pseudoscience, though you can have a pretty solid debate about whether it's truly a useful skill or not.

zimpenfish 5y ago
Haven't several blind taste tests been done with professional sommeliers where they've failed to pick the "good" wine against the "bad" reliably? Or they've been given the same wine several times and given it different ratings each time?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Indeed, even failed to distinguish white from red.

acomjean 5y ago

I believe so. I remember when CDs first appeared, we used to makes tapes of them and then A/B test. With Dolby Noise Reduction(C) over speakers nobody could tell the difference and I had young ears back then. The quiet parts of Jazz or classical on newly recorded stuff through headphones there was less hiss, but for rock little difference. But they were always advertising new Xbit Digital to Audio conversions. Even my headphones had a "for digital" sticker on them (Sonys MDR-V6s and I don't think there was anything digital about them...) I think its about feeling you have something special. Of course now we've come full circle and records are the new best sounding thing.. I remember having to clean them and hearing pops and skips... but here we are. but I'm old and my ears are happy with mp3s....

GuB-42 5y ago

Wine tasters can't pick an expensive wine by taste alone because price is mostly related to marketing. There are some excellent cheap wines and no-so-great expensive wines. Professional wine tasters are like human spectrometers. They can tell you each component of the wine (aromas, sugar, alcohol, tanins, etc...), using that and their knowledge, they can identify characteristics of grapes and vineyards, process, and defects. The audio equivalent would be a sound engineer, who can listen for bad mixing, noise and distorsion. Both work with producers to improve their products. Audiophiles have more in common with wine "connoisseurs", who have some knowledge but are sometimes influenced by marketing and the placebo effect and are mostly driven by enjoyment and sometimes social status.