>How can audiophiles continue to exist with knowledge being so easily available?
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.
Off topic but I bet you could tell the difference between an espresso shot pulled after stirring the grounds to ensure even distribution vs one that hasn't been messed with. I'm not saying you can tell the difference between stirring with a toothpick vs stirring with tiny metal tines. You can actually observe a difference in how the water flows through the grounds, you can measure how much coffee has been extracted into the water with a refractometer, and you can do a blind taste test and identify which is which. If the grounds are not evenly distributed, you get channels where the water passes through under high pressure, and this over extracts those grounds making the shot taste extremely bitter, and other grinds are left untouched or under extracted. I was very skeptical of this until I observed it myself.
Most people don’t realize that making espresso is quite complex due to seemingly minute factors like these. When you’re pushing water through grounds at very high pressure, there are a lot of things that have to line up to get a great shot.
Not only a great shot but consistent shots, that's even harder. I really don't understand the gripe OP has against WDT because it is really about eliminating those minute variables so that the process is reproducible.
It is about improving the packing of grounds by breaking up the subtle clumping that occurs during grinding to reduce channeling where water finds an easy path so part of the puck is over extracted and other parts are under extracted.
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 :)
Not saying that you could tell the difference, but as a random physical process I am sure there is some vague difference in stirring vs. not. So at least there is no immediately obvious falsehood.
Claiming that bits are not bits is on a flat earth level stupid.
> Claiming that bits are not bits is on a flat earth level stupid
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.
Audio doesn't use floating-point, it's all fixed-point. So there's no rounding error, only quantization error, and that can be controlled to whatever degree of precision is needed.
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.
Haha, you're all making the same misunderstanding as the post I was replying to. The context of the "bits are not bits" is in relation to memcpy, and his lack of understanding that it's not comparing bits to bits, but the method used to transfer said bits.
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.
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.
Please try to read it as I say it I don't know how to be clearer.
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.
If I understand you correctly, you're asserting that it's possible for transport-layer protocols to cause hiccups in the output because bits might get flipped.
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).
Not sure if you are serious, but that is a flawed understanding of floating point. 0.1+0.2 being slightly off of 0.3 is a floating point issue, but will be exactly the same on any normal FPU. The bits are still just bits. I literally work on floating point stuff.
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.
When you think you're clarifying yourself, you're actually getting less coherent. I can't even parse what you're saying in your deeper replies (and I design mixed-signal audio systems for a living).
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).
Look. If I just made the .1+.2 example in passing by as how code doesn't always behave like we expect, does that mean I'm claiming we even use addition to work with sound? If everyone misunderstands a claim I haven't made, and asks me to explain that claim, how exactly do I respond?
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.
This seems to boil down to a claim that when transfering data from A to B then B may be different from A. No, it won't, and that's the point. Data transfer via a reliable protocol, e.g. TCP (and when using UDP you simply apply a framework with its own error correction, as e.g. OpenVPN UDP does). I mean, in my job we transfer petabytes of data.. if B wasn't equal to A.. no. What can, and does, happen is that the data at A or the data at B could experience bit flips typically due to cosmic radiation - this does happen, which is one reason ECC RAM is better for some situations, but if this happens during transport then the protocol will handle that and you still get B = A.
> 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?
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style and otherwise breaking the site guidelines? you've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we have to ban that sort of account.
> ... I don't know how audio works and don't claim I do
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.
> 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.
That's my entire point. I never claimed anything. I'm told I did and asked to explain all these strawmans. I see the title attracted all the "actually" people in the world.
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?
Not to mention the fact that sometimes bits are not bits, for example see undefined values in optimizing compilers can act as if they have multiple bit representations at the same time. I can kind of see how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing here, I don't think that the guy who said that is necessarily stupid. Certainly not flat earth level.
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.
Doesn't make my claim wrong though. It's an interesting fact just to make a point that sometimes it's not as simple as we assume. Also why I asked him to look it up instead of explaining the how and in what circumstance. I'm sure he's able to find that out, it's not important to the point.
I saw that earlier claim that ones are heavier than zeroes.. could you explain what that even means? And what kind of effect that's supposed to have? I'm genuinely curious about where that comes from.
Technically flash memory storage would weigh more as a 1 (or maybe as a 0, depending), since it works by storing electrons. Apparently it stores something like 500 electrons [1]. My phone has 6 GB of storage, so if they are all ones that gives an extra weight of 2.50e-13 g, which is 0.0001 nanograms. Probably not measurable, though, especially since the large mass of the phone relative to the change in mass eliminates a lot of sensitive measurement techniques.
I'm not sure if RAM would have extra weight, as I know less about how it works.
I know you're being funny, but researchers in a lab got an encryption key by listening on the spinning discs if I remember the paper correctly. Was front-page few years ago.
Don't be silly, bits are ultimately conveyed via analog electrical impulses. Speakers consist of air compressors under electro-magnetic control. The analog emissions of a bit-carrier have as much impact on the acoustic element as an extra stir of the spoon does on the molecular flavour profile of the coffee.
> bits are ultimately conveyed via analog electrical impulses
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.
The bit is still a bit, but if the bit is generated at the beginning of a cycle it might have more voltage than at the end of the cycle and this difference could be discernable in the electromagnetic environment around the processor, which might effect the actual movement of the electro-acoustical element after the decoding by the DAC!
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.
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.
> No human ear can hear frequencies above ~22kHz, meaning anything over the normal ~44kHz sample rate provably makes no difference.
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.
Agreeing with this, and likewise I wanna suggest for some coffee drinkers who are skeptical on "coffee nerds" to try a coffee cupping (basically a form of coffee tasting, like wine tasting, where different beans are prepared identically in a particular method good for producing a very strong and flavour-filled coffee).
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.
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.
CRT whine is at a much lower frequency, though. It's within (average, young) human hearing range.
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.
Reminds me of the invention of Fisher's exact test:
>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.
> David Salsburg reports that a colleague of Fisher, H. Fairfield Smith, revealed that in the actual experiment the lady succeeded in identifying all eight cups correctly.[6][7]
Matt parker showed that whether you add the milk first or last affects the temperature and temperature over time profile of the tea. That could have an effect on the taste.
I'm not surprised someone ran an experiment. That's exactly what I thought about when I read the scenario. The level of extraction and the taste of what's extracted will vary depending on the temperature, and adding the milk first lowers the temperature of the fluid the tea is steeping in.
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.
I would imagine that unless you controlled the specific volume of milk, there may be systemic bias towards more or less milk depending on when it is added.
The thing you're laughing at is how you deal with coffee grinders that spit out clumpy coffee. If you don't break the clumps, the high pressure water from an espresso machine will distribute unevenly throughout the puck (choosing to go through the path of least resistance) and will be the difference between drinking a notoriously-finnicky-to-get-right light roast and battery acid.
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.
You have to break up the clumps. Doing it with a specially marketed metal clump breaker vs a metal spoon, a fork, a wooden spoon, etc doesn't matter. That is what they were making fun of AFAICT, not breaking up clumps in general.
In addition to just letting people have their fun (so long as it stays fun/isn’t just a method of gatekeeping/isn’t just picking fights or whatever) I think we should all remember to exercise a little humility and consider that maybe we are wrong about what matters or doesn’t. Sometimes things look a little ridiculous from the outside, but once it’s explained or you do it yourself, it makes a little more sense.
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.
Most “nice” coffee shops will carry a chemX or toddy systems of some sort. French press too. If you’re looking for a cold brew solution just go online to filtron and get their toddy. It’s affordable and really gets the job done.
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.
Not to defend stir guy, but small changes to the brewing process do change what gets extracted. Chemistry is wild stuff, but if you just pour warm water over beans you found and call it coffee I can see why you wouldn't necessarily appreciate that.
I've become fascinated with James Hoffman's channel on all things coffee related - I have no desire to buy fancy coffee, grinders, coffee machines, kettles etc. and I'm perfectly happy with my cheap Sainsbury's coffee and a John Lewis machine that probably cost £60.
My most upsetting opinion on James is that he calls a $60 hand grinder an "entry level grinder", when you can buy an identical hand mill burr grinder for like $15
I use a Hario Skerton Pro (roughly $60 where I live), considered an okay starter choice, and it's absolutely an entry level grinder. I had to mod it quite a bit to get something resembling consistency. Where can you get something that grinds almost as not-bad as this for $15?
It's probably the same conditioning that Pavlov discovered. The clinking metal creates anticipation leading to a real and measurable difference in satisfaction. The brain is interesting that way.
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.
> will straight faced insist to you that they can tell the difference between stirring the coffee grounds with a tiny metal "distribution tool"
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.
Also that they can tell the difference between stirring with an expensive tool vs a toothpick or needle.
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.
> Sure stirring grounds to break up clumps seems like a good idea.
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.
I don't think there was some grand concerted effort to self-promote by the WDT guy, it's just a legitimately helpful and (at the time) novel technique for getting decently even flow when using cheap(er) home coffee grinders. It requires like 5 seconds of time and something like a toothpick or cake tester. This is not the same as the audiophile magic cables or whatever, the results are measurable and replicable by anyone with a toothpick and a home espresso setup.
It's the scientific method, but without any rigor on the quality of experiments. Subjectivity will take you to ridiculous places. It's exactly the same root cause as the fringe audiophile stuff: the dictionary definition of pseudoscience.
I believe they are referring to "Weiss Distribution Tool". I have a manual lever espresso machine that I used daily for a decade. The idea behind WDT is real. Distributing the grounds evenly makes much more consistent shots. If the grounds are not evenly packed, the water under pressure breaks through a channel and the shot tastes like garbage. It's not quackery, just fluid dynamics. One can argue that grounds can be distributed by other means as well. Stirring with a needle (WDT) is the quickest for me.
meh, it's arguably the most important new technique in espresso making in at least the last 20 years. I think John Weiss deserves some credit for that.
I can't believe I'm about to defend this, but unless you have an anti-static grinder spraying water does cause a lot less mess and ground coffee flying everywhere. I had to do it with my Wilfa Svart grinder (and still do when I use it) but I don't need to do it for my Niche Zero. When I use my Wilfa Svart without a spray of water (or just a droplet of water stirred in with the handle of a teaspoon) I notice the coffee is a lot messier coming out of the grounds container.
My wife keeps asking me if I prefer Twining English Breakfast or Irish Breakfast tea. I opened both boxed and had two cups side by side. They are exactly the same.
My wife will insist that one cup of tea I bring her is amazing, but another one is disgusting. However, they're all from the same box of teabags, made the same way, and the biggest correlation as far as I can tell is how long she has left it to go cold.
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.
Absurd comparison - channeling is a known physical phenomenon that occurs when you fail to declump the grounds. It causes the high pressure water to find the path of least resistance through the basket and leaves the majority of the grounds underextracted.
Wine is interesting because, while there is definitely some pretentious nonsense going on, the other extreme is hilarious as well.
There are people out there insisting that it's impossible to differentiate red from white wine by blind taste test.
Interesting, but one has to ask, were they testing the hypothesis or the participants? The participants were describes as both "students" and a "panel of experts".
except the study does not test for that. it somewhat interestingly shows that distinct vocabulary gets used for reds and whites once that context is established by a visual cue.
that doesn't however mean no systematic difference between reds and whites can be detected.
I used to be a member of an amateur wine tasting group.. and someone figured we should serve some snacks while we were testing the wine.
Turns out that with cheese most red wines taste almost the same, unless they've gone bad. Or at least you certainly won't find much difference between cheap and expensive wines.
Hey, balancing extraction is hard! You can't necessarily make a good puck without declumping it first, which helps the process a bit! I've also seen a number of people without just also alternatively thunk it to even things out a bit before making the puck.
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
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.