Is it all Hype ?

[Gazzip]

£4 bottle of red, £7 bottle, £15 bottle, £200 bottle.

How many would tell the difference in blind test?

Just a thought *wacko*

I'm afraid I could quite easily. £15 you can get a decent bottle, below that it is generally extremely poor. £200 it depends on the wine. Bordeaux is incredibly over-priced so that wouldn't buy you a top-growth. In Burgundy you would get a brilliant bottle for that. As I type I'm drinking a Gevrey Chambertin "Lavaut Saint-Jacques" 2008 and that was about £40 and it is lovely (if not wonderful).

I have taken lots of blind-tastings of wine and I can generally tell the grape and the origin.

Chris

Booze is an interestingly comparative experience. You are getting more than just pished. You are enjoying the subtlety. Some however are just in it for the effects, not the entire experience.

 

[MajorFubar]

To MajorFubar - Not intentionally. It is a balance of all those things for me. Do you walk around in a boiler suit and trainers all day? That is the cheapest way to clothe yourself but I bet you don't. Why?

lol trainers mostly, but a boiler-suit wouldn't be as practical as normal clothes, and with clothes, practicality is an important consideration and is material to my choice of clothing.

There was no right or wrong answer, it was just an interesting thought that crossed my mind, i.e.: how much would you pay ('you' as in people, generally) just for better build + other subjective qualities if the sound quality was exactly the same as something much cheaper. I'm not even suggesting that's normally the case, it was purely hypothetical.

 

[Covenanter]

£4 bottle of red, £7 bottle, £15 bottle, £200 bottle.

How many would tell the difference in blind test?

Just a thought *wacko*

I'm afraid I could quite easily. £15 you can get a decent bottle, below that it is generally extremely poor. £200 it depends on the wine. Bordeaux is incredibly over-priced so that wouldn't buy you a top-growth. In Burgundy you would get a brilliant bottle for that. As I type I'm drinking a Gevrey Chambertin "Lavaut Saint-Jacques" 2008 and that was about £40 and it is lovely (if not wonderful).

I have taken lots of blind-tastings of wine and I can generally tell the grape and the origin.

Chris

Booze is an interestingly comparative experience. You are getting more than just pished. You are enjoying the subtlety. Some however are just in it for the effects, not the entire experience.

But then some are into hifi on the basis of status rather then sound. A similar thing happens with cars.

Chris

 

[keeper of the quays]

On the whole my current set up betters my previous stuff...lol..sound is much bigger! No digital artifacts...seems a lot more laid back..listening as opposed to being shouted at! More detailed blah blah....i think well recorded music sounds great..not so well recorded? Horrid! My previous pre amp was a lot more forgiving..everything sounded ok...cd sounds a lot better now..think im done now changing stuff...some sake, some mahler 4 (third movement, solti)..think ill be happy for a bit..long bit hopefully!

 

[Gazzip]

But then some are into hifi on the basis of status rather then sound.

Chris

Really??!

 

[keeper of the quays]

Decent bottle of plonk..nice music on hifi..partner in good mood? Lol....sounds cool to me...lie in on sunday morning? ...maybe partner still in good mood? Yay! Whats there to whine about? Lol

 

[matt49]

I'm afraid I could quite easily. £15 you can get a decent bottle, below that it is generally extremely poor. £200 it depends on the wine. Bordeaux is incredibly over-priced so that wouldn't buy you a top-growth. In Burgundy you would get a brilliant bottle for that. As I type I'm drinking a Gevrey Chambertin "Lavaut Saint-Jacques" 2008 and that was about £40 and it is lovely (if not wonderful).

I have taken lots of blind-tastings of wine and I can generally tell the grape and the origin.

Chris

Ditto. Done it many times and have the badge.

The thing about wine is that you need the experience of tasting a wide variety of stuff and you need to be taught (whether that's formal tuition or a social wine tasting group).

This evening I'm drinking a Bouchard Beaune Teurons PC 2005. Very nice with roast chicken.

 

[Gaz37]

£4 bottle of red, £7 bottle, £15 bottle, £200 bottle.

How many would tell the difference in blind test?

Just a thought *wacko*

I'm afraid I could quite easily. £15 you can get a decent bottle, below that it is generally extremely poor. £200 it depends on the wine. Bordeaux is incredibly over-priced so that wouldn't buy you a top-growth. In Burgundy you would get a brilliant bottle for that. As I type I'm drinking a Gevrey Chambertin "Lavaut Saint-Jacques" 2008 and that was about £40 and it is lovely (if not wonderful).

I have taken lots of blind-tastings of wine and I can generally tell the grape and the origin.

Chris

In non-blind tasting 57 French wine experts (buyers, sommeliers etc) tasted a Grand Cru and a Vin de Table, all of them raved about the "wonderful complexity" etc of the Grand Cru and how "unbalanced & flat" the Vin De Table was, unfortunately the people carrying out the test had switched the bottles on them - OOPS!

 

[matt49]

In non-blind tasting 57 French wine experts (buyers, sommeliers etc) tasted a Grand Cru and a Vin de Table, all of them raved about the "wonderful complexity" etc of the Grand Cru and how "unbalanced & flat" the Vin De Table was, unfortunately the people carrying out the test had switched the bottles on them - OOPS!

We've been here before.

If you actively mislead people (e.g. by switching the bottles without telling anyone), that will skew the results. It's meaningless.

 

[Gaz37]

In non-blind tasting 57 French wine experts (buyers, sommeliers etc) tasted a Grand Cru and a Vin de Table, all of them raved about the "wonderful complexity" etc of the Grand Cru and how "unbalanced & flat" the Vin De Table was, unfortunately the people carrying out the test had switched the bottles on them - OOPS!

We've been here before.

If you actively mislead people (e.g. by switching the bottles without telling anyone), that will skew the results. It's meaningless.

Seriously?

So if I told you that Susan Boyle was Kiera Knightly you wouldn't realise I was having you on when the difference is obvious?

It proves quite conclusively that people will see/hear/taste what they expect to see/hear or taste, yet when there are no expectations or preconceptions (blind tests) the differences mysteriously disappear

 

[matt49]

Seriously?

So if I told you that Susan Boyle was Kiera Knightly you wouldn't realise I was having you on when the difference is obvious?

It proves quite conclusively that people will see/hear/taste what they expect to see/hear or taste, yet when there are no expectations or preconceptions (blind tests) the differences mysteriously disappear

Yes, seriously.

Misleading people will skew the results. (Pay attention to what I've written: the words are important.) It won't necessarily make all the results invalid, but it will change them in significant ways.

In any case, if you honestly believe that people are incapable of, say, identifying wines in blind tasting, you have a hell of a lot of evidence to explain away. People have been successfully identifying wines blind for many years; there are thousands of well documented instances. (Just sign up to a wine website: e.g. Jancis Robinson's Purple Pages, or check out the practical exams that you have to pass for the Master of Wine qualification.)

 

[Vladimir]

I remember catching a documentary one late night about the new global developments in the wine industry. I was surprised that Australian wine made in regulated metal reservoirs tasted better than traditional European wines from oak barrels. Also IIRC they could simulate to good extent the taste and texture of most famed Euro vinos.

 

[matt49]

I remember catching a documentary one late night about the new global developments in the wine industry. I was surprised that Australian wine made in regulated metal reservoirs tasted better than traditional European wines from oak barrels. Also IIRC they could simulate to good extent the taste and texture of most famed Euro vinos.

OK, but that's an altogether different issue. You can engineer wine to taste a certain way -- up to a point.

Actually much traditional European wine is fermented in steel or cement.

 

[Gaz37]

Funnily enough my Dad had a Master of Wines qualification & he firmly believed that snobbery was a significant factor in wine tasting, hence my scepticism.

He attended numerous tastings where cheap (sub £10) wines from obscure vineyards in unfashionable locations came out better than the established, and more expensive, wines. Oddly these results were rubbished, or claimed to somehow "tainted" in the same way as blind tests seem to be in the hifi world when the results don't suit those reading them.

 

[Vladimir]

I was just chatting up the wine topic. My grandfather had 2 separate vineyards in different soils and elevations for making two different wines. He took great care to those wooden barrels as they changed the wine acidity (I think) and gave a specific character to the wine.
To him it was never a waste of time and he would get snobby about cheap supermarket wines. It made him happy and us as grandkids playing at the vineyards and drinking the sweet sparkly wine at the early fermentation stages (low on alcohol).
Sadly no wine drinkers, let alone alone aficionados, came out from the offspring, so the vineyards were sold last year. Both were red Italian wine breeds.

 

[Gaz37]

I was just chatting up the wine topic. My grandfather had 2 separate vineyards in different soils and elevations for making two different wines. He took great care to those wooden barrels as they changed the wine acidity (I think) and gave a specific character to the wine. To him it was never a waste of time and he would get snobby about cheap supermarket wines. It made him happy and us as grandkids playing at the vineyards and drinking the sweet sparkly wine at the early fermentation stages (low on alcohol). Sadly no wine drinkers, let alone alone aficionados, came out from the offspring, so the vineyards were sold last year. Both were red Italian wine breeds.

In which country was that?

 

[Vladimir]

Pelagonia valley.

 

[Ajani]

Behringer A500 ($200) + Behringer UCA202 ($25) + Monoprice cables ($25)

Job done.

That should be an excellent starter setup. I'd get something like that, allowing me to focus the budget on the best speakers I could afford. Later I'd upgrade the electronics to ones more aesthetically pleasing, with better build quality...

 

[Andrewjvt]

Ive been ripped off as paying so much just for the looks when in all honesty it never looked that good anyway and the sound is so bad and distorted not to mentioned flavoured with the inaccurate house sound.

Im dumping it all for a denon dm40 so i can have realistic sound production and thanks for saving me 3grand on a set of atcs.
Ill just get mission sx1

Cant believe ive been so stupid. Now i can have real accurate sound for just over £200.

One day if i win the lottery ill treat myself to a real good looking shitty sounding hi end piece of kit but i wont play it as ill hurt my ears. It will just be as an ornament. The denon shall be my reference kit.

I shall sit listening to it with a bottle of £3.99 red.

 

[Ajani]

Ive been ripped off as paying so much just for the looks when in all honesty it never looked that good anyway and the sound is so bad and distorted not to mentioned flavoured with the inaccurate house sound.

Im dumping it all for a denon dm40 so i can have realistic sound production and thanks for saving me 3grand on a set of atcs. Ill just get mission sx1

Cant believe ive been so stupid. Now i can have real accurate sound for just over £200.

One day if i win the lottery ill treat myself to a real good looking shitty sounding hi end piece of kit but i wont play it as ill hurt my ears. It will just be as an ornament. The denon shall be my reference kit.

I shall sit listening to it with a bottle of £3.99 red.

While I get that your post was meant to be pure sarcasm and disgust, there are some issues in it worth addressing.

1) An expensive system being coloured does not mean it should sound bad. In fact I'd expect the opposite. Harmonic distortion and skewed frequency response can produce some very pleasing results.

2) Why would you assume that a Denon DM40 is not also coloured? You can't just pick any cheap product and expect that it will be accurate.

 

[Andrewjvt]

Ive been ripped off as paying so much just for the looks when in all honesty it never looked that good anyway and the sound is so bad and distorted not to mentioned flavoured with the inaccurate house sound.

Im dumping it all for a denon dm40 so i can have realistic sound production and thanks for saving me 3grand on a set of atcs. Ill just get mission sx1

Cant believe ive been so stupid. Now i can have real accurate sound for just over £200.

One day if i win the lottery ill treat myself to a real good looking shitty sounding hi end piece of kit but i wont play it as ill hurt my ears. It will just be as an ornament. The denon shall be my reference kit.

I shall sit listening to it with a bottle of £3.99 red.

While I get that your post was meant to be pure sarcasm and disgust, there are some issues in it worth addressing.

1) An expensive system being coloured does not mean it should sound bad. In fact I'd expect the opposite. Harmonic distortion and skewed frequency response can produce some very pleasing results.?

2) Why would you assume that a Denon DM40 is not also coloured? You can't just pick any cheap product and expect that it will be accurate. 

You also cant believe all cheap stuff is accurate and high end stuff unaccurate or coloured. Also distortion at any cost is bad - it ruins the sound- but hey its only about the looks not the sound.

And no your right ive never heard the little denon but those sx1s kick ass.

Yes im just trying to bring a sense of reality back. I totaly understand about cheap good quality PA I also used to have a very cheap 2kw PA when i was in a band in south africa. It sounded very good and could be heard farms away but nowhere near as clear, resolute or more important quiet than good quality home gear and much lighter and cheap build quality but on theother hand was so loud.

Anyone can enjoy music on almost anything - cheap cell phone earphones, boomboxes, tv - anything that gives of a sound but in my view to say the expensive hifi is only for the look or hype is wrong. Even though not all amps, speakers are the same quality, spec, build per price and some also are over priced just for a look but others put sound quality above all those generalizations also. So i mean while some are hype not all are and tou get what you pay for

 

[manicm]

I think an excellent test for any amp is Brian Eno's Discreet Music, my guess is some amps will struggle with it at low volumes.

 

[Gazzip]

Ive been ripped off as paying so much just for the looks when in all honesty it never looked that good anyway and the sound is so bad and distorted not to mentioned flavoured with the inaccurate house sound.

Im dumping it all for a denon dm40 so i can have realistic sound production and thanks for saving me 3grand on a set of atcs. Ill just get mission sx1

Cant believe ive been so stupid. Now i can have real accurate sound for just over £200.

One day if i win the lottery ill treat myself to a real good looking shitty sounding hi end piece of kit but i wont play it as ill hurt my ears. It will just be as an ornament. The denon shall be my reference kit.

I shall sit listening to it with a bottle of £3.99 red.

I got a dm40 for my living room and cannot for the life of me understand the rave reviews. It sounds exactly the same as every other mini/midi system I have heard, which is pretty pants.

 

[NSA_watch_my_toilet]

I would like less Irony, off topic and jokes and better built factual standpoints. Especially from the "I hear incredible differences" party.

 

[keeper of the quays]

I have a denon rcd100 its a cd player, amp and radio...weighs half a ton! Its very good indeed...in fact if i didnt have my main kit it would be my hifi of choice. Denon stuff is top order...