The sommelier thing is at least somewhat real but it actually takes work. I don’t think anyone is getting much better sound than 320kbps with a good quality sound system. $300 studio monitors can give you pretty much peak sound quality at this point, no unobtanium wires required.
A group of international sommeliers were unable to detect that the red wine they were tasting was actually white wine with food coloring in it. I think that the bar for genuinely assessing wines by taste is very low.
Also, if you put the same wine in different bottles, they pretty reliably prefer (and describe the rich complexities of) the more expensive bottles.
I knew an audiophile that believed the government had top secret technology for additional audio channels in surround sound setups, like 17.7 or something. I tried very hard to explain how you can buy an off the shelf 128 channel recorder/playback device, and have as many channels as you can feasibly buy and set up, and the reason a lot of media was recorded in 5.1 was because a 5.1 setup was considered at the upper end of what people would be willing to pay for. He moved his target in response, to now the government has top secret 1000 channel audio equipment.
I don’t know what the equivalent of the wine world is, but I hope never to meet it.
The sommelier thing is at least somewhat real but it actually takes work. I don’t think anyone is getting much better sound than 320kbps with a good quality sound system. $300 studio monitors can give you pretty much peak sound quality at this point, no unobtanium wires required.
A group of international sommeliers were unable to detect that the red wine they were tasting was actually white wine with food coloring in it. I think that the bar for genuinely assessing wines by taste is very low.
Also, if you put the same wine in different bottles, they pretty reliably prefer (and describe the rich complexities of) the more expensive bottles.
I knew an audiophile that believed the government had top secret technology for additional audio channels in surround sound setups, like 17.7 or something. I tried very hard to explain how you can buy an off the shelf 128 channel recorder/playback device, and have as many channels as you can feasibly buy and set up, and the reason a lot of media was recorded in 5.1 was because a 5.1 setup was considered at the upper end of what people would be willing to pay for. He moved his target in response, to now the government has top secret 1000 channel audio equipment.
I don’t know what the equivalent of the wine world is, but I hope never to meet it.
For most people Opus at 128 Kbps is transparent already