Decaf
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsThe taste of decaf coffee isn’t the same as caffeinated, in the same way that Diet Coke, vegetarian bacon, or high-end MP3 players aren’t the same as what they started out as.
It’s good we call out differences between the original products and their derivatives, but at times it can seem a bit odd. As vegetarians, we enjoy a meat-like substance that resembles strips of bacon, but bacon it is not. Were it actually animal flesh we would not eat it.
The fact it isn’t what it purports to be is the reason we engage with it.
Take for example a product said to have a tube-like sound. We ignore the fact it is 100% solid-state because that description might not connect with our image of good sound any more than a package of Vital Wheat Gluten, Canola Oil, Adzuki Beans, and Buckwheat Groats seems appetizing.
It’s bold indeed to produce products that stand on their own merit and challenge stereotypes: AC regenerators, separate phono preamplifiers, CD transports, vibration control feet, active grounding systems.
I love the taste of a great cup of coffee, caffeine, and all.
I have never been told why people are vegetarians!
Is it the killing of animals?
Is it the consuming of animal products?
Does not anyone care about removing a head of lettuce from its growth point in the same fashion as killing an animal? Is lettuce picking the same as carrying out an abortion?
Is eating carrots different from eating Beef Wellington?
Are we discriminating against plant life? Do we have rage or expression of anger when we
Pick a pepper? Was Peter Piper
A mass murderer?
Oh don’t vegetarians eat fish?
You know those live creatures
That are corralled in nets – like mass murder or do they prefer fish caught on hooks , with barbs of course?
Oh and do vegetarians eat chicken- those animals that are kept in pens and then are slaughtered!
We don’t eat live chickens!
And do we pick and then “roast”coffee beans? Do we not have
Any compassion for the bean?
I wonder how many people were in a state of horror when the US capitol building was invaded, and never considered that that would have never occurred if the people who were responsible for the
fallacious display of injustice against the president were punished!
I wonder how many people have cherished recording of Le Miserable and have read the book or have seen they play many times?
And how many of this group have declared themselves
Vegetarians?
So my friends, I guess this is just another day of bring a justified
Hypocrite!
Enjoy your morning brew!
Larry
Some of us don’t want to clog our arteries with animal fat.
Yeah,
you’re right, and this mindset is what the Drs. said about my grandmother, at her death of 91 years.
Had she not used lard for biscuits, bacon fat to make gravy, ( yeah I’m southern), smoked, and drank JW Black, she may have lived to be 100.
As Paul sort of cryptically stated, I don’t think she would have made the switch to the new come lately health fads, especially if it meant shutting down her love of JW Black. Just one man’s opinion…..
Mr. V.
The lies that have been fed to us by the government , food industry and the pharmaceutical industry is BS, no pun intended. Saturated fat from grass fed animal products are the healthiest fats humans can eat. Low fat food, vegetable/seed oil and carbohydrate/sugar consumption are the real cause of all the diabetes and heart disease. Vegetables have toxins that can cause problems like leaky gut syndrome due to lectins and other substances. Look it up. Tonight, I’m having a big, juicy ribeye with bacon!
https://carnivoremd.com
https://drberry.com
….. Such an admirable talent for oversimplifying the complex, be it foods or sophisticated electronics. This is just one reason I’m a hungry member of this association of, at times, stuffy audio enthusiasts.
Takes all types of “music” to appreciate your system.
Verrazano
(named after the bridge)
Carnivores Vs Vegetarians.
Tubes Vs Solid State.
Exotic cables.
I’ve got a bowl of murdered popcorn, you guys carry on 🙂
Pass the bowl…
Mr. V.
Mmmm…more salt & extra butter!!
I hate to say, Paul, but this is a generational thing. To one generation the standard quality was full frequency vinyl, to the next 16/44 CD and to a few audiophiles it’s now DSD. To 99% of the world it’s 128kbs or 256kbs AAC or MP3. It is not decaffinated 16/44, it’s the fact that 16/44 was a standard for a physical format and AAC/MP3 are standards for mobile formats, which is how the vast majority of music has been listened to for the last 15 years or so.
Steven,
After I read your reply about wanting to see Smith’s windmill shots I rang Justin Langer (I have his number) & I asked him to get a message out on the field to Mr Smith; he obliged but then got LBW’d on review, shortly after.
So I called Justin again & requested that he ask the same of Cameron Green.
I hope that you enjoyed his efforts 😉
Sharma (52) straight into the hands of Stark with 15 minutes to go.
I will sleep well tonight 🙂
Thank you for trying, but I hate to say only Tim Paine averaged over 4 an over. Cameron Green certainly was exciting to watch, it was the only day’s play I managed to watch to the end.
Surely there Indians can knock off the last 300 on the final day? After all, as I mentioned the other day, they managed 421/8 at the Oval on 4 September 1979.
“I can’t believe it’s not DSD”
In front of the second paragraph of today’s post:
Vegetarianism, well understood, does not encourage the practitioner to consume foods that resemble in taste the animal products to which they had already been accustomed to ingesting them due to an atavism.
This is playing the game to the companies that are dedicated to that, and delaying their own evolution, in nature, there are countless foods that have both an exquisite taste, and unmatched.
Whoever seeks flavors similar to those offered by animals, is facing an internal struggle that, deep down, harbors the doubt in the sense that if their decision to have stopped eating dead (or live animals, as in the case of certain Eastern communities) has been adequate for him.
Having stopped, since 1970, from eating living beings that were sacrificed for having paid for that, at this point, not eating those animals, is NOT in my mind in the same way that murdering another human being is not.
It is simply a way of life, in which the mind does NOT conceive of ingesting corpses, whether they have lived on the surface of the earth or in the waters.
Humanity, in its slow but inexorable natural progression, is heading towards the implantation of a behavior in the human race that does not promote the raising of animals to sacrifice them and then sell them as food. This natural progression is the same that has planted in the collective imagination not practicing anthropophagy, of course this has not happened like all the great changes in humanity in short periods of time, but it is taking place, a pale sample of what is the animal protection societies, unimaginable only a century ago, in addition and of course, the vegetarian practice (which in some eastern cultures has been given for thousands of years) to which in the West, more and more people adhere.
I am not against those carnivorous people, nor does being a vegetarian make them better than those, it is only a way of life whose choice is strictly personal.
An omnivorous observation:
I’ve noticed that the further down a “healthy” path my friends go, the less healthy they “look”. One friend of mine does the fasting, cleansing, organic, vegan thing on top of “old world” hygiene products. He looks ill and smells like the cedar chips in my daughters guinea pig cage. Bless his heart!
To make an audiophile analogy – he probably “measures” well at the doctors office (similar to an amp on a test bench). But something about him always looks and seems like a recovery or experimental condition of contrarian self denial.
For the record, I’m not against those healthy choices or audio pursuits of perfection. I just prefer to enjoy all foods that taste good and all systems that sound good. Even if die sooner than the cedar chip guy with the most revealing stereo!
Quality and enjoyment of life guide my risk/reward choices for food, not life span expectancy. So yes to the caffeine, the steak with a side of “warmth” and some tone controls for dessert please.
😉
So imagine you are an audiophile with a 30gb monthly data allowance. Do you binge on ten 24/192 streams and starve yourself of music the rest of the month, or use Spotify the entire month with no worries about running out of music?
Proof if ever there was that being an audiophile is bad for your health. Having cut a load of bad foods out of my diet, when I eat them they make me feel ill. I feel the same way about DSD.
I don’t have a problem eating meat or fish. I do have a problem with factory farming, whether it’s beef, pork, or salmon. It’s not ethical and not healthy for animals or humans. I get the theoretical connection and conflict between meat production, pollution, and population growth. But technology always overcomes real obstacles. Already there are promising developments in the laboratory creation of real chicken and beef from tissue samples. Not the pseudo crap made from soy and chemicals, but the real deal, already being marketed on a limited scale in Singapore. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to buy a cow from a local farmer to provide beef for a full year.
And, of course, coffee, at least the fully caffeinated kind, is a miracle food. There’s nothing it can’t do.
Indeed. We produce too much industrial food contaminated with toxic substances and micro plastics – as a stereo system gets contaminated with all kind of noise, 🙂 . And would Inuits had survived when they once had decided to become vegetarians? In the end it’s all about „heathy“ food and a „healthy“ environment – meaning drastically reducing wastes!
The French have a concept called “terroir.” It has to do with the special and unique properties of a piece of land, specifically a vineyard. They claim that it is related to the soil, the climate, the way the land is exposed to the sun, and all kind of other factors that make the land unique. This justifies and explains why they claim to have a monopoly on certain wines, among them the wines of Bordeaux. Some of these are among the most prized and expensive wines in the world. Among the king of kings of red Bordeaux is a wine called Chateau Petrus made in the village of Pomerol. It is made of 100% merlot grapes. The owner of this vineyard and the winemaker is a man called Christian Moueix. A few decades ago he bought a vineyard in Napa California called Napanook about 6000 miles away from Petrus. On that land he makes a wine called Dominus from 100 percent cabernet sauvignon grapes. The man many consider the greatest wine critic in the world Robert Parker who claimed he could identify by smell and taste alone over 100,000 wines said that Dominus is a “dead ringer” for Petrus. Other critics claimed it more resembled a great Paulliac, another famous village near Bordeaux where three of the top Bordeaux wines rated Premiere Grand Cru Classe’s in 1855 are made, Chateau Laffitte Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothschild, and Chateau Latour. In the neighboring village another great one is made Chateau Margaux. So much for the concept of terroir.
In mathematics we have a concept called an “asymptote.” Two lines are said to be asymptotically related because as you follow them from their point of origin forward they get increasingly closer but they never meet. Pick any arbitrary distance at all no matter how small above zero and they will approach more closely than that and continue approaching it and yet still never meet. (they are said to meet at infinity, another mathematical abstraction.) If the criteria is the limits of human sensitivity then once two things are close enough they become indistinguishable. At that point getting closer doesn’t make them better. So choose any aspect of sight or sound or any of the other senses and once two things are close enough they are subjectively the same.
Do I want my sound systems to sound like transistors or tubes? Neither. I want a Steinway piano to sound like a Steinway and a Baldwin to sound like a Baldwin and I want the difference to each have the characteristics of that family of pianos. What’s more I don’t want a piano intended to fill a room half a million to a million cubic feet with sound to sound like it is in my room. I want it to sound the way I remember how they sounded in places they were intended for. And I certainly don’t want a symphony orchestra to sound like it is in my room. My original goal was to recreate the way they sound in any of these kinds of spaces by understanding what those spaces do to sound and to find another way to do the same thing starting with a recording. Now after nearly 50 years of experience with it I want to equal or exceed the quality of acoustics of the best of these spaces at their own game.
In recent days I’ve just about nailed Marian McPartland playing a Baldwin D10 at Maybeck Hall. I’m still struggling a little with Billy Taylor’s Steinway D on the recording Ten Fingers One Voice. I had no problem with George Shearing’s Trio in the recording “Breakout.” Some of these recordings are relatively easy and some are very hard. So if your “one size sound system fits all” satisfied you, your gap on the asymptote is much larger than mine. To say that I am an uncompromising person is an understatement. I want what I want and I won’t settle for less. Very unreasonable. Practically impossible to please. Crazy. You do it your way, I’ll do it my way and never the asymptote shall meet.
SM
Just a reminder of our exchange: see first response today. To each his own but I strongly disagree with the political argument.
I don’t engage people who i believe already way out in political views to mine.
Cheers.
Then why are you engaging me now? I like coming here because I enjoy the main topic of this site. I enjoy reading what others have to say about it. I really don’t like talking about politics or religion here. There are other places I do that and if you consider my views extreme then that’s your business. I’m sure the people who fought the American revolution were considered extreme. In the words of Barry Goldwater “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” I agree with that.
SM
I am sorry you got me wrong. You forgot our exchange. I was referring to comment by larryro to this posting on caffeine. See first responder and his comments in paragraph starting “I wonder how many people….”
I apologize for the confusion
i always enjoy your dissertations.
Cheers.
Paul and I being contemporaries agree on many, maybe most things. But I’m a carnivore.
I won’t argue with him on his personal choices.
Grainger
For medical reasons I had to remove caffeine from my diet years ago. It has taken years and I have found many decaf coffees that are every bit as tasty as caffeinated. Even fooled many friends that are hard core caffeine freaks. Seek and you will find.
Careful… If you love coffee (I am one of them) and your only sources for iron and b12 are veggy sources? If you have a cup of coffee with veggy sources for b12 and iron? You can become anemic. Coffee kicks out the veggy type of b12 and iron.
I eat lots of good veggies with iron. But also not afraid of good grass lamb and organic chicken. My Dr. found I was low on b12 and iron. After researching as to why, I stopped drinking coffee. That did not make me happy.,
Then I discovered that calves liver has a type of b12 and iron that coffee will not have its negative effect with. Within a month of integrating liver into my weekly routine my blood returned to normal. As far as coffee? I grind my own, and it must be organic.
And, shortly I shall be grinding me some more……
Don’t mess with my coffee, or my coffee making equipment.
Don’t move my speakers.
Paul I am not surprised that you included AC power generators in your list of bold & outstanding products.
On Paul Simon’s Graceland album there is one track (All Around the World – The Myth of Fingerprints) at the end as the performance recording fades you can clearly hear the water heating ripple control system tones coming through from the mains supply even on the most basic of systems.
This was supposedly recorded in a professional recording studio with probably only inductive filtering of the mains supply.
Something that is the bane of any sensitive electronic process is dirty mains power.
No snake oil here.
Its natural to eat what we kill in order to survive. Been doing it going back to the beginning of life on earth. I hate that we do and am against the inhumane treatment of animal’s but its a necessary part of survival in the food chain. Spiders eat other insects. Lions, sharks, eagle’s, bear, birds, vultures, dogs, cats, TRex, eat other animals to survive and the list goes on and on of one species that survives by eating another species. To the vegetarians who think they are saving life by eating fruit and vegetable life don’t be so sure that that you are not causing them pain. Scientific research has proved that plant’s and trees have compassion and feelings. A fish has no brain, its entire boby is its brain and nervous system. It’s the same with trees and plant’s. They are life just as we are. A venus fly trap will eat what falls into its mouth. We cannot say for sure what a plant thinks or feels. Research shows that when you chop a tree down the other tree’s desperately try and save their children, brother’s, sister’s by growing their roots in the direction of the dying tree and dropping nutrients to try and save their life. The lion, the shark and on the way down the food chain keep the population of other species in control not only so they can survive but also so those species can survive because they would eat up the vegetation if populations were not controlled. Trees eat the carbon in the air and in return they give oxygen to the animals that need to breath. So lets be careful not to kill too many tree’s. Nature set everything up this way including the meat eaters. Its all needed. At least man has the power to be humane on how it kills its food. A lion doesn’t.
Did you ever hear of a vegetarian lion? A meat eating rabbit? Some of us were born to be lions and some were born to be rabbits. Fortunately for the human rabbits the human lions have much tastier meals to devour. A rack of pork spare ribs, a porterhouse beef steak, salmon, and lots of other animals. Do I feel guilty being a lion? Hell no, I feel lucky that I’m not a rabbit.
Sm,
The ‘meat eating’ rabbit made it’s debut in the movie, ‘Monty Python & The Holy Grail’
I love the smell of percolating coffee, but I never acquired a taste for it. In social settings where it’s the only beverage offered I load it with cream and sugar and pretend it’s hot chocolate.
I am not a vegetarian, but when I eat a slice of meat, I do not like to see the cross-section of the animal’s limb with the skin around the perimeter. I don’t have the same problem when I eat a chicken leg, thigh or breast.
When I was young and living in Manhattan I’d go into Macy’s main store where they had dozens of different kinds of coffee beans from all over the world. I tried a lot of them, ground them with a hand grinder, used the drip method. I guess I was a coffee freak back then. The coffee I enjoyed most in my life was in the Venus lounge on the Royal Viking Star. Better than in the main dining room or anywhere else on the ship. Now I drink instant coffee, saccharine, and Creamora artificial creamer instead of half an half. A beer mug full every morning as soon as I get up. Caffeine is rocket fuel for the human mind. It’s my mind altering drug of choice.
I remember riding the clickety-clackity original wooden escalators in Macy’s Manhattan.
San Francisco has a wealth of specialty coffee shops, each using freshly ground, highest quality beans from a single origin (country, region or farm), hand-crafted according to the customer’s choice of special brewing methods. I hated doing projects there because instead of breakfast my colleagues would drag me to those places where we’d stand in line and pay a fortune. First time I ever saw “foam art” on a cup of coffee. I guess I’d led a sheltered life.
Well as a just turned 40 year old I enjoy my AC regenerator with a fine cup of coffee ☕️. Sometimes I add a splash of MCT oil, which is the best fats your body can possibly have.
Being 40 has granted me more refinement and serious tuning into my special interest, which of course is all things Audio.
I’m actually excited for year 50. 🙂
I’ll be the majority of people enjoy the regenerator with a drink other than coffee 🙂
I think you got me there. 🙂
Very true. Of course it is code red Mountain Dew. I knew that.
Nephilim 81,
I take it that the ’81’ in you moniker is in reference to your year of birth; in which case HAPPY BIRTHDAY 40yo young man 😉
(It’s all relative)
Hitting 50 is nothing, unless you win the lottery that year.
Wait till you hit 60, like I did last year, & you start really noticing the lack of the higher/highest frequencies in your hearing.
I’m looking forward to 61 in five months 🙁
🙂 😉
original catches on because it has a strong appeal. Copied products just do not have the same appeal. Take for example vegetarians. Much as they eat substitutes none of them will ever taste like the real thing. so for those who are particular about the taste copies simply will not work. As for options unless medically indicated eat in moderation and enjoy. As for going after trends and fashion, well it’s a free world. One makes one’s choice and has to live with it. Regards.