1 - I have had freshly shaved white truffle in Piemonte that was almost tasteless, and I have had French black truffle that was so flavourful that only a few shards were needed to flavour a dish.
2 - there are some things that some people are simply not able to taste/hear/smell. I am a wine nut. I have known otherwise gifted tasters that were not sensitive to trichloroanisole (TCA) the chemical that indicates that a wine has been 'corked', and when I was saying that a particular wine was corked, they didn't know what I was talking about as they couldn't detect it (a serious shortcoming in a taster as when TCA is present, it affects the fruit in the wine - sometimes rendering it undrinkable but sometimes just muting slightly the fruit elements, and that would seem to an TCA insensitive taster as just being a wine they just didn't like as opposed to a flawed wine.
Asking someone that has basically no hearing above 4000 hz (not uncommon for those with noise induced hearing loss - NIHL) to assess a system for high note reproduction is pointless.
from the Wall Street Journal:
It's a fact -- people react to truffles in vastly different ways. Now scientists are closing in on why. Nearly 25% of the population do not smell androstenone, a chemical that contributes to truffle's signature musky aroma (and makes female pigs go into mating stance). Another 40% of people are keenly sensitive to androstenone; they say it smells like rotten wood or sweat. The rest of the population likes the smell.
