lol I'm just as surprised it wasn't trashed as you! It's not about which is better though, I like growing organically when I have time for it, so I think that's why it's doing ok. Lots of good info I'm finding! And I just don't want opinions so that pretty much makes it hard to respond to the thread
And yeah I think you're right about hydro can change the taste, the theory I have (and have been guilty of) is pushing the nutes too high. I don't think it's a matter of flushing or not flushing, I think it's a matter of not overfeeding and lowering dose after week 4 and start reducing nutes (especially nitrogen) until the last couple of days do a quick flush to rid any salt build ups (this is for the system maintenance more than the plant imo). I've had some nasty hydro before. I've had some nasty dirt grown as well. Genetics play a major factor in taste and smell, the grower is just trying to get those true genetics to come through with the proper amound of nutes. It's really about learning a strain and dialing it in and I think it can be done with any method, just takes time. But that's just an opinion lol. RO water or even rain water (rain water is dirtier though) can be used and won't need any filtering and i think it is better than tap water. I still use tap though, mine is only 80-120ppm so it's pretty soft.
I also built a true aeroponic system a long time ago, and like you said, I got a little overwhelmed at first and never truely got to test it out. A $700 piece of equipment just gathered dust until I gifted it to a friend 5 years ago
The only aero type system I have now is my aero cloner lol. But I would like to give it a shot sometime when I can have a dedicated space for it incase I mess up I will still have another crop going. (I do could be wrong with a lot of things I mentioned above, it's just a theory I have and not much to back it up, so take it with a grain of salt lol)