This subject of being able to distinguish the difference between wood species, taste wise, goes back to the days of Pelletheads..For my self and what I can ascertain, the vast majority of of us, don't find a
difference at all.. The smell of the smoke may be a different story..
Now for the "pellet dump". In my mind, the pellet dump came about to facilitate cleaning out the hopper of undesirables. Lets face it, some hoppers are outright nasty with a build up of fines and just about
anything. Some fast thinking marketing person pushed this clean out feature as an exchange feature generating a way to selling more pellets and boosting product features.
When I first started cooking with pellets, I purchased all the pellet varieties available only to find there wasn't any real difference between them other than the writing on the bags.