This manuscript should be published in the Journal of Chemometrics after the authors have undertaken some minor revisions. Specific criticisms that need to be addressed by the authors are listed below.

1. What is the significance of support vector machines performing being the method of choice for the electrospray data whereas linear discriminant analysis is the method of choice for Raman? Clearly, the classification problem posed by Raman is easier than the classification problem in desorption electrospray. The author should elaborate upon this point in their manuscript.
2. How was the data preprocessed for the different pattern recognition methods used in this study? Was the same method used?