John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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Of course, everybody should be able to taste the difference between coke, 7up, and ginger ale. We all know what they taste like individually. However, in this 'bar bet' that I witnessed in 1972 or so, people just like you were SURE that they too could taste the difference with their eyes closed. But they failed. Now, how could this test comparison have been compromised? Well, first the soft drinks came from the same machine that poured what you selected. There were not individual bottles, but plastic cups only. All were apparently made on the spot by mixing some sort of factory additive to carbonated water, so they shared the same carbonation and water quality. This might have made them more similar, for example.
 
There were not individual bottles, but plastic cups only. All were apparently made on the spot by mixing some sort of factory additive to carbonated water, so they shared the same carbonation and water quality. This might have made them more similar, for example.

Plastic cups can also add a distinctive taste, and complicate the comparison.
The temperature of the drink matters as well.
 
Just to make trouble. '-) I will talk about a tweak that I use to improve Cognac. It is made by a company named IPC and it is initially designed for CD improvement, but we also use it to improve the Cognac taste to a higher catagory (more expensive) equivalent. I just used it a few minutes ago. It seems to work for CD's and vinyl records too!
 
Now, how could this test comparison have been compromised? Well, first the soft drinks came from the same machine that poured what you selected.

May be because of what they drink prior to the test. They should come to the bar fresh, and then focus on the first drink as it will be the easiest. The rest is harder if you don't give time between the tries. If you're lucky, you will get ginger ale first, as I think it is less likely that it will modify the taste of the Coke or 7-up.
 
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Bill, I'm a little surprised at Holt's prediction. He was off 20 years on the streaming, but the fact that he talked about music being stored in central data banks is a little odd. Had there been any real digital recordings or storage in 1968?

No, but concerts broadcast over the phone lines had been tried (famous case of one where it interfered with the wall street brokers I need to find). As 1968 was the year of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos you can see that people were thinking more of this stuff, but it was a good leap of imagination.

I was a baby at the time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_newspaper not the one I was looking for, but broadcast concerts.
 
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Bill, I'm a little surprised at Holt's prediction. He was off 20 years on the streaming, but the fact that he talked about music being stored in central data banks is a little odd. Had there been any real digital recordings or storage in 1968?

I think it was about that time there was a confident prediction (LTE?) in HFNRR that there would never be enough electronic memory in the world to store digitised music!
 
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Storage of data using DNA seems to be a big area of research. Was listening to a podcast of 'The Life Scientific' (UK radio program) where this was discussed.

Over 2 petabytes stored on 1 gram of DNA. That's nearly half a million DVD's. I believe there is even an error correction system in place.
 
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