Yes music CDs have lousy error correction compared to data CDs but they still have very few if any uncorrectable errors (on a undamaged CD). And when ripped by good software to a HDD errors will be reread a number of times to give you even less of these errors. The place this goes south is when you burn a CD, the errors multiply and depend on the burner and blank CD.
Precisely!
The question now is - what if it is NOT ripped by "good software"?
How to explain that when I play on the same CD player the original factory copy, it plays just fine, as well as the player can do, but when I put on a copy, made on my PC, the treble socks it to me?
Never mind whether my PC is up to the job or not, the point is that the same copy flaunting all the treble, when played on my Yamaha CDX 993 player used as a transport, and on my external DAC, there is no treble excess? Because my DAC has no brickwall filters, no oversampling, and uses 8 parallel Philips DACs?
Again, never mind which is right or wrong, the key point here is - copies CAN sound different from the original, even assuming very special circumstances. I, and millions like myself, don't really care how and why, or who's to blame, we simply note the differences and, more often than not, do not like them.
To me, the mere statement that something is perfect in an imperfect world is, to be kind, ridiculous. It's childlishly naive.
There is no perfect amp, no perfect preamp, no perfect loudspeaker, no perfect PC - most here would agree, yet some would argue that digital technology as such is perfect.
Sorry folks, but it isn't. It's better than most others, no argument there, but it's NOT perfect. And just so you don't think I'm some kind of a Luddite, let me mention that during the last 25 years, I purchased 0% of LPs and 100% of CDs. I did, do, and will enjoy them even if they are not perfect. And some of the CDs are digital versions of mono analog tape recordings in God knows which forsaken room Pete Seeger recorded it - and to me, he's still THE Big Daddy of protest songs, even in mono.