For quite some time I have labored under the conclusion that music ripped to a hard drive sounds better than playing it directly from the disc. In fact, many of us labor under this conclusion.
And here's another one. We believe that ripping a CD to a hard drive, then transferring it to a recordable disc also sounds better than playing of it from the original disc.
I am finding the first idea to not be true, the second seems to still be true. But why?
Both of these notions are really weird. Confusing. I know we've debated them endlessly and opinions continue to shift like the sands of the desert. For example, many believe recordable CDs sound better than printed CDs because the mechanism of bit recording and playback on the recordable CD has lower jitter - despite the fact you must first extract data from the one and transfer it to the other. A theory that seems plausible, but never proven, and to me suspect. Yet the results speak for themselves.
And then there's the question we're all asking. If the original 'master' of modern recordings comes from a hard drive, is then transferred to a printed CD, then placed on another hard drive or recordable medium, how could anything other than the original be 'better'? Seems impossible. Makes no sense.
I have a couple of theories but nothing that, when really thought out, makes any sense.
Perhaps better minds than mine might contribute ideas.
