Every other player (portable Discman, car stereo, 3 different DVD players) I've ever put these into has never exhibited any problems whatsoever.
We all have stories like this, I'm certain. No big revelation, surely, but if you have confirmed that you have a proper rip and error-free burn already, that's tangible, postiive proof that the player itself is the culprit.
However, I wouldn't underestimate user ignorance. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people DO NOT have EAC or cdda2wav or whathaveyou set up properly, have never run simple tests to make sure their burner is properly configured, etc. Nor are they willing to learn how to do so.
(And if you think I'm just taking cheap shots, Andreas, need I remind you of some of the other laughable claims being made by the likes of Grant and Dave Night Goof, such as "purchased songs from the iTunes music store will only play a certain number of times before disappearing" and "gold CDs sound better than aluminum and I can hear the difference"?
What these two have demonstrated time and again is that they suffer from incomprehension -- not to mention an utter inability to digest basic information; my guess is that their ripping/burning setup is as half-assed as any of their half-baked "theories".)
You can't have cockamamie elitism without pricy obscurantism. False consciousness always wins in these "audiophile" debates: the $1000 cable MUST be better than the $10 interconnect at Home Depot, the MOFI CD-R has got to be better than the TDK disc from (gasp) Taiwan. After all, it has a MOFI logo on it! It costs 10 times more than "lesser" CD-Rs! It'll clear up those cloudy transients!
Luke wrote:Without a trial once and for all that would prove that differences are just in people's heads, I'm not going to make that claim
OK, then I will. How is this any different from their cable claims, their green marker claims, their Shakti stone voodoo, the jitter boogieman.................. ? With a track record like that, I'd err on the side of their proven nuttiness.