Correct if the the disc is damaged… then there are various strategies… but this is handling unrecoverable failure scenarios from a faulty or damaged disc.
Some transports will just skip… and you might find a missing block of several seconds or an abandoned rip.
But this is not about somehow changing the audio… this is critical error handling/strategies … ie an extreme scenario
Sure. But in the context of the question here, that’s what was one of the possibilities laid out. Either the end result of the reading process, after all lossless error correction was successful, produces the same data. Then Toby’s potion performs magic. Or the two rips are not actually identical, i.e. unrecoverable errors occurred, where interpolated and resulted in different rips.
The latter should of course not occur in a competent ripper without getting noticed, and how this would create the consistent effect that Toby described is difficult to imagine, but as the other option is magic, here we are 
And unrecoverable errors on an undamaged disc will be one click or equivalent silence or fill, every few discs… or every few hours … that is it is not going to be noticeable.
But sure compare the data chunks again… it is interesting in previous tests and examinations not one unrecoverable error was seen from members with different cd roms.
CD really is a very reliable format… and the hamming codes in CD Audio is one of the key aspects of Red Book, and it’s robustness and error recovery is impressive.
If it’s interpolated it does not necessarily have to click. Avoiding it would be the point of interpolation - which may or may not work. But sure, still, it wouldn’t lead to what Toby has described - that’s what I have been gently getting at for quite a while above.
IMHO the most likely hypothesis, if you read above what I wrote, is that the two files are in fact identical as they were most likely both ripped bit-perfect. As you say, it’s not unusual because CD is good at this. So if Toby hears such a big difference with the potion, we are in magic land
No … but that is instead of a click! It will occur statistically every few hours of playing CDs… ie that is technically an unrecoverable error.
Some get fixated about mystical data and sound corruption in CD… that it is specifically designed to avoid… but examine the data chunks… and you will see… or use Accurip of course.
Yes, I know. I am just offering these two possibilities, and you are doing a good job proving that one of those is in fact not really possible. So that leaves us with there being two identical files
Food for thought: It is not too long after midnight in central Europe on a Friday night and you guys are discussing the potential differences between rips and their reproduction on arbitrary systems that none of you can realistically compare at this time of night.
Sadly, my better half has gone to bed. I am going to open another bottle of wine and listen to some music.
Sorry for straying from the topic, but this discussion seems entirely misplaced at this time of night.
The thread is “Audio Myths”. Toby described sound differences with a magic potion, with rips even, and things like this were quite the myth once when people were still scared by digital data. We are just pondering the non-possibilities, which admittedly has been done before a million times, but it’s a forum
I disagree. Suedkiez and Simon are helping thousands of Naim european members to go asleep.
You can count sheeps if you prefer.
To be fair I actually had no need but was just reiterating/clarifying what I had said before, as I didn’t want Simon to think poorly of me
thanks. Not a psychologist by training, but do lots of work in this space…
Including myself 
Would I ever… i like a good reasoned debate…
No - some are shaped slightly differently, with softer edges, which affects the sound, particularly soundstage and tone. The cleaning fluid can affect these edges optically, sharpening them up and improving their chakras.
There are just the bits. There is no additional noise in a digital file that is not in the bits.
Not sure what the time of day/night has to do with thinking/discussing! For some people their brains come alive at different times from others, or for others late evening onwards might be when their time is free from other demands.
…or of course they may be drinking another bottle of wine themselves, and playing music at the same time (and some could be fortunate enough to be able to do that without having to resort to low volume at night).
So there are good bits and bad bits.
I knew it!
If TJ’s wave files are identical, then this would be a good argument for the existence of this thread. TJ might feel bad about that but he really shouldn’t, everyone of us here is affected by listening bias whether we like it or not.
The steps in that case could be as follows:
TJ read in a hifi magazine that the cleaning solution works:
When I first came across this product reading an article in a hifi magazine, the writer went some way to explain it could be down to getting rid of substance residue used within the manufacturing processes of CDs.
Factors of influence are:
a) It is mentioned in a hifi magazine, which has authority, so this contributes to a degree of confidence in the product
b) A technical sounding / plausible explanation is provided by the author
c) We all want to improve our sound, so we subconsciously prefer the outcome to be positive rather than neutral (or negative)
Because of the above, after buying the product, cleaning a CD and playing it back, it’s easier to interpret any perceived changes as improvements that are a result of the product used. A change could be for instance paying attention to different aspects of the music, or with more attention to specific details in the music.
When it has been concluded that the cleaned version is better, then it’s a small step to influence others to hear the same thing. Humans are really good at passing small subconscious suggestions to others in order to influence their behaviour. Factors that could influence another person’s subjective assessment:
The same process happens in our own brains all the time when we assess things, and the effect is exaggerated in social situations due to peer influence.
I am convinced that if on the Naim forums a rumour would be started that a problem was discovered in the ND555 network chip which causes unintended harmonic artifacts, within a short amount of time various people would report that that is exactly what they have been experiencing.
There is also a general difference in approach that people employ when making assessments about provided claims:
It is a personal journey.
The audio world is full of conflicts, dilemmas, smoke and mirrors and psuedo-science. James Randi and Richard Feynman are my heros.
No I don’t believe directional speaker cables make a difference but I genuinely believe if they sound better to you then they are better (for you).
I am a hypocrite and perhaps it would be interesting to see if I changed my expensive (but not too expensive) speaker cables for a bit of bell wire would I notice the difference in a ABX test? The trouble is I can’t be bothered.
I get belief systems but they don’t make happy bedfellows with science and I am not going to be convinced by clever words phrases that I am not going to look up. I like challenging the “norm” and think healthy scepticism is good.
It is also strange, as these days CD PCM is a relatively constrained and limited media definition, and higher quality PCM exists elsewhere…but more relevantly many CDs are made by decimating current and recent, over the last decade, digital masters which can produce arithmetic errors encoded into the downsampled content, by the fact of the limitation of the format.
CD is certainly not the reference it once was in the late 90s early naughties in terms of PCM.
However as an optical storage medium it is as good as it ever was… and it’s data integrity and robustness is extremely impressive…