I have to strongly disagree with Chang here as I suspect he didn't actually audition copies from a Pioneer 739. Therefore he is poo pooing my experiences based SOLELY on the burner he used i.e. all burners are NOT equal!
Chang brings up the point that we do not have access to the master tapes and he is correct. What we do have access to though is a near "edge of the art" $55,000 turntable rig that is only eclipsed by the "best in the world" $70k+ Rockport. That rig has been compared to master tape we use this source as our "reference", then we all would unequivocally state that the burned cd sounds closer in space, harmonic decay, fluidity and overall sound field as compared to the original cd.
The question I have for anyone here is how the hell do you add space, fluidity or additional harmonic decay to a copy with a frequency shift? Many have speculated (including Chang here) that the Pioneer burner is just rolling off the highs or something like that... The problem with those hypothesis is that frequency related colorations never add more space or additional harmonic decay. But guess what? Almost every article ever written about cd sound compared to the master tapes speaks about the loss of the above aforementioned sonic qualities! And since the Pioneer 739 adds these qualities into the copy, I think it is a fair statement to say the copies sound closer to the master tape!
Chang also stated that he had the ability to compare the copy to the original "bit for bit". Unfortunately his statement shows his ignorance of digital. For example: Either the copy or the original could have jitter magnitudes hundreds of times greater than the other, yet both would look identical bit for bit. If you decrease jitter components in the copy, they WILL be audible! Especially if they are large in the original cd as compared to the copy. In a nutshell, it's a hell of a lot more than just bits!
