Do CD-R's sound the same as originals

For CDR technology to be useful as a computer data media requires vanishingly small rate of uncorrectable errors during the transcription. When was the last time you had a "bad" data or program file on a CD? This means the post-correction error rate must far better than 1 bit in every 10 billion. (In round numbers, there's about 5 billion bits of data on a CD). If the post-correction error rate were not that low, CD-R would not be reliable enough for use in the computer industry. When I say "correction", I mean recovery of the original data provided by the error-correction coding used for both audio and data CD formats. Think about it: a computer program will not tolerate interpolation of bad data. So no way is an alleged difference in sound due to data errors, unless consumer CD-R burners are truly, truly, crappy and do have much higher data error rates as compared to computer burners and CD-ROMs. A different issue is whether clock jitter differs when reading CD-R vs a stamped CD.

Good point about reflectivity. Too bad that $200 CD burners can outperform big buck audio players :-( Concering error correction algorithms: notice I used the term "correctable error": this is an error which is detected by the error correction algorithm and CORRECTABLE -- the original data word is restored to its proper value. I won't go into technicalities, but the use of redundant bits allows this. For example in an (11,8) code, 11 bits are recorded to represent 8 bits of data input; at playback time an 11 bit is read and the error correction algorithms decides which 8 bit word was intended. It can perfectly correct any single bit error out of the 11 bits, but if a pair of bit errors happen within that 11 bit word, all it can determine is that an uncorrectable error has occurred. If 3 bits out of the 11 are in error, the algorithm cannot recognize the situation and the wrong 8-bit word is output. An uncorrectable error is one in which the algorithms has to "fake it" via interpolation, or in really bad cases, shuts down the output.

Perfection is the Holy Grail. In practice, this means "vanishingly small error rate" relative to digital data. Uncorrected bit error rates (BER) on the order of error in every trillion bits is not uncommon for some high-quality digital data transmission systems. That BER is roughly one error in the equivalent of (whips out slide rule here... hmmm... fiddle... fiddle...) about 184 compact discs, assuming 680 MB of useable data per disk. Not too shabby.