With today's online catalogs of tracks to download, especially in high res, why would anybody still want to buy a CD? It beats me why CDs do not encode regular wav or flac files, with much more effective error correction for buffered playback. Add a state of the art reclocker after that to get jitter down to lowest possible level and a DAC to suit your taste in terms of filtering and conversion, and you are good to go! Once the CD is properly ripped it is of no big use.
Theoretical question about how CD's work
Theoretically, can the contents of a CD be printed out onto sheets of paper in 1’s & 0’s, re-entered digit by digit (say, by a generous helper monkey with an infinite lifespan) into some sort of program, and the same sound will be replicated? Just trying to understand how CD’s work (though I’ve been trying for 25 years and it still seems like magic to me).