How come there is no thread on the RealityCheck?

The Positive Feedback review cited above contains the following statement:

" Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking master tape-type quality from Redbook CDs."

Why do I have a hard time believing such hype?

There is no way that this device can extract information from the disc that isn't there. The data on the disc can be manipulated in various ways when it is re-recorded to change the sound when it is played back, but it is a distortion of the original data. For example, certain frequencies can be boosted or cut, phase relationships can be altered, harmonic structure can be changed, and that sound may be more pleasing to you just like adding an equalizer or some type of signal processor to your system may alter the sound in some way pleasing to you, but I'll stick with the original.

Audioengr, your lower jitter theory is a reasonable hypothesis, but if jitter from reading the disc is the culprit, this then begs the question of why, given the low cost of memory and computing power, doesn't every player above the entry level read and re-clock the data to the dac thereby eliminating this variable from the equation? This seems like a much more elegant solution to the problem than the meticulous cleaning of discs and then re-writing to a blank CD which has a limited lifetime.

There are numerous high end players that do re-clock the data. I wonder if this re-writing process has any audible effect on their playback?

I am also curious why I never see any test data on the bit stream coming from a transport before and after such treatments are applied. With the right equipment it would be very easy to analyze this stream of bits and see what if any differences there are. It might not tell us what it would sound like but at least it would demonstrate that there are differences.