Even a cheap-o Sony Discman can buffer about 40 seconds, I think, of information into memory. I'm not an engineer, but it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to read a whole CD into memory.
New Transport Approach
With never-ending advances in technology and tumbling prices, I wonder if any high-end audio CD player manufacturer is considering an approach such as this - populate the player with 700 megabytes of RAM and pre-read the whole CD into RAM. We know this is completely reliable (or else our beloved MS Office wouldn't work). Then the whole transport system could be shut down, eliminating any concerns about mechanical or electrical noise, and the "CD" could be played back straight from RAM through the DAC. It would seem like this would reduce or eliminate jitter completely. There would be an "initialization" time penalty, but I would think for the high-end market, that wouldn't be a huge deal. Any thoughts? -Kirk