One could, e.g., connect the output of a cheap player to your sound card, and using software such as Cool Edit, record a flawless audio stream into WAV or MP3 format.
Or am I missing something?
--Boris
You are missing nothing. All decent audio CD players have error correction. This ranges from loss-free correction based on data provided on the CD, to "fill-in" for uncorrectable errors, to blanking -- replacing uncorrectable errors with silence.
Different players use different strategies when confronted with uncorrectable errors. Computer players are designed not to allow any uncorrectable errors, so they are more likely to find the entire CD unplayable.
But if you could find a modern audio player with a digital output, you could connect it to any sound card that has a digital input and get nearly flawless recordings.
This just in: last night, browsing the HIFI mags, I saw an ad for a palm sized A/D converter that accepts optical and coax inputs. $150 retail. A sign of the future?
Boris, Your post is right-on! The only effective way to stop a "clean" recording is to make the medium incapable of producing a "clean" sound. After all, you could stick a microphone in front of the speaker no matter what. I bet that music sales will decrease by more than 10% if they adopt the philosophy of creating music that sounds so bad that no one will want to copy it ... oh. I guess that's what they are already trying. duh!it.