Jeff, on the question of copies and playback, have you seen the Gary Koh/Genesis white paper that kicked this off, it's been revised a few times:
http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/whitepaper/White%20Paper%20on%20Black%20CDs%20ver%203.1.pdfI built a system to do this, down to a Plextor ripping drive and Yamaha 4x burner. I have about 4 different types of black discs and use them for most of my burns. I was lucky enough to meet up with Mr. Koh at his factory in Seattle where he demonstrated a $45k pair of speakers in a literal warehouse. The sound was utterly amazing and he took the opportunity to demonstrate original vs. different black CD copies. Not only were the copies better, but the copies were significantly different from each other. Gary said the only difference was the physical medium - burn parameters were identical.
When I was using these I was convinced of their superiority. The logic is pretty simple - it's easier for a ROM drive to take its time via EAC to get the imperfect CD surface read correctly, then deposit the bits "better" to a clean copy vs. the physical pressing problems that original CDs have.
Of course the problem of creating a logical construct is that expectations are born. It's fully possible all that I heard were illusions, based on what my logical brain instructed. However, IF you follow that logic and IF you continue that logic the question becomes "why have any real-time reading of a physical medium at all". Even if the burned disc is a "better" middleman, it is still an extra step that is no longer needed.
This leap led me to the server concept where most of my listening has been centered for a couple of years now.
All that said, my clock-linked Rega-Lessloss combo is freakin' sweet - even with original CDs.
