I have been a professional Stand Up Comic for 40 years
Let's humor the comedian.
Below a quote from marketing material from Project:
The mechanics in many drives struggle to correctly read CDs and rely on audio interpolation to make it work, that often has a negativ impacting on the sound quality.
Read up on CD encoding (Eight to Fourteen Modulation, CIRC, tracking, focusing, C1, C2, and CU errors and their correction).
Then actually use a CD analyzer (costs of a small car) and see how many C1 and C2 errors occur and how many CU errors occur during playback using a functional (not defective) CDP and using not severely damaged scratched CDs. I have in my repair period.
Let me assure you C1 errors are constantly there and are fully correctable. C2 errors are far less common and are mostly also fully correctable or accurately interpolate-able.
Only when CU errors occur (unrecoverable errors) then samples are lost BUT it is known samples are lost.
How the player handles this (sample hold, interpolation or mute) depends.
It is what Project alludes to.
Focusing and tracking is mechanical (beam following the bread crumb trail on the disc) and is not the same as digital error correction.
The project is nicely built and the chassis has better build quality. That does not mean the read
eye pattern is 'better' also.
Let me guarantee you that CD's handled with some basic care (so not terribly scratched or with 'holes' in the reflective layer) and with normal functionality do not ever have any CU errors so all bits are always recovered perfectly and timely.
You would have to understand that unlike vinyl playback is not an 'instant and direct data stream sent to a DAC' but all read data is
demodulated, re-clocked
de-interleaved,
error checked (and corrected) and more processing is done (including digital filtering) before it is sent to a DAC.
So no matter how loud they scream what is claimed is nonsense and when it happens it results in 'ticks' or unwanted noises.
Reading CD's (ripping) via a computer is done differently (buffered and re-read at much higher speed).
Some things in life don't need to be experienced they can be reasoned and measured. Certainly in the digital world.
As a comedian you should know how you can manipulate people into going along and convincing people about things that may not be entirely true. Same here... marketing talk. People want (need) to believe. When they do the magic happens but may not come from where the think it comes from.