My last two laptops didn't have drives.
Reseached a bit more. CD Transports have a valid use case but CD players read the exact same way. The only difference is the sound decoding logic chips and how the signal is processed before it gets to the speakers.
I never understood the whole audiophile thing. Amazon Basics speakers on this thing.
That's correct. The laser bounces light off the disc and it either receives or doesn't receive the light back. Modern drives are capable enough to read that same bit multiple times (oversample) before the disc moves on to the next bit. There's absolutely no difference in the bits when they come out of the drive. The amount of metal required to bounce the laser is absolutely minimal, which is why you can get CDs you can see through. And gold CDs? No difference, the laser doesn't care.
For decoding the audio, there's a minimum quality that's going to give you a good sound, but past that it's all in processing to make it sound good to you.
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