The Absolute Sound "review" of USB cable reads suspiciously like a press releaste

A sufficiently corrupted data stream cannot be reconstructed at the receiving end, but the corrupted packets can be identified and dropped.
This is quite audible and unmistakable. It does not result in the loss of ambience or differences in top hat shimmer.

Agreed. The reviewer did state that it would result in dropouts, affect depth, dynamics, impact and sound staging. As for any effects on ambience and/or shimmer, I'd have to hear it for myself as I've heard differences in those aspects with different cabling and from cleaning up noise on the AC.

All the best,
Nonoise

The word shimmer means different things to different people. It’s like the word soundstage or air. If only you could hear what I hear with my ears. 

@geoffkait 

I don't think people really care what you might think of their CD
playback hardware if you were able to hear them in person. 
I think it's ridiculous to not realize that top shelf CD Players
can sound as good or better than other mediums.

The Naim CDS-3 will smoke a lot of turntables and Wifi Flac
streaming setups. I have heard amazing A/B comparisons 
and CD Playback can be breath taking. 

CDs themselves can sound bad if they were recorded poorly.
Many CDs will always sound bad and so will LPs that were 
recorded poorly.  

Agreed. My point is that the loss of a packet results in a discontinuity in the signal. In my experience such an event is audibly catastrophic and not in the least subtle and does not require audiophilese to describe.
USB interfaces will report packet loss, but I'm not sure that audio gear is able to enlighten the listener when such events occur.

I would imagine that computer based playback software would be able to report it, but I don't know that for a fact.

Yes, many CDs are just dross, while a few are quite magical.
This applies also to high res recordings, but as always caveat emptor.
I know of one download that on my system sounds noticeably superior to the live performance of the same piece with the same two musicians but performed in a different hall than the recording and with the violinist playing a different violin- a, as he put it, "fine copy of my strad" and the pianist playing a Steinway model A rather than the recorded model D.
This is not just my opinion, other attendees agree.
The playback was over USB using an RME ADI-2 PRO FS, and using a non audiophile USB cable with an active extender.