So are after market power cords, vibration control devices and power conditioners bogus if they measure well and make the system sound better? Does it win a prize instead?
https://nordost.com/downloads/NewApproachesToAudioMeasurement.pdf
That paper is brutal.
1x CD player, older, $4000 --- I have an idea, how about tell us the model. Why is that a secret? It was obviously a unit with troubles that conveniently measured poorly. I am making a leap there? You bet, but I have a reason. That reason? A current, $250 Japanese CD player was better than their $4000 unit, quite a bit from the pictures shown. They needed to pick something really awful to show a difference. They gamed the test. Worse, they gamed it in another way I will mention later.
29 graphs, count them, 29, not one of them with an adequate scale being used, let alone always with a good description and most of them, with absolutely no scale at all.
They have some pretty big claims of timing errors, 20-40useconds, though how someone could replicate this with almost no data I have no idea. Of course, they are using what could be an ancient (and purposely chosen) CD player, and to make it as bad as possible, they are using a CD made on a computer CD writer, not even a pressed CD. At this point now very old CD player, well worn, and a computer made CD, with "sample sized", their words, timing errors. It sounds like the CD was misreading. I could see a mechanical platform improving that. Personally not played a CD in over a decade. Rip everything to storage.