I remember a few years ago i tested a master in two different Premium 2's, and the results came out quite different. After that i stopped worrying about it too much. I still test every master in Plextools, but as long as i don't get any of those blue or red spikes, i don't pay too much attention to it.
Anyway, surely the first thing that happens to an audio CD master when it gets to the factory is it's ripped into some kind of computer system (to a DDP image?), so actually, as long as the data is 100% identical, we're good to go, right? Or does the plant try to exactly reproduce the pits as they are on the audio CD master they receive from us?
Actually, i should really know this stuff, shouldn't I?!