Do CD-R's sound better?

I was re-reading Robert Harley's article about why perhaps hard disks are better data sources (with music) than disc transports. I think that RH made a solid case and his reasoning is sound. What I mainly inferred from the article is that bit errors are virtually non-existent, and that differences in sound quality on the digital side of a source (transport -> clock) are overwhelmingly determined by jitter (timing error). However, the mention of CD-R's superiority continues to perplex me. I believe that it's plausible that they do sound better, but the exact reasons why still elude me.

If CD-R's sound better, is there any research that demonstrates lower timing error between a Red Book disc and its CD-R duplicate? The difference between a CD and a CD-R is that the reflected laser light scatters much more with a commercially-manufactured disc than with a CD-R because of the physical deviations between land and pit. A CD-R is "etched" or "stained" with data, which induces much less scattering. Does this mean, then, that laser scattering induces bit errors? RH's reasoning, to me, would suggest no, since "bit-errors are virtually non-existent" and "bitstreams read from different media... can sound different from one another, but not because of data errors." In that case, there has to be some other explanation.

From what I understand, the two things that affect sound quality in front of the DAC are bit errors and jitter. In that case, CD-R discs must induce far less jitter than Red Book discs, especially if the difference in sound quality can be heard. If that is the case, then, the contention that CD-R's sound better is a bit odd because some CD players already have extremely low levels of jitter when playing back Red Book CD. Therefore the difference between a CD and its CD-R duplicate would essentially be inaudible.