wrote in message
ups.com

Having recently purchased a DVD burner and having had a
CD burner for some time, it occured to me that there may
or may not be differences in blank media, such as there
are in blank analog tape.

There *are* differences among different kinds and samples of media.

Is there any research that indicates any qualitative
differences in blank CD or DVD media?

The results of qualitataive differences show up as differences in error
rates and compatibility with different players.

So the differences don't show up so much as sound quality, but how much
error recovery is going on in the background. If there are uncorrectable
errors, then you may hear skips, tics and pops, or the media may not play in
that player at all.

Having searched Google already, I was unable to find any
sort of definitive tests on the subject, indeed it seems
that it is not something that any particular attention
has been paid.

A great deal of attention is paid to error rates.