[metalgod77]

Silly question, but when you copy an audio CD is it an exact copy. Do you lose any quality or is it as sonically good as the original.

[Jim_Hardin]

It is digital, consisting of 1's or 0's… NO.

Now if you convert it to something other than WAV first, then make an Audio CD from those files… Yes something will be lost along the way.

[d_deweywright]

Let me attempt an answer as well. Being digital in nature, the copy should be identical, and there should be no loss of quality. As Jim said, if you go to some intermediate file type that involves a lossy compression scheme, like .MP3, or .WMV, then the copy will not be identical, so stick with .WAV files if needed.

Also, I said should be identical. When you "rip" a track from an Audio CD, that's called Digital Audio Extraction (DAE). In most cases, it will be a perfect copy, but if there is dirt on the disc, or scratches, or your drive simply doesn't do DAE well (not all drives do) then because of the lack of ECC bits on an Audio CD, the copy could be different, which could sound like a click or pop in the copy.

Hope that helps.

[metalgod77]

Thanks guys.