[X4U] importing audio CD as AIFF

[Alex]

On Apr 27, 2005, at 21:36, Kansas Territory wrote:

> If I import as AIFF files and then burn an audio CD of these files.. 
> am I thus making a DUPLICATE copy ?

No. It is virtually impossible to make a duplicate (identical copy) of 
an audio CD on a Mac or a PC. You can make a good (but not identical 
copy) with a tool such as ExactAudioCopy (Win), and, of course, a good 
drive. To my knowledge, no such tool is available on the Mac, but you 
can use cdrdao, which has been ported to the Mac. You can make a 
reasonably good copy with a tool capable of reading/writing in DAO 
mode, such as Toast, DragonBurn, Discribe, etc. iTunes (or Finder, for 
that matter) copies the tracks from an audio CD, but not its structure, 
so you don't actually get a copy with iTunes (that's simplifying a bit, 
but it's close enough for rock 'n' roll). Whether these distinctions 
matter to you or not, that's another issue. I assume to most people 
they don't.

> or is there any kind of process that happens going from an Audio CD to 
> AIFF where it would experience any degradation  ?

Theoretically, no. In practice, it depends. Copying audio from an audio 
CD is not a "simple" matter of just copying bits from one medium to 
another. There may appear defects, ranging from small ones, which most 
people don't notice, to very audible clicks caused by imperfections on 
the disc surface.


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