feeling dumb tonight...

[I'm Painting Again]

hey thanks fo r the insight.

i always wondered what was going on with bounces.

[Professor]

I just want to jump back a moment to cover the original question.

Given the choice between dropping the CD into the CD-r drive and pulling the files into the computer or playing the disc real time through the S/PDIF input into the computer, you are probably safest pulling the data off the disc through the computer's disc drive.
If you could slow the drive down to read at maybe 4x speed instead of 40x then you would have a lower Block Error Rate on the CD drive and a cleaner transfer. But even at a high speed transfer, going through a CD player and its electronics, some cable, a soundcard, and all the computer electronics is probably going to affect the sound more.
Since I assume that the CD-R in question is already mixed and complete and you won't be back in the studio to create a different mix format, all of the other formats discussed are moot. And while 24bit files are a better choice for transfer between systems, that isn't available when mixing from analog tape through a board to a Tascam or similar CD Deck.

As for the comparison between a word processing file or photo file, there is a considerable difference in file size, error correction and human perception between audio and other computer files. A word processing file takes up maybe a couple hundred kilobytes, is typically saved uncompressed and runs through extensive error correction on its way from hard drive to removable disc and on its way from removable disc back to another drive. A photo file might reach a couple megs, but still goes through considerable error correction. Errors can occur with photos, but if one pixel is 2 points more blue than the ones around it, our eyes cannot tell, and the error rarely turns a pixel from black to white.
With audio files, the volume of data involved is enormous, more than 10 megs per minute of stereo audio. When a CD is created from a computer, the two .wav or other files are interleaved into a CDDA file and recorded to the disc with fewer error correction flags. When the disc is read into a computer, the CDDA files is read, goes through the drive's error correction system, then is translated into either WAV, SDII, or AIFF or other formats, some of which pull it apart again to two mono files. When the audio is altered and a new CD is made, the process happens again. Anyone who has ever tried to "Export" from a word processing or photoshop program to another format (try export to .PDF or something similar) and then tried to re-import into another program knows how well this kind of translation doesn't work for text or photos - it is a wonder audio data moves as well as it does.

As for the perceptibility of all of this, it is true that the average listener on the average system cannot usually tell. My girlfriend's laptop does a piss poor job of ripping and burning CDs, and I can tell every time I get in her car and hear one. I have never checked to see what software whe is using and what the hell it is doing to the sound. That is an exception, usually the software tries to make an accurate copy which is hard to spot without an AB test. But please don't say it is impossible to spot unless you have done an AB test on a good listening system (not your computer speakers or Bose Waveradio). I have done listening tests from all sorts of angles, different duplicators, different media, different program material and always tested on an audio system which ran at least $10k as the reference. I would usually run a straight AB between the original commercially released CD and the copy, and there was a difference every single time. Even the nice Pro CD-Recorders would impart a difference, just by peeling off the SCMS code, while the pro-sumer and consumer decks would alter the SCMS code or just plain blur the audio quelity. The Alesis Masterlink came in as the closest to sounding better on copies than originals when it peeled off the SCMS code, though it could mess with certain attributes of some program material - in particular synthesized keyboard parts could sometimes be a little weird.

It is something everyone should try, it doesn't take much to transfer one track from CD to HD and back to CDR and really listen to both tracks on a good system and hear how different they are.

-Jeremy

[@?,*???&?]

Everyone here needs to go to the library and find the book, "The Principals of Digital Audio" by Ken C Pohlman. MUST READ, not optional. Don't be afraid to skip some of the calculus stuff...

Or "Compact disc and digital audio technology" Published by Sony

[blm15]

http://www.johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm

'Course you can find stuff like the above all over the net. Opinions mostly... but still there's some interesting points here.
blm15