Burned CDs can sound better than the original?

You hit the nail on the head. Many people think that LESS resolution and LESS dynamics sounds better. If you listen on a reference system, the difference will blow you away. CD-R machines like the Pioneer produce a more accurate copy than computer CD burners. The accuracy of a copy is ALWAYS <= the original. Stuck with those darn laws of physics and the really poor Red-Book standard for CDs. The beauty of digital is that you can compare recordings without listening to them. You can look at 2 recordings next to each other and compare dynamics, highs, accuracy of reproduction, transients etc. Why don't recordings sound like live performance: less dynamics, that's it. Our playback media and equipment can't handle the dynamics that you'd need for sounding live. It's even more evident with CDs over LPs and with SS instead of tubes. Of course if your equipment could handle it, where would you find a room that could handle it?

It's possible that the software compresses the dynamics to make them sound "better". Since most people think that compresed dynamics sound better. (They bring out the material that a lot of equipment can't reproduce). Just look at the rave reviews of Blue Note's RVG remastering even though they had 90 - 95% of the dynamic range removed. With a few exceptions (HDCD, XRCD, DCC) it's just different flavors of distortion. This is really strange since CDs can give us perfect reproductions of music. So why are there so many different hardare and software mastering methods? I don't know and I've been an engineer in the digital audio / video field for over 10 years. Just marketing hype I guess.

The burner's and the software have come a long way in the past couple of years. Before all reading was done real-time which has to degenerate the signal and there was no reclocking available. I'll have to completely upgrade my hardware and software and try this out. What are Ahead's "Nero Burning Rom" and Audio wizard.

About 8 or so years ago, I did a test of CD player / Transports and their ability to accurately retrieve what was on the disk. At the time I hadd access to a $40K real-time analyzer and I was trying to prove that all transports were the same and that transport tweaks were useless. Boy was wrong on both occasions. First the CD Red Book standard is not very robust. Second Most CDs don't even meet the minimum standard. Third Even the best transports had read errors, 25 - 40% of the samples on premium transports to more than 95% on mass produced models. I nver thought that the errors could be due to poor track path, but that makes good sense. I'm going to get a new CD burner and Software and do a comparison of burned CDs with stamped ones.

Mr Ttathomp you may be absolutely correct. I wanted to try this out first before I said the same thing. I have noticed that many so called "remasterings" are just reducing the dynamics and rolling off the highs. This makes them sound better on systems that can't handle the dynamics or the highs. I was really angered at Blue Note a few years ago put out these RVG remastrings simply trying to cash in on the RVG name with CDs that were already currently available, and to boot at a premium price. These CDs had 90 - 95% of the dynamics removed (measured by one of my technicians using a software analyzer) and severely rolled off highs. To take it one step further, StereoShill praised these recordings, yet in the next issue blatsed all the remastering of rock records with greatly reduced dynamics. When I have time, I'll make some CD-R copies and have them analyzed by one of my techs.

Everything you mentioned could happen in a burned CD also. I'm open to the possibility, but I want to do tests both on audibilty and measured differences in the data stream. Then I'll be willing to agree that the burned CDs may be better.

The work it would take to do a single copy isn't worth the effort. You really do need the source tapes to do this.