do burnt CD copys sound as good as originals?

Drubin, is there any chance that your panasonic dual tray CDR actually copies via the DAC and ADC rather than making a bit perfect copy ? This would certainly explain degradation. It would be a ridiculous design, but we are talking consumer electronics, and sound quality likely plays much less of a part than the simplest, cheapest design.

If I copy a CD by using my PC and treating it as a data disc and having the computer do a simple "dupicate disc" I can hear absolutely no difference from the original.

I'm with shadorne ... it should make no difference, unless the CD is badly scratched, and the computer CD-rom drive has better error correction capabilities than the transport in your CD player.

To all those who say that a PC may not perfectly copy a CD I say this:

TREAT IT AS A DATA CD.

On Nero there is an option to make a duplicate of the original CD. This works no matter what is on the original CD, music or data. It is simply a bit for bit copy.

If you rip to the hard drive then burn to a CD it's hard to say for sure what happened to the data, but if you simply duplicate the original CD then you'll get a ...... duplicate.

If the "duplicate" feature works on data disks AND music CDs then it must be a bit-for-bit copy.

If it only works on music CDs it might not be a bit for bit copy.