I'm not dreaming - these are great CD copies

Can you really improve the quality of music from a red book CD by simply copying to some other format?

No. Data on a red book CD is stored as a cda file. As such, copying a cda file results in the same cda file being copied elsewhere. Ripping a cd on the other hand can result in a change of format, such as wav. Once in an editable format such as wav, the file can be reworked in the digital domain and as such can be improved (subjective) relative to its parent source file.

@georgehifi

Regarding not proving anything, in this case I’ll agree with @geoffkait . Geoff, I’ve read a number of your posts the last few days. Seems you’ve taken what I’ve indicated elsewhere to heart :)

George, to your point about CD failure versus hard drive failure, consider though how much more expensive CDs are in comparison to hard drive. So the failure rate of the hard drive is moot as one can easily back up a hard drive versus hundreds or thousands of CDs.

Some high level approximate numbers. A CD holds 700mb of data, and most often when burning music to it (80 min) one does not maximizes its capacity. Even when buying in "consumer bulk" quantities of 100 pack spindles of "very good quality", $25 would still be considered a bargain. So, in this example, it costs $25 for 70 gig of storage. I can buy a western digital 8 *terabyte* hard drive for $200.

There are a myriad of reasons I’ve abandoned CDs long ago. I still have 4000 though....

I still find they are better sounding than a copy "from them" to any other format.

Hi George. Not meaning to play on words here, but personally I draw a distinction between a "copy" and a "rip".

As I mentioned in my 03-26-2018 1:14pm post, a copy is just that, a copy. So, in the case of a copy, there is only one format - a cda file. And in this instance, I agree with you that the copied cda file should not sound better, all other things being equal (such as the condition of the source and target disk). In fact, ideally if there is nothing wrong with the condition of the source and target disks, they should sound the same (i.e. one should be hard pressed to hear a difference, if any).

And I also agree with you about a stamped CD being better, even if only theoretically because of the "more pronounced" pits.

Ripping, on the other hand, could (not that it necessarily will) result in a better sounding file, even if only because of the change in playback mechanism. For example, the source cda file can only be played on optical media whereas a rip of that cda file could produce a wav file that when played back via hard drive or usb *could* sound better. This is especially true if ones optical drive is "noisy".

I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised if successive copies sounded better and better.

Especially if you're smoking because "ya got em".