I'm not dreaming - these are great CD copies


I have an out of town friend who's given me some CD-Rs that he's made by simply copying music off of red book CDs. The music quality is extremely good - better than I'm used to hearing from my red book CDs. He's not an audiophile and has no idea what format is being utilized e.g. Lossless, etc.
Question - Can you really improve the quality of music from a red book CD by simply copying to some other format? If so, I'm boxing up all 300 of my CDs and asking my friend to copy make copies for me.
rockyboy
In your face and musical are just words. They certainly don’t mean the same thing to everyone. I like things to be in your face if that’s how they’re supposed to sound. I don’t like laid back sound if it’s supposed to be more present and dynamic.

Read again, I didn’t say laid back sound, I said "musical" and not in your face (meaning hard/harsh to me).

Fact is the odds are going negative, more you burn the more errors there will be, as the laser has difficulty reading the not so clean pit/lands of a burnt CD no matter what blank is used, even though some are better than others.
Nothing is as clean as the original stamped/moulded retail cd, as the pics below show.

Left moulded/stamped retail CD, pits are clean to read hopefully to be error free

Middle and right burnt CD-R pits one gold one normal silver, not clean and can cause errors.

https://www.iasa-web.org/sites/default/files/tc05-fig20.jpg


Cheers George
PS: the cd retail stamped vs copy burn pics above comes from Jean-Marc Fontaine just one of digital’s foremost authorities.

Here is just a video conference of his which discusses the drive mechs and storage of digital
https://vimeo.com/16104280

Cheers George
Interesting discussion, but what's a CD (grin)?  Since moving to PC audio well over a decade ago and having over 100k tracks on a 10tb HD, I haven't listened to one of the little sliver disks in years....  In fact, most of my DVD's and Blu-Rays are also going the way of the CD's -- to a HD and into storage.

Back in the day, to confirm what others have said, I did notice a positive difference using a CD damper like Herbie's Grungebuster.  I didn't know why nor care, better sound equaled using the Grungebuster.  

Lastly, from all the posts, ripping and burning CD's may be a sonic improvement for some and in some cases.  But it doesn't seem to be consistently positive.  At least not enough to rip and burn everything to another disc.  If I'm doing that, it would be to a HD and copying to at least another HD for a backup....   
In fact, most of my DVD’s and Blu-Rays are also going the way of the CD’s -- to a HD and into storage.
If you look after them, how many CD’s or DVD’s have failed you, then compare how many Hard Drives have bit the dust.

Big difference to me, I’ve lost count how many H/D’s I’ve lost since 1987?, maybe the new solid state ones are better, as yet too small and expensive

Yet I still have my original 1982 first CD Love over Gold and it’s still perfect and sounds magnificent as the day it was bought.

Cheers George
georgehifi
PS: the cd retail stamped vs copy burn pics above comes from Jean-Marc Fontaine just one of digital’s foremost authorities.

>>>Nevertheless, it doesn’t prove anything. This whole is the copy better than the original debate has been around like forever. And undoubtedly it will be around for a whole lot longer.