how to get good sounding copies of CDs

I've burned cd's on a Mac platform for years without any of the sonic deficiencies you mention. In spite of the supposed equality to WAV, I never use any lossless format, why bother if you are just ripping a cd copy and aren't archiving the files on your hard drive (in my case.) ? I use only the WAV codec and find that anything burned at 4x or slower sounds as good if not better than the original.

I own a RealityCheck CD Duplicater. Depending on which blank discs you use you will get good to awesome results

I am not sure about Apple lossless, but what has been posted about FLAC is accurate, it is a truly lossless format.

However, major factors to consider:

First, the CD Drive you are ripping with and the mirror of the CD you are ripping from matter. In the PC world the program to use is EAC (exact audio copy) not sure if there is a MAC version of this, you can configure it to focus on quality copies and it logs the master volume level and how effective the rip was, IE what percentage of the bits were accurately captured. Some CD Drives cannot get to 100% so make sure you are using a quality drive to do your rips. Any scratches to the mirror, including small imperfections can affect the data transfer.

Second is media, what you are burning to is important, audio CDs buffer differently than data CDs and therefore what is good for one is not guaranteed to be good for the other.

Finally, to insure a true bit perfect copy you will need to make sure your ripped format preserves sample levels, DB adjustment levels and a CUE file to preserve gaps between tracks.

I have definitely noticed a loss in quality using itunes to make CD copies for my own use on a Mac G4 compared to making direct copies CD to CD using disk mastering software. Exactly as you describe, less sparkle and space in the playback of itunes generated disks compared to original factory burned copies of higher quality recordings. I have had significantly better luck using the program called "Toast" on the Apple to copy disks, and only use itunes to purchase and organize music as single songs versus full albums.

itunes does allow you to make a nice printed CD cover for your burned playlists to put in your jewel cases. Add the color album art if you purchased the music from Apple in the first place or don't mind Apple peaking through your songs lists to fetch the right art for the selected album.

In my experience "Lossless" does not equal no-loss. Better than standard MP3 though.

Rrm and Knownothing, out of curiosity, are you burning with a cd only drive or a cd/dvd superdrive? Are you using desktops or laptops?