Peter, You have good ears. I have been ripping to Apple Lossless for a few years and I always thought they sounded the same as WAV or AIFF. But a few months ago I experimented something similar to what you did. I ripped some CDs to AIFF using iTunes, converted them to Apple Lossless, burned two sets of CDs: one directly from AIFF, another one directly from Apple Lossless. I than played them back from CD player. Some tracks from the Apple Lossless ones sounded thin and some with narrower soundstage and not as dynamic. It didn't happen on all the tracks but the ones did sound different were very obvious, even my non-audiophile friends can point that out immediately.
The Apple Lossless format didn't loss any information because when I converted them back to AIFF and compare them to the original AIFF files, they were identical. That lead me to believe that the one-step conversion process during CD burning may have introduced artifacts.
The Apple Lossless format didn't loss any information because when I converted them back to AIFF and compare them to the original AIFF files, they were identical. That lead me to believe that the one-step conversion process during CD burning may have introduced artifacts.