how to get good sounding copies of CDs

Lossless really is lossless, so you won't lose any information.

I haven't used AIFF, but have FLAC and even wav with very good results. I forget what software I use and I'm away from home, so I can't pass that on, but it cost about $30 after the trial ran out.

I have been told, but not tried, that you can make CDs that playback superior to the original if you use more exotic CD stock.

Be sure that your software is not compressing and then decompressing somewhere in the process.

If you check earlier forums you will find that Apple lossless is highly recommended and has been used to make SUPERIOR copies. Perhaps 1x is better? Check the forums out.

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.