how to get good sounding copies of CDs

Photon46,

I have a LaCie external CD-RW drive for burning. Does a great job, but sounds like a jet plane revving up on the runway when it is burning! I use my built in Panasonic Super Drive for the source - this arrangement seems to work very well, but I haven't carefully evaluated the reverse.

I use both PC laptop and Mac G4 desktop unit to burn disks from itunes playlists, desktop only for making disk to disk copies (I never loan out originals or take in the car!)

Question for all: Just downloaded several songs from Apple to my PC laptop and noticed that they are all 128kbps ACC files. I have read that Apple lossless is capable of 256kbps? Does this mean that I am not really using Apple lossless formatting? If not, how do I enable that within itunes on my machine(s)? Does format depend on the native format for the music file from the record label? Different capabilities running on Mac vs PC? Very difficult to get info from Apple on this.

Rrm, To import WAV files, pull down the iTunes menu at the top of the screen, open "preferences," then "advanced," then "burning," and choose "WAV encodeder." I've used Taiyo Yuden (pretty much any disc that is made in Japan is Taiyo Yuden, I think they are the only cd-r manufacturer left in Japan) and Mitsui gold cd-rs to good effect. Every test I've read of cd-r quality says those two are the best. I've found Ebay sellers that sell Mitsui for a good price. I usually just look for whatever "Made in Japan" disc I can find when buying locally and have never been disappointed. The black discs I've tried in the past also sounded good, don't know if they are as archivally stable as the others though. When I use an external burner, I've had very good luck with LaCie burners, both the Porsche design model and the slightly less pricey models. Can't say I've heard any difference between the internal Superdrive in my Powerbook and the Lacies though. I also haven't heard any difference between Toast and iTunes produced discs, both sound great to me. Interesting that these differences are occuring among us.

Some CD players, mostly older ones (weak lasers), have problems playing CDRs (less reflective).

Rega Apollo might be one of them. I found info about it in another Audiogon thread:

"In John Atkinson's recent testing of a Rega Apollo CD player he noted difficulties playing CD-R's. Have Rega Apollo owner's experienced similar difficulties? There are other operational difficulties noted in an earlier Audiogon posting. Is this a flawed design? Have the problems been corrected? An attempt to get an answer from the U.S. distributor went unanswered."