Does copying a CD or DVD decrease the quality of the original at all? I was just wondering. I kinda figure the quality of the burned copy isnt as good as a official CD.

no it doesnt decrease the quality of the original, and the burned copy will be the same, its all digital transfer not like back in the day recording cassette to cassette lol

dance4me3121 said:

Should be bit 4 bit the same.

Keep in mind that the music and film CDs and DVDs made by the original manufacturer are done so by following strict quality control methods. The use of glass masters with high-quality data layers ensure that QC is kept at maximum levels. Home disc recording is a far cry from these precisely met tolerances.

Remember that the analog dye medium of the recordable CD which stores the digital data has to be "burned" with a laser to make the pits that are read as 1s and 0s by your D/A converter. These burned pits are not going to be as uniformly shaped as the ones on your Warner Bros disc. In fact, the pits will more than likely be quite distorted.

Can you hear or see the difference? No. Digital audio and video will either be readable, or it won't. But if that recorded disc gets copied again and so on - somewhere down the line there will probably be a corrupt/unreadable copy, due to this degradation of the pits. This would have to happen many generations down the line, though. There's a reason why rewritable discs are supposed to be thrown out after so many uses. Never archive to RW-Discs.

Just stay away from cheap store-branded recordable discs and brands like Verbatim, LG and Imation. Buy good brands on sale.