Audio Systems: burning, highs and lows, digital burn

Question
Hi. I'd like to know how much sound quality is lost when a song is burned from a compact (not burned, but bought) cd. Also, is the sound quality of downloaded music from napster or amazon as good as that on most cds??

Answer
CD's are wav files and are very large files not designed to be downloadable. Napster, Amazon and for that matter any services providing music downloads, usually generate a very low bit rate file 128kb or 192kb. Anything else will take too long to download and the bandwidth of most Internet providers is a minimum. You would need very high upload speed from cable or dsl.modem to even get a high bit rate mp3.

If you are discerning and compare the sound of mp3's to wav (CD), listening to acoustic music, such as classical, you will notice the difference especially in the highs and lows.

A digital burn is an exact copy because they all use ones and zero's to store information. There may be a difference in the ability to read the information quickly because of the recording media but in the end both store bought and home made are the same.