Ripped CD's to hard drive vs. Burned CD's w/ WMP 9

[RD]

I ripped some cd's to my hard drive using windows media player 9 at 64
kbps, 96kbps, 128 kbps, 192 kbps. I then burned them to cd-r's using
the same player at 2x.I could not hear a difference between the burned
cd's and the original cd's I copied them from. When I insert the
burned CD-R's in the CD-ROM drive, I cannot get any data about the
size of the files (just shows "audio"). I know this might sound
unintelligent, but does WIndows Media Player somehow automatically
take the wma file from the hard-drive (no matter what bitrate it was
copied at) and re-convert it to a wav or some sort of cda file that is
not compressed on the newly burned cd-r? I cannot account for the fact
that with critical listening through a good system, I cannot hear any
differences and my ears are still pretty good.

 

[Galley]

I ripped some cd's to my hard drive using windows media player 9 at 64
kbps, 96kbps, 128 kbps, 192 kbps. I then burned them to cd-r's using
the same player at 2x.I could not hear a difference between the burned
cd's and the original cd's I copied them from. When I insert the
burned CD-R's in the CD-ROM drive, I cannot get any data about the
size of the files (just shows "audio"). I know this might sound
unintelligent, but does WIndows Media Player somehow automatically
take the wma file from the hard-drive (no matter what bitrate it was
copied at) and re-convert it to a wav or some sort of cda file that is
not compressed on the newly burned cd-r? I cannot account for the fact
that with critical listening through a good system, I cannot hear any
differences and my ears are still pretty good.

Yes, that is exactly what is happening. The compressed file is converted to a
WAV file "on the fly" and then burned to the disc. .CDA files are merely
markers to a file format that the computer cannot understand. (That's why they
are only 44 bytes in size) You should be able to tell the difference between
the original CD and a CD-R made from compressed audio files. The reason they
can be compressed is because the encoder removes audio data that it thinks your
ears might not miss. The lower the bitrate, the more noticeable the difference
is. It also depends on the source. 128Kbps MP3s ripped from a newly remastered
disc can often sound better than the CD track from an old version of the same
disc that might've been released back I the 80s.