I have recently made some audio CD copies and, since I have a CD changer with fine sound (Denon DCM-280), I can easily compare the sound quality between original and copy. To my surprise I thought I heard a slight difference: the original sounded slightly better (I went back and forth many times between original and copy). But then I raised the sound volume slightly on the copy and then I detected no difference. Could the illusion that the original sounds better derive from the fact that the copy gets a slightly less sound volume than the original? Does the copy process (DAO) reduce the sound volume slightly? Mats W
Yes. Depends on your settings: If you normalize to < 100% during audio extraction (especially on up-to-date mainstream chart music that contains clipping natively) the volume is lowered. If you copy audio CDs without a lossy compression step during the process, volume changes (e.g. normalizing) are not necessary and will degrade quality slightly.
