A CD, burned or pressed, will be a replication of the source as presented in a digital format. If you have to covert true analog sound to digital then the sampling rate will have some technical loss, though not perceivable to most humans.
A digital to digital copy will be a 1 to 1 replication of the data, there’s no expectation of loss other than perhaps physical error of the drive, which even pressed disks can suffer from if the stamper is worn.
Edit Source: literally worked in a optical media replication plant back when DVD was still a fairly new thing. It starts off making a glass master disk in a clean room. From that, a positive metal stamper plate is created for production runs, tested periodically to verify the output still matches the master dataset. Once the metal stamper is worn to the point of causing errors it is replaced.
Burned disks are functionally identical to pressed disks in operation but work by darkening bits in the media layer. They degrade easier because of the photo sensitivity needed to let the laser change their state.
a digital to digital copy will be a 1 to 1 replication of the data, there’s no expectation of loss
You are mostly right, except this line. And I think I understand your meaning but I think it’s a little misleading.
A digital to digital copy can be a 1:1 replication. But just saying “digital to digital” doesn’t mean the copy process is lossless, there are a ton of lossy transfer methods. I don’t believe they are used when burning CDs (honestly not sure, but I googled it real quick) but just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it can’t have losses
Assuming there’s no conversion I might have added in. Yes if you change from wav to mp3 or similar there will be changes. A disk image copy, or even placing a digital file onto a disk doesn’t alter the content regardless of burned or pressed, only the method of storage. A hash of the file should return the same regardless assuming no errors in the writing.
Every file transfer creates some noise and loss to the file. Unless you’re using high quality Flac files, which not everyone burning and downloading files are doing so, or it’s already been converted or transferred and incurred corruption.
If you transfer an mp3 1000 times, it’s gonna degrade. You can’t use hashes to fill in missing audio portions like you can with text or something.
Every time you transfer a file, there is loss, this isn’t unique to audio files. Your entire comment is wrong. Even downloading a file online won’t create a perfect copy of the audio file because of data loss, even with hashes.
A CD, burned or pressed, will be a replication of the source as presented in a digital format. If you have to covert true analog sound to digital then the sampling rate will have some technical loss, though not perceivable to most humans.
A digital to digital copy will be a 1 to 1 replication of the data, there’s no expectation of loss other than perhaps physical error of the drive, which even pressed disks can suffer from if the stamper is worn.
Edit Source: literally worked in a optical media replication plant back when DVD was still a fairly new thing. It starts off making a glass master disk in a clean room. From that, a positive metal stamper plate is created for production runs, tested periodically to verify the output still matches the master dataset. Once the metal stamper is worn to the point of causing errors it is replaced.
Burned disks are functionally identical to pressed disks in operation but work by darkening bits in the media layer. They degrade easier because of the photo sensitivity needed to let the laser change their state.
You are mostly right, except this line. And I think I understand your meaning but I think it’s a little misleading.
A digital to digital copy can be a 1:1 replication. But just saying “digital to digital” doesn’t mean the copy process is lossless, there are a ton of lossy transfer methods. I don’t believe they are used when burning CDs (honestly not sure, but I googled it real quick) but just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it can’t have losses
Assuming there’s no conversion I might have added in. Yes if you change from wav to mp3 or similar there will be changes. A disk image copy, or even placing a digital file onto a disk doesn’t alter the content regardless of burned or pressed, only the method of storage. A hash of the file should return the same regardless assuming no errors in the writing.
Every file transfer creates some noise and loss to the file. Unless you’re using high quality Flac files, which not everyone burning and downloading files are doing so, or it’s already been converted or transferred and incurred corruption.
If you transfer an mp3 1000 times, it’s gonna degrade. You can’t use hashes to fill in missing audio portions like you can with text or something.
Every time you transfer a file, there is loss, this isn’t unique to audio files. Your entire comment is wrong. Even downloading a file online won’t create a perfect copy of the audio file because of data loss, even with hashes.