Copy music cd to keep original in case

[calhobbes]

OK...I bought the Collector's Edition of U2's new album of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and I'd like to copy the CD so I can move the copy between home, car, work, etc and keep the original in the case. I know I can rip the tracks to iTunes, and then burn them to a CD, but is there a way to copy the cd without losing fidelity to compressing and decompressing?

[phonemonkey]

OK...I bought the Collector's Edition of U2's new album of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and I'd like to copy the CD so I can move the copy between home, car, work, etc and keep the original in the case. I know I can rip the tracks to iTunes, and then burn them to a CD, but is there a way to copy the cd without losing fidelity to compressing and decompressing?

Try copying the cd as a disk image...never tried it myself with an audio cd so maybe someone else can tell you how good it would turn out, but the concept itself makes sense to me.

[jsw]

Or import to iTunes using Apple's Lossless Encoder. Smaller files (than original CD), no losses.

But Disk Image should work perfectly.

[PlaceofDis]

toast can copy discs no problem

another solution would be to open the cd when it mounts on your desktop, copy the AIFF files to your harddrive, import them to itunes, and then burn, you wont lose anything with that type of file, but it will take up quite a bit of room on your harddrive, so you might want to delete the AIFF's after you burn them

[MemphisSoulStew]

Or just import them directly into iTunes as AIFF files and burn them, still in iTunes, to a new CD. No need to copy them to your desktop first.

Set iTunes Preferences > Importing > Import Using to AIFF Encoder, but remember to set it back to your current import encoder or all your future imports will also be AIFF and will eat up your HD.

[calhobbes]

The easiest and quickest method was ripping the AIFF files into iTunes, and then burning to a CD from iTunes as well. I already had the trackes as AAC files, so when I ripped them, I selected not to overwrite the files that were there. After burning, I deleted the AIFF files and all was well.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.