CD burnt on iMac not as good as original?

[gregvet]

I had a very interesting demo with the Arcam AVR600 in stereo with PMC DB1i and GB1i speakers yesterday.To say I was impressed (especially for an AV amp) would be an understatement. However, it raised an issue that I was not aware of previously.

I use an iMac, all my music is ripped into apple lossless. I burnt a CD of demo music from my computer, and was merrily listenig away when the guy in the shop stopped the music and said the quality of the music was very poor (he asked how compressed the original files were, and did not beleive me when I said not at all!). So he then went upstairs and came back with the shops own copy of the same track, and the difference on the same system was night and day. Why would this be? Could it be related to the quality of the CD I burnt the music onto? I am just worried now that when streaming music from the computer I will never accheive the quality I heard in the demo room!

Any other ideas as to why this could be?

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps down to the quality of the CD-R you used, the speed at which it was copied, the quality of your CD drive and the amount of error correction that had to be applied by the CD player in the shop??