Hello. I have a few questions for you audiophiles out there. I am interested in backing up some of my cd's. I wasn't sure what is more effective, either extracting the WAV files with EAC (in secure mode) or copying/burning a image/cue file with EAC, Blindwrite, Clone CD etc. Are the wav files the same exact quality as if you copied the cd 1:1? Lastly, is there generation loss when copying a cd 1:1? I have heard that while a 1:1 copy with Nero or CloneCD or Alcohol would seem to be lossless, the fact is that all CD burners generate miniscule data errors during the burn process. Most of the time, a CD-ROM's read-error correction will fill in the gaps. Is this still considered generation loss? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Yes.

There are losses if there are errors while reading.
Most decent drives nowadays can read without errors from a clean audio disc.

If the disc is scratched (sometimes even clean), errors might appear without waring. The read data is different from what is supposed to be written in the disc.

Thanks for the reply minix.