Jolo, thanks for the good words.
> I am not parnoid about what I asked, I am just sick to death of reading
> about it and would finally like to see the facts about this on a forum
> where the burning, ripping, playing is not a emotionally charged subject !!
I had had the same reaction. I tried to keep track of my own experience and write about that. Other people may have different experiences. They should share their experiences.
Responding to your specific points:
quality of the original - So far, I have not found audible problems in files that MC says it ripped with 100% or 90+% confidence. I'm acting on the belief that if MC says it ripped the CD with high confidence, I have the right results and that no further improvement is possible for those CDs.
washing - I stored my CDs in their jewel cases vertically with the hinge side up. For the last ten years, the CDs have been in closed drawers. I didn't play the CDs in my car CD player. (I made CD-R copies of some CDs.) I have taken as much care as possible up front. I didn't have much of a problem with dirty CDs. I inspected most CDs before I before I ripped them and blew bits of dust off a few disks.
Years ago, I decided to wash some vinyl LP disks to lessen the surface noise. It didn't work! I didn't have a discwasher or any kind of fancy machine and I wound up with noisier surfaces than I had before. Fortunately, I had experiemented on a few LPs. So I've been shy of washing my CD collection.
wear - One of my problem disks had many spots over about 20% of the disk surface. I went ahead and ripped the disk without trying to remove the spots. 6 of 9 tracks ripped fine. The other three had a few glitches in them that I'm going to live with for now..
value of the music - Those three tracks were not music I cared much about. I got accurate files for the 6 tracks that mattered. If some music that was valuable to me and not easily replaced is at stake, I would try more drastic steps. However, I would try ripping the CD before I did anything that might damage or degrade the CD.
statistics - I was lucky. The one percent of my collection that could not be ripped without audible glitches did not include anything priceless to me. That's another reason to take good care of your CD collection. Keep the fraction of problem disks down and you have a better chance that nothing that is important can't be ripped accurately.
burning CDs - You are clearly much more involved in burning CDs that I am.
DRM and Microsoft, Sony and Apple - I don't like the combination of DRM and closed systems like iTunes. However, that might be the only choice in the future. The catalogs of classical, jazz and other niche music are shrinking. Buy it now while it is available and doesn't have copy protection or other DRM.
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I've ripped my collection of about 1200 classical CDs. I still have 400-600 more CDs of other music to do. Quite a few of these CDs are from small labels in the US and Britain. My experience with those CDs might be a bit different. If so, I'll report on that experience too.
Bill