Does it degrade sound quality when you....

Yes, there is. Do not even think about it...


EDIT: Okay, I will come clean. Unless you have RAM issues or faulty read/write heads on your HD which will throw up errors or blue screens, there is no chance of generation loss when copying/pasting. Go nuts

I don't see why there should be, only compression affects sound quality so I don't see how transferring a complete compressed file from one drive to another could affect SQ.

No... computers have a very inherit ability to perfectly copy data back and forth. It's sort of their thing... Every bit matters, and a lot of care is taken to make sure everything matches.

Actually, 53% of true audiophiles have noticed a degradation of sound quality after copying an album from one hardisk to another. Science hasn't been able to explain why that happen, but many have reported hearing significant differences. No blind tests have been performed as of yet to my knowledge.

Nope. Does a text document get all screwed up when you copy it? Audio files work the same way.

Redbook however, is another story...

I don't think, I know you are funny

Yes, there is a chance.
Not all likely though, unless you run into rare software/hardware issues...

You may copy files over but never cut and paste them to a different harddrive/source!

If the computer can't compare the new file to the original one it's bound to end up faulty!

Great information. Luckily, everyone here aren't braniacs on the nerd partrol. We're not members of the factanista. We go straight from the gut. A lot of people don't realize the subtlety in many things. For example, never play a cd that you've inserted without restarting the cd player. Upon powering up a cd player, the full power of electricity is used to power up that cd, which is not used when a cd tray is simply opened and closed. This results in a blacker background and increased transparency. Or, another significant overlooked tweak, wrap your cables with toilet paper. This takes care of all the crap being transmitted and yields an improvement in clarity and bass.

And btw, I was not being funny. There are many things which do not seem to make any sens to anybody but audiophiles, but science can't explain everything. And if they can hear differences, well, if they can think they can hear differences, who is anybody to tell them they can't? Who's to tell them that it's placebo and that there isn't actually any differences and that they've wasted hundreds and hundreds of dollars for snake oil? Besides, how can anybody know with certainty anything? DBTs? There's something fundamentally wrong with DBTs with audio, as it doesn't allow one to hear the fundamental differences between power cords, tweaks and cables for example... Things which are easily heard without DBTs.

I've gotten a lot of crap about wrapping up my cables with toilet paper, but that's why I've also wrapped my head in it, it just filters everything. It's great, some people look at me funny when I walk on the street, but hey, I know that it makes a difference. [/sarcasm]

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Except when you cut and paste, the computer first copies the file, THEN deletes the original after everything is succesfully finished. It wont delete the original if anything goes wrong, which is very unlikely unless the computer has issues in RAM or you have viruses etc...


To OP, no. You wont lose any quality. You are just handling digital files, if there would be any errors it would cause blips and cuts in the copied file, not quality degrade.