Thanks everyone for the help. I am realizing that there are a number of things that could be wrong and I am also realizing that there are two different situations that could happen. The first, is taking a regular CD and copying the files to my hard drive and then ripping a CD from there, then there is downloading music from iTunes and burning the CD from that, which I haven't had any issues with the sound quality on those discs. However, at work I have a DVD/CD tower burner that does 7:1 and I have not had any problems there either. This only seems to be a problem when I am taking the files and copying them to my hard drive and then burning a master disc of some compilations.

Although, what I should do is compare a downloaded version of an album burned to CD-R against the store-bought Redbook CD. I have never compared these before. I have compared CD and CD-R's of exact copies and there is minimal difference.

Does anyone know what I would experience a huge gap in the volume though between these???