I am experiencing strange behavior using EAC to burn a collection of mp3-sourced WAV files for a compilation. In the CD Layout Editor, I use "Append Files as New Track (Index 1)" to manually add each file to the cue and then finally burn them without gaps in DAO mode. When I then rip a song from the new CD (still using EAC), and compare them to the original WAV using a hex editor, I notice that there are a few differences! I have all of my offsets properly adjusted, so I knew that the program had to have been changing them somehow. To be more specific, I discovered that there are exactly 3 differences between the CD sourced WAV and the original WAV. The first two are located in the very beginning of the file... which reads in the original WAV like "RIFF....WAVEfmt ........D...........data...". The first change affects the first two ".." (parts of the hex code) after "RIFF" and then the second change occurs after the first two parts of the hex code after "data". For instance, where in the original WAV the hex code reads "data.." the new WAV reads "data0." Finally, the last change is an extra portion of digital silence (zeros) added to every file. My apologies if my description is confusing... it would be easier if I could just make a screen capture. I've never experienced this behavior before... perhaps does EAC alter some WAV files before burning them for compatibility reasons?

Cds don't have WAVE files, they have raw PCM data. the header is added by the ripper, as long as the files content are equal to the original (IE, using EAC's wave compare option or doing an inverted mix in Cool Edit) there's no audible difference. If however, EAC's wave compare reports different samples there's something wrong.
The difference in length must be caused because the cds have 588 samples sector, so files are padded with silence to make the song length a multipe of 588 samples.

awesome, thanks for responding... and no, eac doesn't report differences between the files, (except for the padding). i guess that answers it.