h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

the whole idea behind digital recording is that bits never wear out when played back our copied. the medium they're on will slowly degrade in quality, but up to a certain point all the ones will still be ones and all the zeros will still be zeros. if you copy them onto a new medium before that point, all the information is preserved.
so, while some of the information is thrown away when _recording_ sound onto a minidics, there is absolutely no loss when _copying_ it. unless, of course, you copy from your md player to your md revorder through an _analog_ connection, which would be _terrybly stupid_.