Purchased songs burned to audio cd, what compression rate do they end up?

Could someone clear up my confusion? I burned a disc of songs that I had purchased from the iTunes store using the "Audio CD" setting in preferences so that I can play this on a CD player. I then reimported this disc into my iTunes library by mistake ( long story..I thought I had deleted the originals but I hadn't), therefore ended up with two copies of the songs. The original purchased versions are 128kbps,4.8 Mb protected AAC audio file, and the burned to disc versions are 827kbps, 26.2 MB Apple lossless files. So does that mean that if you burn purchased music to disc you convert upwards to a less compressed therefore better sounding audio file..? I couldn't really hear any difference, unlike the dramatic difference between the same track on CD compared to a 128kbps track.
The main reason I don't buy a lot of music from iTunes is because I hate the sound of compressed music, to my ears it is nowhere near as good as a CD, and a million miles from vinyl, so if burning to disc and then reinporting raised the quality it would be fantastic...I would buy a lot more from iTunes.

Message was edited by: 12frets56