Red Book (audio CD standard)
Basically, any program that burns audio CDs will conform to the Red Book standard. However, there then comes the issue of CD replication; iTunes is
not an application capable of making duplicates of audio CDs (notice that there is no "copy CD" function, for starters). It doesn't support Disc At Once burning, which invariably means that the CD "copy" you manage to make by importing an audio CD and then burning a playlist with those tracks, will have a different TOC (including TAO gaps) than the original audio CD.
I don't recommend that anyone purchase Roxio's Toast software, as I don't think it's worth anywhere near its purchase price, but it seems to be software that most Mac users have or want to have. It will do a good job of "cloning" audio CDs.
To be absolutely rigorous in ensuring perfect copies of audio CDs, you unfortunately almost have to use Windows and software such as
EAC (free, and the best that there is at ripping and burning, on any platform) along with a good CD recorder such as a Plextor or Lite-On. EAC and other Windows ripping/burning software allow for offset correction (as long as the CD reader/recorder supports Accurate Stream), which brings a duplicated CD even closer to a perfect match with the original disc. I am aware of no OS X ripping or encoding software (at least with a GUI) that supports offset correction.
So, for the best CD duplication on OS X, I would suggest ripping audio CDs to a single WAV file with a CUE sheet using
Max and then burning the WAV/CUE set with something like Toast (if you decide to buy it).
