.wav files are the digital data from your music cd. They should be an exact copy. CDROM's have some complex error detection/correction built in to deal with scratches gracefully. This and the fact that some CDROM's are crappier than others make this digital copying less than 100% exact. So there are tools like cdparanioa to oversample. I think there are a couple write modes "disk-at-once" & "track-at-once", where disk-at-once may be preferable if you want to get an exact copy of the almost empty space between songs. This may be required to generate the keys needed to lookup the music title in the CDDB databases. Also there are some funny options that can be set in these gaps. Checkout cdrdao program. Also you could look at: Check out CD-Writing-Howto, 3.2. Writing audio CDs