  The most promising source of gravitational waves for the planned detectors
LIGO and VIRGO are merging compact binaries, i.e., neutron star/neutron star
(NS/NS), neutron star/black hole (NS/BH), and black hole/black-hole (BH/BH)
binaries. We investigate how accurately the distance to the source and the
masses and spins of the two bodies will be measured from the gravitational wave
signals by the three detector LIGO/VIRGO network using ``advanced detectors''
(those present a few years after initial operation). The combination ${\cal M}
\equiv (M_1 M_2)^{3/5}(M_1 +M_2)^{-1/5}$ of the masses of the two bodies is
measurable with an accuracy $\approx 0.1\%-1\%$. The reduced mass is measurable
to $\sim 10\%-15\%$ for NS/NS and NS/BH binaries, and $\sim 50\%$ for BH/BH
binaries (assuming $10M_\odot$ BH's). Measurements of the masses and spins are
strongly correlated; there is a combination of $\mu$ and the spin angular
momenta that is measured to within $\sim 1\%$. We also estimate that distance
measurement accuracies will be $\le 15\%$ for $\sim 8\%$ of the detected
signals, and $\le 30\%$ for $\sim 60\%$ of the signals, for the LIGO/VIRGO
3-detector network.
