Am I ripping CDs correctly

It might look a bit confusing, but most of those settings are created by the config wizard. I've just listed them for completeness.

Even if you had to do everything manually it wouldn't be that hard; just go through each setting and copy and paste.

I'm really quite surprised at how difficult people seem to be finding this. If you can use this forum, you can set up EAC.
I think it just looks a bit daunting to a non techy type.
I know I tried to change out MP3 as a compressed setting to FLAC a few years ago and couldn't figure it out. I needed to do a fresh install with web help.
The help is out there, though, so it's not as daunting as it first looks.
 
I'm happy to share my EAC config file with anyone who asks for it; I'm not saying my way is right, but it'll get you started with a fresh install. You will have to detect the features of your specific drive however.
 
I had some trouble with the tags and only went so far with that last night still scratching my head.

WAV lossless is identical to the original track you ripped, but as mentioned earlier, tags can be a real PITA. The WAV format does not store tags internally. Some programs can store those in what's called a "sidecar" file which is accessed whenever you play the track. It works, but ... if you ever change computers, chances are good that the links will be broken. You'll still be able to play the track, but all the tags will be lost. As said - a real PITA.

You're much better off ripping to FLAC. Same playback quality AND the format stores tags internally, so no sidecar nonsense to contend with.
 
Missed this:
My guess is there is money to be made designing a rock solid CD drive designed for ripping CDs specifically. Even if there is a little overkill - it would be nice to have a really reliable CD drive.

The bog-standard CD/DVD drive in a computer is designed to run at multiple times the CD data rate. Mine is rated at 42x. These drives are dirt cheap. But, in order to be able to pull data off a disc at that rate, the control loops have to be more responsive, and able to track faster, with wider bandwidths in all processing chains. Therefore, that cheap CD drive in your computer probably performs better at pulling data off a disc than that in pure CD player. Also, since they are designed for data use, where a single bit error matters, the error detection mechanisms have to detect single bit errors. If you write ripping software to use that error detection, you can perform automatic, multi-pass rips, changing the speed to ensure you have the best chance of recovering the data. Like EAC does.

Computer CD drives may not last as long, but they are very cheap to replace.
 
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I've been ripping in WAV via iTunes. Should I move over to JRiver?

I am 60 years old and not a computer expert by any means. I was using WAV format but the WAV format does not have internal tagging so I was having trouble with tagging of songs. I now use JRiver and it is very easy to use the front console. Read the post above by Skizo as he explains it well. When you choose a format on JRivers choose FLAC for the reasons set out above by Skizo. You have to pay for JRivers but the cost is worth it. cheers Russ
 
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