dBpoweramp vs. EAC

No, EAC is strictly for ripping digital audio from compact discs. You can use it also for burning discs but the primary function of EAC is audio ripping, period.

What many people seem to forget is that faster audio extraction from compact discs always leads to higher possibility of audio degradation. There is no fully reliable way to get audio data from a compact disc after it has been written. That's simply an effect of the way the data is stored on the media. You can't be 100% sure that the data your drive gives you during extraction is the data that was originally written to the disc. But what you can do is to push the possibility of a incorrect extraction below some threshold by repeated extractions. And that's whats taking so long when ripping your discs.
That's especially true when dealing with problematic media.

I'm not saying that dBpoweramp produces inferior results than EAC when dealing with perfectly mastered media where the drive has no trouble to read sectors.
BUT if you have some bad media and want an accurate rip you better use the program that does a slower (and more reliable) extraction, and that's EAC.

Also think about that: You only rip your discs once, but you listen to the rip multiple times. Seems fair to invest some time into the ripping process.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Megalith

From what I understand, a 1:1 copy of a CD is impossible anyway, unless you have a writer like a Plextor that reads and writes in an advanced manner, which I don't really know enough to elaborate on.

But we're talking about the ripping process here. Writing is something completly different and one could probably create a new thread just to discuss what features a good writer should have and where the problems with accurate replication of the data sent to the writer are.
But again, that's an entirely different story. And probably not a good topic for this board (better check out the CDFreaks board for this kind of information).

Originally Posted by Megalith

I'm going to try EAC again and use burst mode and test+copy...apparently it's an alternative for secure mode, but you might have to rip the disc multiple times.

It's no real alternative to secure mode because it does no multiple reads. Also applying this multiple reads on your (user) level does not get you the same reliability you would get when EAC does it. According to my information EAC does (can) not detect stream losses in burst mode, so if the drive desyncs (and there is this possibility when using a multitasking operating system) EAC won't detect this, leading to eaten or duplicated samples.

cdparanoia has some bits of information about the usual problems with DAE, you can find the FAQ here:
CDDA Paranoia Frequently Asked Questions

We wouldn't have such problems if we switched to DVD-Audio completly.

There's nowhere I can't reach.