Does "ripping" quality improve if you.........

I use Walker Vivid on all of my CDs before I rip them. I haven't ever done a comparison of the same track ripped with and without, so I can't say anything about that. I have had the treated discs rip perfectly when the untreated one hadn't, so now I just treat everything before it goes into the drive. I tried a CD mat once, and my CD-ROM made such horrible noises I decided never to do that again.

Bombaywalla, I'll disagree on one point. Virtually everyone has had CDs that are unreadable or skip in even high end transports. Throw those in a CD ROM drive and start up EAC in secure mode and you will get a good copy. It may take 24 hours and substantially shorten the life of your drive if you don't check the "rest after 1/2 hour" button, but you will get a glitch free copy. Leads me to believe that while mfrs would like you to believe read errors are not a factor, they are...

Edesilva,
"Virtually everyone has had CDs that are unreadable or skip in even high end transports."
yes, I can believe this. However, I do not believe that this is an error during data read (which is what I wrote in my post. An error during data read implies that the transport recognized the CD/CD-R/CD-RW, etc & is able to read the recorded data). What you are pointing out is a disk recognition error. Indeed, it is true that certain consumer CD transports will not read certain CD-Rs & CD-RWs while a computer (CD-ROM) drive will routinely read such disks.
What I implied in my original post was: once the transport recognizes the disk & commences reading the recorded data, the errors during read are virtually zero for even el-cheapo transports.
Hope that this clarifies.

Actually, I was talking about CDs bought off the shelf. I've got several CDs that won't play in my DV50s, my Theta David, or my Sony. But, I was able to use EAC to create WAV files that play beautifully--actually, I was able to burn replacement CDs that play beautifully as well.

Again, I think transports are prone to read errors that can be overcome using CD extraction.

I notice differences on the CD's when I A/B after different treatments.

I was most surprised by the difference between CD's after I did a test in freezing discs. First I would place some blank CD-R's in my freezer for 48-72 hours (it was suggested that doing this would be the equivalent of about 80% of what cryo does). Then I would take the original CD and record to a blank unfrozen disc. Next I would record the original unfrozen disc to a formerly frozen CD-R. Lastly I would put the original CD in the freezer for 48-72 hours and after removing them I'd would record to a frozen disc.

After all that I could tell the difference in quality between all the CD-R's, frozen & unfrozen, even on a car CD player. Go figure. Now I always place new CD-R's and DVD-R's in the freezer for a few days before recording on them.