does it make sense to use alcohol 120% for making an audio cd image (using raw mode), then mounting it and ripping from the image drive in eac (in secure mode)? will there be any error correction? i'm asking because it seems a lot faster to me than usual. my yamaha crw-f1 rips only at 3-5X in secure mode.

No it would not make sence since the job of alcohol is to copy the cd as it "sees it" (with errors). That enables it to copy games with copyprotection but it makes it as bad as any burst mode ripper for audio.

edit: bust mode --> burst mode
meh.

Secure rips of EAC from such an image and from the actual CD - are they equivalent? Is that process worth the trouble?

Jan S. has already answered this question: EAC won't do magic, if there are any errors present in the image, EAC can't correct them, of course.

No.

No.

Image creation software (e.g. Alcohol120%) use burst mode. The image will contain all uncorrected read errors, but no C1/C2 error correction information from the source CD. Because of this, no matter how the audio is extracted from the image (CDMage, Mounting the image to virtual drive -> EAC secure mode), all these errors will be in the resulting audio files.

I've got a Yamaha as well, and if you have newer firmware (1.0c and up, I think), there is a little trick to enable faster ripping speeds. When you go to open the tray, hold that button for 5 seconds, put the CD on the tray, close it, then let go of the button once it's spun up. Yamaha put this on to keep from errors when reading unbalanced CDs, older ones with a thin center ring, etc.

Thanks Tigre ... I totally forgot about the C1/C2 info