I am just getting started ripping my CD collection and had a few questions, hope someone can point me in the right direction.

I am using EAC and LAME.

I was using secure mode on the alt extreme setting and then switched to the burst setting. All of my MP3's are coming in between 220 - 270 in bit rate.

Is there an audio quality difference in burst vs. secure?

I have had many people make the case for ripping to a lossless format (FLAC) but I wasn't sure if I wanted to convert everything twice, for home stereo CD's, portable and car stereo. Is there an audile difference between FLAC and MP3 at 250? I know this is a subjective question, but I don't have a 10,000 stereo at home, but can people tell the difference?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

As far as I know, there isn't any quality difference between burst and secure. Those are only ripping methods, burst will rip faster but won't fix any errors the disk has. Secure mode actually is the main reason 90% of people are using EAC.
Take a look at the guides posted in the stickys all over the forums.

About the 2nd answer, in my 2.1 audio system i can't notice any difference... i've never tried in a super audio system though.

It is safe to use Burst mode in conjunction with Test & Copy. If the CRCs match, your rip is as good as when done in Secure mode. If they don't, switch to Secure mode.

Once in a blue moon (say, every couple of hundred CDs) you may get matching CRCs when, in fact, a read error occurred. You may have a glitch in your rip then. Whether it is worth taking precautions against such a minor risk and always ripping in Secure mode at the cost of wasting 4-5X the time on ripping is up to you to decide.

Actually, if this type of event happens on a burst (matching CRCs), secure mode will also have missed the error -- it rereads until it gets matching CRCs.