I've got way more CDs than I have the energy to rip, and many of them are scratched to all hell. What's my best bet for ripping them? iTunes is a no-go, since there's no way to find out which tracks don't rip properly. I've been trying xACT, but surely... surely, there's something better. I just downloaded Audion. Is it what I'm looking for?

For the time being the only secure ripper that will both alert you to possible errors and work with drives that cache audio is EAC running under Virtual PC.

It's a disappointing situation but there are moves afoot to improve it

CDPAranoia is available on FINK and although not "secure" has worked perfectly for me as has CDRDAO but as ffooky says they are not truely secure and ideally you would have to sit and watch them while they rip to be 100% sure there were no errors.

You can download xACT and it has the CDparanoia library built in for ripping.