eac vs itunes ripping

By all reckoning, iTunes is pretty good. EAC is about as close to perfect as you can get, if used in secure mode. For audiophools bent on discerning the differences between maple and mahogany conical footers, EAC being marginally better than iTunes as a ripper is a no-brainer.

Seriously, the big difference is that EAC re-reads, compares, re-reads again until its satisfied that what is in the buffer is what is on the disk. Unknown what iTunes does, but since that is probably overkill for almost everyone, it probably does not do that.

If you use iTunes be sure you check "error correction when reading Audio CDs" I've got to believe that this is a similar, if perhaps less rigorous implementation of the same idea - works for me

Sounds like belt-and-suspenders to me. Apple Lossless is exactly that--lossless. I think John Atkinson at Stereophile confirmed that a while back (and I bet he used EAC to do it).

Have you compared the file size and the bit rate of the same track that was directly ripped by iTunes into Apple Lossless and the one that was ripped by EAC into WAV and than imported into iTunes and converted into Apple Lossless?

I found that the EAC ones almost always have a slightly higher bit rate and larger size. I don't know what caused the difference but the EAC ripped tracks sound smoother and fuller.

There is no EAC or EAC-equivalent for Mac. . . right?
thanks,
bob