There's not much special about dd versus any other single pass copy program, like cp or even cat.

Not sure which kind of CDs we are discussing here: CD-DA (audio), or CD-ROM (data)? For the former (CD-DA), the gold standard is the cdparanoia ripper. For the latter (CD-ROM), you're mostly at the mercy of the on-drive firmware rather than any particular bit of external software.

Cheers