That is because Media Player, like iTunes, doesn't have robust error checking and recovery modes. Rip a handful of CDs with it and take a careful listen to them all and you'll find pops and cracks.

I'd recommend you give dBPowerAmp a try, I and many other long time EAC users have switched to it. It offers the following advantages over EAC:

- fully automates the multiple passes you need to make with EAC to ensure the best quality ripping
- fully automates AccurateRip, at the track level
- uses four different meta data services and attempts to pick the best from all for any given track
- gets good quality cover art for many albums
- automates track and album ReplayGain tagging
- can encode to as many different formats as you like in one go (I now rip to FLAC, high bitrate MP3 and low bitrate MP3 at the same time)
- makes better use of C2 error data (on some drives)
- much better UI (no more scanning through a text report to spot which tracks ripped accurately)

Not only does it do AccurateRip like EAC, it automates it all. Its normal mode of operation is to rip each track at maximum speed in burst mode. If the track matches the AccurateRip database then that is the track done (and therefore ripped at the same speed as Media Player). If the track isn't matched then it falls back to secure mode, for that one track.

You can do the same in EAC, but you have to rip in burst mode manually. Then look to see which tracks failed against AccurateRip and manually select those for a secure mode rip.

It isn't free like EAC, but I do believe it is better value. It has already saved me a lot of time.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/