"Sorry, but I don't think so. I've done exact compares of the output files and the cdparanoia files are the same (+/- half a dozen bits at start and end) as the Audiograbber output ..."
But how does Audiograbber fare with scratched or otherwise damaged CDs? (I've never used it, so I'm not being rhetorical.) As the name might imply, cdparanoia tries to get every last bit off the CD exactly as its supposed to be on there to begin with. I've managed to use it to recover a number of what I thought to be hopelessly damaged CDs. It just tries and tries and tries ... until it gets a good read. Files ripped from CDs that sounded awful playing in the CD player sound great once cdparanoia has had its way with them. The Windoze code might be "playing tricks" with the CD device to get speed at the expense of *possible* ripping errors, too. (Following the lead of "only just good enough for the average Joe" set by Microsoft themselves...)
Also, keep in mind that this is one of those places where Windoze 90% market saturation "help" the end-user. There are (at least) 100x more people ripping and encoding under Windoze, so there are a lot more people developing the software for Windoze. Off the top of my head, I can't name half-a-dozen rippers OR encoders for Linux, but I bet there are at least three or four dozen *popular* ones for Windoze. (Of course the tools for Linux are *clearly* better... :)