You can get almost equal quality to EAC/LAME 3.9.0 with alt-preset switches with
cdparanoia setting in grip and dont use lame that comes with your system use an older version thats been proven.Like
lame-ha -v
LAME version 3.90.3 MMX (
http://www.mp3dev.org/)
ha stands for hydrogen audio...pretty much the guru for lame.
I have debian so I add this to sources.list
## RAREWARES REPOSITORY
deb
http://www.rarewares.org/debian/packages/unstable ./
than apt-get update
apt-get install lame-ha
You can grab it from rarewares.org or from hydrogen audio forumz has the older version links.
As for the switches...that depends on the quality...I like "alt-preset extreme"
My rips come out great.cdparanoia is the closest you will get to EAC securemode rips.