In a typical use of MC, the final locations of an audio track's metadata / info /tags can be:
-- MC's database.
-- inside the audio file, which can also contain tag text and even image (depending on the type of audio file).
-- some metadata can be stored as part of the audio file name.
While you can somewhat choose what gets stored, and where, to meet your needs, I use them all. I store all known metadata/info in MC's database (and I'm always striving to expand and improve what I know about each track). Also, I have MC write all of this data back into file tags. Then I have MC rename every file in a consistent format that contains some of the metadata.
How the metadata gets to the storage locations is up to you. Whether you Edit Disc Information while ripping, or later edit the Tags / fields, is simply a choice of convenience, same outcome. Some metadata can be typed in by the user, and/or MC can get it from the file name, and/or from online lookup, and/or from any tags that already exist in the file. But then or anytime later, you can further update/edit/delete/whatever, until it is "right" for you.
Also, consider what metadata you care about. It is typical to use some of the standard fields, but ignore others, as desired. You can see which fields MC assumes will be used, because they show up in the standard views. I use some, but ignore some. Also, I added several custom fields to store metadata that goes beyond or works better for me than certain standard fields. Therefore, the disk/track lookups that happen when ripping are only the start of getting the metadata I desire for each track. Customizing capability is essential for me, one of the reasons I adopted JR Media Center (actually, predecessor Media Jukebox) about 15 years ago.