Thanks - there is clearly a lot to learn here. Is there any significant downside to doing the ripping first and then experimenting with tagging, workflow, archiving etc?
I don't think there are any downsides. You can always use your preferred ripper and import the tracks to MC.
The MC ripper is easy to use but it appears to lack confirmation after the fact that the rip is exact ... so am tempted to use EAC and accuraterip and then to work with MC. I have an audiophile streak and am especially concerned that my coppies should be perfect. From my readings it seems that if MC is a "Universal Plug and Play" architecture is seems it can potentially be used with accuraterip ... or am I off base here?
MC has a very good secure ripping mode and you can set it to save a log file automatically. Here is an old, but still useful thread that explains a few important things:
Topic: How can I ensure quality of a ripped music fileRegarding the AccurateRip system, I don't know if the JRiver developers would be interested in adding support for it. The AR system is created by another commercial software maker. It has been said to be open for all developers, but so far I have seen it been implemented only in freeware programs in addition to dBpa.
However, you can use a freeware program named CUETools for accessing the AR database and verifying the ripped tracks outside MC. Despite its name it can also verify audio CDs that are ripped to invidual track files as long as the files are organized as album folders (a folder per a physical disc). Here's a link:
http://cuetools.net/ (edit: apparently CUETools can't find the correct album in the "tracks as separate files" mode if the CD has an additional pregap before the first track unless the pregap value is set by hand.)