there was just a post on this but people were saying it was ripping slower. There was a bug which was not ripping in secure mode even though that was checked (you should almost always rip in secure mode IMHO)
Just an observation though, provided your hardware is not really old, you should be able to rip much higher than that, depending on the quality of the cds and errors encountered my rips might start off at 10x but four cds later I can be flying at 36x. If you are ripping in secure mode and the data is verified, slowing things down won't insure a better quality if the ripper is good. This was an issue a long time ago, but this is pretty much sorted out ... the drive might me at 48x max, but the software will rip at the maximum secure speed -- might be 8x might be 25x - depends. if the rip is not in a "secure" mode though that's something else again.