[rspencer]

To get mp3s as an audio CDR, they must be converted to .wav (you may not have done this yourself, but otherwise the burning program would have done so).
When they are converted, they suffer unnecessary bloat.
That is, the resulting .wav files are much larger, but contain no additional audio info.
So even if you ripped it perfectly using EAC, you still have bloated lossy files.

If mp3 was the only way the taper shared the show, then the original mp3s would be the stop point. Any other conversion would result in further degradation.