I too use EAC often to burn but it will not write to some Burners

As far as the plugins go for burning compressed files (as CDA) to a disc. The reason I do not use them is 4 fold

possible glitches during decomp/burn

At least when I checked out what Nero was doing a few years ago... it just made a copy of ALL the wave files in a temp folder then deleted them all when it was done burning. I prefer control over the process and like to test my waves before burning.

If you have a problem you could end up with some big temp files that you would have to go back and delete (not good for the novice)

Finally I can then burn 1 copy and listen to it then make other copies from the waves that I manually extracted. Could save drive wear and tear and fragmentation verses letting the plugin decode each time.

YMMV