[showtaper]

Don't be terribly surprised if EAC rips the tracks and they still have crackle.
I've had a few discs that went "bad" somehow and act just as you described.
I'm guessing that they have very small bad spots which the error correction
in most CD players fix. When you rip audio from a CD, no error concealing
takes place and you get the raw audio stream, errors and all.

On the plus side, EAC run in different modes gives quite different results, so
try them all: Secure (slowest), Synchronized and Burst. I've gotten audio
of off difficult discs with each. Please take the time to follow the directions
and set up and test EAC properly.