I'm planning on backing up my CD collection as wav image and cue sheet in secure mode. I've been testing both and I found CueRipper to be a lot easier. Which one would you choose and why?
CueRipper, mostly because the checking against CTDB is reliable enough for me to not having to deal with slow/paranoid read speeds of EAC. And because I use(d) CueTools (same download package) to periodically check my files for corruption, it's a no-brainer to just use CueRipper as well. I also faintly remember some unicode related issues with EAC, but that seems to be a thing of the past.
A side note about your planned backup format, there is really no reason to backup to wav instead of any lossless format like flac/wavpack/etc. Image vs split tracks is a matter of preference, on the other hand. I prefer to have split tracks + .cue because I use wavpack hybrid, so I just copy the lossy part to my phone - no need to transcode, worry about transferring all tags or having to manage a separate collection.
Single disc CD drive? Or changers/robots?