"Rip one track then start encoding it in the background while ripping the next track, etc."

In newish versions of EAC there's a setting for doing the Right Thing: ripping the whole disc as quickly as possible, but starting Lame in the background once the first track has finished ripping, then the second Lame once the first Lame has finished (wherever the ripping side of things has got to) and so on. You can eject the CD once ripping is done -- indeed, you can even start ripping further CDs, and their WAVs will be queued for encoding after the first CD's.

Or you could just buy a Rio Central

Peter