I'm not convinced...
A CDROM drive with C2 error detection will provide the full CIRC recovery that a dedicated CD player will. C2 capable CDROMs are common enough.
A CDROM drive has much more responsive servo tracking loops to allow operation at multiple times CD read speed (e.g my PC CDROM is x42). Sometimes a faster-spinning disc will read better than a slower dirve, sometimes the reverse. The faster servo loop is sometimes helpful, sometimes not... Due to the need to read at much higher rates, the data recovery circuits are much wider bandwidth. This must give better eye patterns and margins if the read rate is throttled.
I have discs that I can never play on a CD player, but I can get a perfect rip using EAC. It takes a while, but it bangs away retrying until it has managed to pull as much good data off the disc as possible. Likewise, I have discs that will play on a CD player, but give rip errors (and they're CDs. not Copy Control discs).
In my experience, with literally tons of CD players and god knows how many CD/DVD Rom drives over the decades, the TOTL standalone players absolutely obliterate any PC based playback/extraction on borderline or badly damaged media.
I still have a very early store demo disc we used in the 80s/90s which got to the point
no machine we sold (Yamaha/Pioneer), regardless of price would read the TOC, let alone play it. I retrieved that disc from the bin, made a bet with the store owner my TOTL Sony would play it. I won the bet by bringing in a recording of the disc...No CD-rom has been able to touch it since, but I have several standalone CD players that play it perfectly.
Just for fun, it's in my drive right now and I'm giving EAC a go at extracting what it can. So far:
Progress after 4:27 on the first track...:
This is what the disc looks like- both sides heavily scratched and severe destruction to the label side Al layer and TOC area.
I'll make a quick video of the Disc playing in a CD player later.
PS, I aborted the EAC copy. 8:30 in and it hadn't got past the first few seconds. I could try 20 other CD roms in the house, but they simply cannot extract the data.
Even the poor drive locked up! I had to use a paper-clip to open it.