What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

[Ucodia]

The title pretty much explains my subject. I have been using dbPoweramp for more than a year now and as I decided to enter the long process of ripping my whole library with FLAC I was wondering what is the ideal usage of the computer (software or hardware) to not affect too much the ripping and encoding process.

For example I guess that you should avoid running anything processor intensive, especially while encoding. Is it true or that does not really matter?

When you start a new rip, I notice that there is no "read warm-up". By "read warm-up" I mean that the ripping speed slowly increase from x3 to x30+. Is this variation affecting the ripping quality or is it better to simulate something intensive on the drive to maximize the spinning speed and then start the Rip?

Also if any of you have more advice on how to increase your rip quality I would appreciate.

Thanks.