General questions about ripping audio

hi all, i know programs like cdparanoia and EAC are for extracting audio 
accurately, so this implies that normal reading of cd's is inaccurate. 
so if i use (eg) nero to copy an (audio) cd (either to an iso or another 
cd), am i losing quality?

if not, why not use the same reading method to extract the audio?

surely, if i mounted an iso and ran cdparanoia on that, i wouldn't lose 
any quality (assuming the iso was perfect), would i?

so would a guaranteed error-free approach be creating an iso from a cd, 
and then ripping from the iso?

(i have cd's from which i see errors when ripping audio using EAC - i 
see things like "sync error", "read error", and "missing samples". i'm 
wonering what would happen if i created an iso from that first, and then 
ripped from the iso. sadly i can't carry out this experiment ATM.)

thanks in advance!