Hi,

I've tried your patch (with the modifications you hinted, included in 
attachment) with cdparanoia and:

1) it works (I get an identical wav)
2) it makes indeed a huge difference on my system:

- before:
cdparanoia 1  4.20s user 1.98s system 3% cpu 3:12.89 total
- after:
cdparanoia 1  3.87s user 1.41s system 15% cpu 33.793 total

Total time went from 3 min to 30 sec... really great :-)

Vince