As I continue to rip all my CDs into FLAC format, I've found the cd-rom drive in the MacMini can be perfectly quiet with some discs and incredibly noisy with others. And the loudest ones tend to lock up Flacapella after a few minutes.

Is this a sign of an aging drive on its way out? Can I use an inexpensive USB drive for the same purpose?

cdda2wav will change the reading algos depending on the error rate / cd quality / "copy protections", so that's likely what you are hearing. If it goes down to the worst-case read modes, that might become very, very slow (it shouldn't lock things up, will just take a very long time). Not sure a USB drive will help - people here have reported issues with those.

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Is there likely to be an improvement in that regard with MorphOS in the near future/next release or soon after that?

As surely it would be a major improvement to be able to use a plug-in USB DVD/CD drive to be able to write a disc when it's needed or listen to a CD from an external device, rather than have no other option than to have a working internal CD/DVD drive as the only one that MorphOS will utilise?

Amazon is selling inexpensive USB CD-Rom drives. Maybe I'll pick one up just to test.

I've tried at least a couple of USB CD-RW/DVD-RW drives, Samsung make/models I seem to remember and they can read data, but they won't get recognised correctly with Jalapeno or on MorphOS if they are audio CDs.

I don't think it will be any different with any other USB optical device you try of that type, as others have had the same issues before, which you can read about on this link, Problem with an external CD/DVD Drive. Others have had issues with Jalapeno and with CD data attempted to accessed other than on the internal CD/DVD drive with little or no success.

I am quite sure it is a limitation/restriction on/within MorphOS for whatever reason that hasn't been addressed/fixed as yet, sadly.

Sure enough, the inexpensive drive I ordered from Amazon doesn't work with MorphOS. It seems like it does: an audioCD icon shows up on the desktop and the individual .wav files can be seen. Unfortunately, nothing can be done with it.

Too bad. This would be helpful since much of our hardware is getting older and older.

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I'd be happy with a slow 1:1 rip/encoding if it meant the drive didn't sound like it was blasting off for Mars!

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Wouldn't a tool like WolnyCD help? It basically lowers your CD reading speed.