honest question: why do you need large artwork? I understand a pdf document that pseudo-replaces the booklet but an art file? And it balloons the size of the actual file adding that metadata.
I use Ben Dodson's
website because it is useful not only for album art (don't worry about the "May not work" disclaimer, it works 99.9~% of the time) but also books (calibre) and audio books (iTunes) and movies (also iTunes). Also you can switch territories for alternate releases and whatnot. you'll figure it out.
Second point on album art: the hi-res player I have won't show art over 800x800 resolution so the Dodson site works well for me as it defaults to 600x600.
I use dbpoweramp for ripping CDs. It's powerful but also you have to pay for it but again it's powerful. Tons of built-in stuff that I will never use but the stuff I do use is there and easy. It's also a conversion software so if there's an album that is in a weird format I convert it there. The only thing it can't do so far is dts but that's rare enough for a CD that it's not that important.