I also wondered about this for ages, figured there had to be some software out there that would do this. I read a bunch of articles and looked all over the web, but came up empty. It's a fairly specialized area.
The only solutions I could find are dedicated hardware/software quality checkers. You can get these both as a standalone player that can be hooked to a PC, some of them come with a specially set up PC.
The cheapest thing I could find is a specially modified drive with special software that Clover Systems puts out, called the CDX. It is calibrated using special Philips test discs and says it will analyze a master CD at up to 40x. Several of the drives could be combined into a system if wanted. It also claims it will evaluate blank media.
It is expensive though, about $3000 for the drive/software, slightly more if you want them to bundle a PC with it. A company called Media Techniques also sells a unit, for more money, based on a small Shuttle "shoebox" PC.
Clover also sells a standalone special player.
There is more fairly good info at Clover's website,
www.cloversystems.com.
I couldn't find a truly "frugal" solution, though.
Hope this helps, if anyone else finds other stuff out there, please post it here.