Ok, then it seems you have covered all aspects to this ;-)

I am still almost convinced I don't have this problem (being that if it's a kernel bug it should have popped up by now... that or nobody using > 2.6.4 ever coppies CD's using high-speed hehe, I don't know), and have managed to "borrow" 4 50x CD-R's from work ;-)

I can test at home this evening on my gentoo machine, but would like some idea what to test before I start. I have an 800MHz (384MB RAM), so I guess 24x should not be a problem. Shall I try burning wav files (as audio of course) at the speeds you tried above? If I get results similiar to yours, the files (burnt) should be corrupt, right, or is this issue purely relating to speeds which it is burned at with no consequences to the data written?

If corrupted: Is this related to the bug reported on http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=137623 (they do state that cdrecord works fine though)?

If just speed: LOL, and then double-lol.... I presumed this was corrupting the data ~ one big misunderstanding... my appologies.