I have a Liteon 40x that I bumped up to 48x burning using a new firmware.
I burn all my KVCDs at 40x or 48x (depending on the media) and I usually use cheap media.
I have not had a single problem or glitch in over 300 CDs. Most are test CDs but they play great. The only problems are with my encoding settings (which is why I am testing so much).
Most of the new high end burners (Liteon, Plextor, TDK) will burn better CD-Rs at top speed than the 16x or 24x one from a couple of years ago will do at 8x.
I have 3 burners and I ALWAYS use max speed unless the drive will not go max because the media is too cheap . Then I use the max speed available.
FYI... I also have two burners on the same IDE controller and do not have trouble burning at all. I am running the following system:
AMD Athlon XP 2200 +
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe
512 MB PC 2700 RAM
(2) WD 80GB (8MB cache) Hard Drives on IDE 1
Liteon 48x16x48 CD-R drive on IDE 2 (Master)
Buslink 48x16x48 CD-R drive on IDE 2 (Slave)
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4400 (over clocked to 300/605)
ASPI 4.72
Windows XP Professional
The box is rock solid. Never any burning problems.
I mainly use Nero 5.x but I also use DiscJuggler, VCDEasy and Windows XP to burn discs.
Grantman