I have a bit of a strange one here, Where in the configs do I set my CD writers capability. I have a new 52X but some thing is limiting it to 8X. Where do you set or configure the driver?
It may be that your media is only rated for slow writing speed.
What's the output of "cdrecord -atip" with your media in the drive?
What's the output of "cdrecord -prcap"?
Paul.