As you can see from post 1, stereo reads CD-R fine. In the absence of ANY tech info I can find I appear to be stuck with a 16x min speed. As far as I can see the Laptop (in WMP) writes at the 'fastest' speed and the LG80N fitted states 24x max CD writing, so no joy there!
One odd thing - Device Manager states the Samsung is 'scsi' when I believe it is SATA.