media vs. hardware problem

[jtay025]

I've seen all the talk about crap media vs. quality media, but what about the actual specifications and tolerances on the drives burning to the media? Something I don't understand is, why is special media necessary for faster burning, when faster burning should just require a stronger laser head (to make up for the lesser duration that the media is exposed to the beam) and tighter tolerances?

I can't burn past 40x on my SM-352N (52x Samsung Combo) drive without having data verify errors on the last 100MB's of the cd using cheap 52x media, but I question if it is actually the media at fault. Can someone conclusively prove that the media is such a major factor for such an error?

No burner bashing , I know its not cream of the crop!! I wonder if I'm bringing up a valid point though as I haven't found much discussion on blaming poor drive manafacturing tolerances.