When burning a CD, always use the padsize=63s and -pad and -dao arguments to cdrecord, and never negate the default -pad argument to the mkisofs program. Also, never burn while using other disk or CPU intensive software unless your CD writer hardware and software are set to prevent buffer underflow (such protection is sometimes called "burn-free"). Be sure you burn at a speed at or below the lower of your CD writer's maximum speed and the CD media's maximum speed. If you're using a rewritable CD, you must use the "rewrite" speed values.