AntiZig :
I'm not sure why the quality in your case seems to be different.
The industry has moved away from 1x burning speed because faster processes/CD drives became available.
But in any case, the software that you are using to burn your CD/DVD should detect the speeds your CDwriter can handle and structure the menu you have to choose what speed to burn at accordingly. If that doesn't happen, I guess you can try looking for an older version, but newer version that doesn't detect proper burning parameters isn't quality software and I'd advise looking for better one.
That said, I can't imagine why you're seeing a quality difference when going from 1x to 4x. Unless your software is bad at detecting you cdrom capabilities, in which case again, I'd recommend looking for better one or your drivers for the cdrom are not working properly. There's also a possibility of hardware failure of the cdrom itself.
In audio or HD audio there is a difference in acoustics that shows up on the instrumentation between 4x & 1x, ok normally like who would notice? Me for the sake of sound system development, I am so close to being able to bring the highest quality, already surpassing Bose® sound quality at between ¼ of the price Bose® costs on sale. This system is as good as the really big buck systems, 100k plus no joke, cheapest 20k for one speaker? Ok on the instrumentation maybe not, but who knows?
I use four different optical drives to do specific functions, two are great at audio CDs, but the one primo made to write, I burn master copies once so easy at 1x even thou firmware indicates the slowest speed @ 4x and never problems, ill effects or loss of lasers density or any indications of medium burning or overcharging optical resonator, not even a change in alignment which overheating one too many times does all the time on spring tension with the slightest misalignment. This is something that occurred while upgrading certain software when they offer an update I normally upgrade to the newer version, blah ,blah, quite a few others do, actually who doesn’t ? The smart ones! I kept noticing on the chart that my speed setting failed, kept failing, now this optical drive is designed to write, yes all do, but not as its primary feature and I regularly check it entirely on all its operational stats and they are always unchanged like the day I first used it, I know my issue is with mastering software, but the version which worked is my dilemma? I was hoping someone knew of a program to override firmware and customize your speed? Save me the bummer of checking version by version on which could take time and clean removal each time, checking registry? Crap.