Burning a CD

Sorry to hear about your problem. I own a commercial media duplication company, and we've had quite good success with both Imation and Mitsui blank discs. We've also tried the HHBs at times; but for commercial applications the HHBs are just way too expensive.
The first question I think you need to ask is how good was the hook-up you used for transfering your material? Did you actually test it first before burning your discs? Do be aware that computer sound cards and computers themselves often induce noise into a recording. Also, did you record these discs faster than normal playback speed.
We often master discs here for clients; and they are recorded at normal (1X) play speed only on a standalone commercial CD recorder. In the two plus years we've been mastering discs for clients - (we are a 13 year old company that started out in video only) - we've NEVER had a complaint about our mastering work. In fact, two of the larger CD duplicators in out market refer clients to us regularly.
Another item you may want to check is the actual CD recorder mechanism itself. Way too often, the CD drives put into computers are the least expensive the maker can find. Sorry to say it but "quality" is a term rarely used in the computer industry.

I think Avideo may have hit it on the head. I would recommend doing a test burn of the same CD at 1x speed and see if you experience the same problems.

Gboren is 100% right on about the audio optimized blanks.

When you burn an audio CD on your computer don't burn at super high speeds. I don't recommend burning higher than 4x. Doing so will sometimes results in too many errors and will cause erratic behavior in audio CD players - it will also result in the drop-outs that some folks have mentioned. If you burn at 4x on good quality media you will end up with discs that sound great and last a long time.

I burn at 1x for masters. 2x for personal use. Nothing faster. I have used many blanks including the imation, which has been inconsistent and thus I use them for family video editing. The ones that have been pretty consistent are the memorex. As I recall there was a thread a while back that went into the different manufacturers and where there actual discs were made. I think there are not that many actual places that make blank CDs, but rather there are dozens of companies that market these blanks. The result is that you want to get blanks made from the "good" source. Some "manufacturers" (meaning imation et al) get their blanks from multiple sources--thus they are inconsistent. While some work with only one source. I do not know these sources, nor do I know which manufacturers use multiple sources, but hopefully someone that does will join this thread.

Imation has been lots of problems for me. I use the audio TDKs now without any problems whatsoever - and at 8x speed. Arthur