What's wrong with itunes -or is it me?

[Snow White]

itunes will burn a CD but it is very inconsistent. One of three CDs is 
just fine but the other two make low grade coasters.  The medium seem 
to work with Toast 5 for OSX consistently but itunes takes forever.  If 
I burn 65 minutes to CD Toast will do it in about 35 minutes at 2X 
speed but itunes take it sweet time at 1.5 hours even at 4X speed. I am 
using the largest buffer.

I am using a 450 Cube with 1 gig RAM and my burner is a USB Lacie 4X 
CDRW (fully supported in OSX itunes and Apple CD burn program).

My next beef with itunes is in the prefs.  I checked none for space 
between songs and itunes added about 2 seconds of dead air onto every 
song. WTF is that. If I wanted 2 seconds between songs I would bloody 
well tell it to leave a space of 2 seconds -F.

Anyhow, if you have a solution to this bit of crap I would be forever 
greatful.

jj