I have friends who I remember always insisting on burning their CDs and DVDs at the maximum speed the discs allowed for, and they all had problems with their di

I have friends who I remember always insisting on burning their CDs and DVDs at the maximum speed the discs allowed for, and they all had problems with their discs dying with time, some very soon, some after a year or two. No matter what brand. Conversely, I never burned any of my CDs or DVDs at more than half their advertised maximum speed, and so far I've yet to run into a single disc dying from age. Some of these discs are now 20 years old, and they still read/play fine. My theory - and this is just a theory as I don't really know what's going on - is that the dyes in CD-Rs and DVD-Rs after laser exposure slowly regress back towards the original transparent state, and that very "fast" dyes combined with a very short exposure time ("up to 52x speed!") emphasizes this problem, while giving the dyes a longer exposure time prevents it by simply burning the dye opaque beyond "recovery".