iTunes isn't burning my CD's correctly!!

Ok. Now I know iTunes is full of bugs and I'm really starting to get annoyed but this maybe the straw that puts me over the edge to finding an alternative. I've tried 2 different brands of CD's and even one that was a friggin "Sony CD-R". Still when iTunes burns my disks it'll finish like normal and mount the finished product in the sidebar, and upon first inspection it looks fine but when I play through the CD all the ends of my songs are cut off and some skip and then some are just plain not there (towards the end of the disk). I've looked at the individual song properties and none of them specify a start or end time and I'm at a loss as to what to do. I know CD's aren't expensive but when I only burn like 1-2 a month, and I buy a five pack and it messes them all up that's money I'm just "burning" (pun intended). Could it be a problem with the buffer under-run? In that case it's HW and I'd need to RMA it to Sony... or is there some special tool I can use to see if I can calibrate the drive or something? Any idea is appreciated. Thanks!!

EDIT: BTW, the drive in QTS is an Optiarc BD-ROM BC-5500S4 with the released firmware update.

 

Well, what about trying another programme?
If you can burn with say Nero then its the software.

CDs - but these "spindles" they are much cheaper - and then buy sleeves/cases separately too, in the end it'll cost you less.

 

Do you have Windows Media Player running at the same time? I find that if I do, burning a disk with iTunes is a bit hit and miss (it still fails sometimes even without another media prog running, but it's definitely fails more often if I have WMP running).