Ok, I have done more testing.
I have several types of blank media. Some are only good for 24X, some 40X, some 52X. It's China, you get what you get. But, once you know the capability of the blanks, they are good. I buy spindles of 50 and can't remember the last bad blank I had.
Anyway, if I open the CD writer drawer and start Nero, I see 52X as the max speed. If I put media in Nero will set the max speed according to the blank. And all is well for writing. This goes for CD-R and CD-RW media.
MC does not seem to do this.
Manually setting the speed results in a good burn. The display is off as Alex mentioned, and the status of the selections is wrong, but at the end a good cd is produced.
For ripping there is a MAX setting. I think there should be the same for burning then MC should detect and use the highest speed possible.
And, give me the option of writing the playlist to the CD. For my portable it not not needed. And if I am adding the sequence number to the filenames it should not matter anyway.