Loud Superdrive, CD Recordings Fuzzy

My SuperDrive is at TIMES, very loud when I put in a CD or DVD; and, at other times is quiet. There have been no problems READING disks, but when burning CDs (audio from itunes), some of the songs are fuzzy and skip. One DVD recording errored as well, though I have since burned some DVD's just fine. Burning CDs on my external drive works fine, so it isn't the source. Has anyone else had this problem? All of my software/firmware are up to date. Thanks for any help you can provide.
G5 Power PC   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Hi justaglo and welcome to the discussions.
Noisy optical drive operation is often due to poorly made CD's and DVD's . Discs which are the slightest bit out of round or out of balance are likely to produce a lot of noise.
The same discs are also likely to suffer from erratic burn and playback behaviour.
The slot loading Panasonic drives in many Macs are less tolerant of such things than many of the external, tray loading, drives.
My suggestion would be that you try a few different brands of discs and see which ones it likes best. Verbatim, TDK and Sony seem to work very reliably in mine. Memorex, and many of the cheap, generic, discs are much less happy. Some are so bad that they are only really of any use as drink coasters.
Assuming that Northwest WA is NW "Western Australia" one brand of "cheap" discs which does work well though, in my experience, are those sold through Australian Post Offices, under their own brand. Worth a go if you haven't already tried them!
Another factor worth considering in your neck of the woods unfortunately may be damage to discs through heat or vibration during transit, regardless of their original quality.
Cheers
Rod

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