Here's a good link explaining about CD-Rs. I also has links to other good CD-R sites & surveys.
http://www.dansdata.com/cdrs.htm
edit: here's an excerpt for the column
"Figuring out whether a given brand of disc is good or not is tricky. But it helps to know who actually makes it. It's often not the company whose name's on the label - even in the case of premium discs.
There's a lot of "badge engineering" in the CD-R market - companies making products for other companies to sell under their names. For instance, the most prolific maker of cheap and cheerful CDs, Ritek, is responsible for discs sold under the Arita, BASF, Dysan, FujiFilm, Hi-Space, Intenso, JTEC, Memorex, MegaData, MMore, Onkyo, Philips, Pony, Ricoh, Rimax, Samsung, Targa, TDK, Traxdata and Waitec & War names, if the CD Media World article here is to be believed."