Lite-On has smart burn or burn-proof or whatever they call their technology. I have this drive, and I have been able to burn several audipo CDs at 24x without a problem, even on lower rated media. You should not have a problem burning it at the higher speeds, but if your paranoia is that bad, I think you'll find that 8x will still work fine everytime. I have even burned CDs on un-rated media that I still had left over when I bought my Hi-Val 2x2x24 drive and had no problems at all. I fried that drive trying to upgrade the firmware with non-manufacturer firmware (Hi-Val didn't release an upgrade apparently, so I couldn't even use an 80 min CD, and it's getting hard to find the old 650MB CDs anymore, but that's beside the point...)
Anyway, i think you'll find that the Lite-ON will handle your burns at higher speeds without and problem. If you really need to go lower, I think Nero can do it, but I really don't know what you need to do to set it up. Of course, you can also try other CD-R burning software.