for about an hour, the sound will get "staticky" and start to break up.
the sound just goes to hell.

In other words, your CD-R is now permanently damaged by [extreme laser]
heat.

I'm under the impression that CD lasers have different intensities which
vary when they read the different dye formulations of the various CDRs.

After the holidays, I'll burn the same songs on several CDR brands.
(Verbatim Blue surface, silver, gold, green and Memorex Black. I'll then
play each CDR for 1 hour and see which one will "keep it's cool" at best. In
other words which one will be read by the laser at low intensity. It would
also be the CD with the best reflective properties.

I'll burn both data mp3/WMA CDRs (from 16kbps to 320kbps) as well as
Audio-CDs. I'll then post the results here with detailed test parameters,
conditions, temperatures and observations.