disc burning problems

Macbook pro retina 13 2015(early)

High sierra 10.13.6

As the laptop didn't come with a disc drive, I bought a third party

Sandstrom SEDVDWH18 plug and play.

I burned 4 times from the itunes playlist in 2021. Everything was fine

I prepared to burn again now (February 2022) using itunes playlist and I'm getting medium write error and failed to burn to disc.

I checked the device in 'about this mac/system report/disc burner and the device is fine.

I'm using the same CD-R verbatim discs as I have always used in the studio.

I tried writing at multiple different speeds with no success.

I tried burning from the burn folder in finder getting the same error for making a data disc.

I downloaded other burn software and got the same medium write error

I updated iTunes and made no difference.

There's plenty of memory/drive space to cater for the burn.

Something has gone very wrong between 2021 and 2022 and I'm beginning to think it's the OS despite not having done anything to the machine since.

Has anyone at apple looked into this problem as I've come across it in other threads but there doesn't seem to be any resolution.