Advice on recording audio CD-R's

I recently bought a Sony RCD-W1 audio CD recorder, and have a couple of questions for those who have experience recording audio CD's. For the purpose of this post, I assume that the features on my unit are similar to other brands.

1. The RCD-W1 allows you to record from CD to CD-R/CD-RW at either "normal"/realtime speed, or 4X "speed synchro". Analog high-speed dubbing reduces the audio quality of the dubbed version. Based on your experience, have any of you been able to detect audible differences between the "normal" vs. high-speed versions of CD-R copies?

2. I plan to make CD-R copies of many of my old LP's. According to the instruction manual with the unit, the level of the analog input must be set to remain below the "distortion" point, just like analog tape recordings. Based on your experiences making copies from analog to CD-R, is it better to keep the recording level well below the overload point, or are CD-R's reasonably forgiving when the "red light" blinks?

Any advice on these questions, plus any other advice you may have, will be sincerely appreciated.