Hi supercat,
I'll say it again: It problem is NOT that the burner fails to lay down tracks precisely. It is NOT that. Otherwise, the burner would not work reliably for any use. Got it? Don't forget that you do not have a burner that works - so everything you've been saying is theory, right?
I've been using a Yamaha burner for the past 7 years and they are still one of the best you can buy. I know that a couple of their models failed to work with CDG so you need to verify this based on the model number.
I highly recommend the Yamaha but verify the model. Now a days you have a many models that work with CDG software.
Not all CDG software works with my Yamaha burner. MTU, Golden Hawk, PlayCDG CE, other ALL work fine. I tried other software that does not work so the software is the problem.
Steve