I am using MC 11.0.133 currently (and just finished downloading 140). They are definately still there when playing back MP3s (I now use VBR, but most of my old ones are CBR 256) and using either G-Force or WhiteCap. I rarely use the built-in visualizations anymore (thanks Andy), but I can check.
My system is no super-computer, but compared to the general population I imagine it can hold it's own:
Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1660 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 429 MB
(That's a Athlon XP 2000+). The memory I have in this is extremely low latency, high -quality stuff, hard drives are SATA WD Special Edition 7200rpm's in a RAID5. Only bottleneck I can think of is that almost all of my media is on a network server (also RAID5 but only connected through 100Mbit LAN (haven't coughed up the loot for a Gigabit switch yet).
The pauses are shorter, I'll agree with that, but they are definately still there. Is anyone else seeing this with v11?