My music playback PC has developed an annoying behavior, and it seems to have appeared after upgrading from MC from to 13.0.172 from .171.
I play a large library (60K+ tracks) randomly. MC is set to "Cross-fade (aggressive)", 2 seconds, and "do not play silence). These settings provide a radio-station-style segue between tracks, so, anything less than a smooth transition is noticeable. I have NEVER heard a problem with this until now.
After the upgrade, I'm hearing an audio dropout of 1/2 second or so. It's like someone briefly switched audio off then back on -- a burp. It happens maybe 20% of the time.
The burp happens about 2-3 seconds before the end of the playing track. It's repeatable in that I can replay the same sequence, track1 moving into track2, and the dropout of track1 happens, same place, again and again.
One guess, given that MC is set to overlap the two tracks, is there's something about the two tracks plus MC's handling of them that briefly suspends the playback audio stream. Perhaps the playing track requires a bit more processing than usual before it can be played (most are highest-quality VBR LAME MP3s). Maybe if reading and readying the new track sometimes takes a fraction of a second longer than "normal" MC's playback of the current track hangs until the new track can be started and mixed in... just a guess.
A clue: When the dropout happens, MC's track info area at the top, which normally shows song title, artist, etc, briefly says "buffering". So I tried increasing MC's "prebuffering" (whatever that means) from default 6 seconds to 10 seconds, but it didn't seem to help; I still hear plenty of dropouts.
I believe the dropout happens when MC starts up the next track per the 2 seconds overlap (it doesn't really cross-fade, fortunately). However, I've listened to zillions of tracks in the past year with exactly this setting and never heard the dropout until upgrading to 13.0.172. So, has something changed in it that could cause this annoying problem?
There have been no other changes in MC's configuration.
I'm using two DSP plug-ins, the built-in Volume Leveling (replay gain processor) mode, and the external plug-in AudioProc, a wonderful radio-station-style compressor. But these have been part of my MC chain for quite some time, and they are processing MC's output while the dropout seems to be at MC's input. Disabling them didn't cure the dropouts.
The computer is as it has always been, good speed, good RAM, good drive, etc. There is NO firewall or anti-virus or anything else running that would limit MC's ability to quickly access the music files. The only computer changes are the periodic Microsoft Windows XP updates (including several a few days ago) typically described as security fixes.
I can only point to .172 as the culprit, unless there's something else to check.