Jim referred me to this thread. I've been having a persistent obnoxious problem with MC 13.0.172 (and prior) that might be related to this problem in MC 14.
Here's my latest post on it:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52987.msg362441#msg362441Guessing that the particular section of playback is the same in MC14, once solved I hope the fix can be back-ported to MC13 (I own an MC14 license but am waiting for a bit more stability before moving my 80K+ audio tracks into it.)
Briefly, the problem is total audio dropout in the playing track just where the next track starts using "cross fade aggressive". In this mode, for a second or two the current and next track's audio overlap. With SOME files there is an audio dropout right where the next track begins, accompanied by MC rapidly flashing "buffering". The problem is totally repeatable, and happens on multiple PCs. However, it only happens to some tracks; the vast majority have no problem.
All the tracks are MP3, ripped at various times over several years, so different rip tools/encoders/bitrates/specs. Some are CBR, some are VBR. Most are 2-channel stereo or mono sound, but some mono audio are 1-channel tracks.
However, while some of the problem tracks are 1-channel audio, not all are. But 1-channel is usually the case. But#2: the problem doesn't happen with all 1-channel tracks.
If the tracks are not played in overlapping mode the dropout doesn't happen, or maybe it does but there's no way to notice it. But "cross fade aggressive" for "1 second" is my favorite "sound" from MC -- I can't give it up. I like this sound so much I use a laptop in a vehicle to run MC while driving (hands off, of course).
I've run some of the "problem" tracks through MP3Utility but no problems are reported. So the dropout/buffering seems to be something that trips up MC at the transition of certain files. Since MC always rapidly flashes "buffering" during the audio dropout, this might help isolate the section of code to inspect.
Also, it would be helpful to know what "buffering" means during playback, since it is being displayed to the user as worth knowing. The problem is not improved by MC's "prebuffering" setting, which I bumped up to 10 seconds, but I don't know what "prebuffering" means either (my guess is it is related to file loading from disc...).