I think its very unlikely an i5 would run out of cpu resources. I can run prime on 4 threads without audio breaking up.
Can you run a benchmark from MC? Without stopping any background processes I'm getting 4302 on my i5. There's also a thread with results that you can check your score against, it will give you a good idea how your system performs.
I'm just guessing, but maybe its more likely a bottleneck on the disk you're playing from and/or converting to/from.
Couple of questions (apologies if you gave this info in another post, I scanned them but I could have missed something):
- How many conversions are you running simultaneously?
- Is it exclusively while converting flac to ape, or also ape to flac, to mp3 or wav?
- Is the conversion read/written to/from the same physical disk as the song playing is stored on?
Things you can try (revert changes after testing):
- Enable memory playback
- If you're running 4 conversions or more; try with 1 or 2 conversions simultaneously
- If all operations are done on a single physical disk, try writing the converted files to another disk.
Note that partitions can exist on a single disk. Another drive letter does not necessarily mean another disk. Look in Disk Management to check which drive letters are on different physical disks if you don't know.