I am seeing a problem of playback freezing that happens in two ways. I never had this problem with Version 24, but it showed up when I upgraded to Version 26. I had this problem with Version 26, but never reported it. I just installed Version 27, played my first track and the same problem happened.
The first way this problem happens is as follows. When I play a track, sometimes it 'freezes' with about 6 seconds left in the track. It stops for 5 or 6 seconds -- I've never timed it, so that's an estimate -- and then resumes playing. The length of the track doesn't seem to matter -- when it 'freezes', it always stops with about 6 seconds left in the track. It doesn't happen with every track that I play, but it happens moderately frequently.
The second way this problem happens is when I move forward or backward on a track, by moving the 'position' in the Player Bar. Again, sometimes it 'freezes' in the position to which I've moved for quite a few seconds. (Again, I haven't timed it, and so I'm not sure of exactly how long it stays frozen, and whether it's always about the same amount of time.)
I have a 1T SSD, which is pretty empty, and I'm running on a relatively new computer (bought last May). My music is on an external hard drive (2T HDD, with 1.44T free), and has been on an HDD external drive for as long as I've had any version of MC.
I have configured Windows Defender as described at
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html .
The bitdepth is set to the recommended "Automatic" and the buffering is set, as recommended, to "100 milliseconds". These are the same values I had in Version 24 (and Version 26). I have set the audio device to my internal sound card (Speaker/HP (Realtek(R) Audio), which also is the same as what I had in Version 24 (and Version 26).
I'd appreciate any suggestions as to how to fix this problem.
Thank you.