gstreamer-tools? I used the version in the repositories.
I've read the thread, and frankly it didn't give me much information... Using the latest gst-plugins-bad would mean compiling the whole gstreamer, wouldn't it? Did you compile the whole gstreamer?
About 22%, and after some tests I wouldn't call it actually choppy: there are only problems when e.g. changing the active window -- I'm not at all familiar with linux sound architecture but it looks like a buffer is just a little too small.