It would be nice if someone would weigh in who understands this stuff better. There are too many factors, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't a correlation between format and stutter. My theory:

Less to no stutter with .wav and .mp3

More stutter with other formats, i.e. .flac, .aac, .ogg

Internet radio stutter or silence (?) could be compounded by network issues. Supposedly, mp3's take the best, if not the only, advantage of the DSP chip's decoding ability, and .wav files mostly just pass through. Regardless, we need better info from everyone.

Also, as I have posted elsewhere, the rendering application might have a low priority level. See:

/etc/X11/Xsession.post/32mafw

for more details.

Personally, I'm using vorbis+ogg files @ ~160 kbps and I'm having little to no problems, but I am noticing a high CPU usage. I'm thinking about switching to 192 kbps mp3's.