grael, I had the same prob as EB and I thank you for your suggestion which did cure the stuttering 
There was a downside though causing playlists to jump several songs after each play.
I changed settings to ...
<buffermode>4</buffermode>
<memorysize>7000000</memorysize>
<readfactor>4</readfactor>
... and this cured the playlist jumping too 