Not sure if it would work, but perhaps increasing the disk cache size might have helped... I've heard of similar instances as yours, and this solution worked. It requires a registry entry like this...Problem solved!!!!! (Audio drops). It was not the software (as I tried numerous) nor the operating systems (I tried win7 32&64 and Win 10 32 &64). It was not from the 100+ tweaks for laptops (including registry tweaks) that I really could write a book on.
One month (after giving up three times) I am happy to announce that the issue is exclusively related to WD Blue hard drives They have a power saving option embedded into them that can not be altered in Windows power options (which all assume would). The head parking system is set way to sensitive on these drives that can cause subtle interruptions within some mainboards.
By accident I found a third party software that can shut this "save the planet" embedded software down. One would assume the power options in windows would do this after setting the hard drive to run all the time,, but it does not!!!
Now my next step is to start fresh, probably go back to Win 7 64 bit and put in a none green hard drive. I am looking at a 7200 rpm WD Black performance drive as the replacement (hoping it will not run too hot). Solid state drives are not an option as my research gives conflicting commentary for streaming music, and overall reliability.
Once again it is exclusively the WD Blue Scorpio models that are the issue.
Regards,
Joncor
Not sure if it would work, but perhaps increasing the disk cache size might have helped... I've heard of similar instances as yours, and this solution worked. It requires a registry entry like this...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Then you change the LargeSystemCache DWORD from 0 to 1.
The reason this might work (theoretically) is that more of the song is in memory, so you're not waiting for the disk to spin up, which is what is causing your delays. When the cache gets low, the disk spins back up and reads more data, even while you are still playing the part of the song still in memory.