Did you try another player like Foobar? I bailed on Winamp b/c of quality/playback issues. I am having a hard time believing that it is hardware. BUT, have you tested your RAM? MEMTEST? What about trying to re-seat the RAM mods. Take them out and snap them back in.
I have not ran mem test since I bought the ram. Memtest is good though and will find any issues.
Prime is a pretty hardcore tester as well.
I haven't reseated the ram yet because I flac'd a show on saturday and it has checked out fine.
I even tested that show while having all these issues and it passed than I ran the test on the files causing grief and they passed that time while in a previous test the very same files were giving errors.. Go figure..
It sure can't hurt to reseat as you suggested and I'm trying to get ideas, suggestions I may not have thought of before tearing hardware out and reseating it.
I also should state that all temp readings are good as well so overheating is/was not a issue.
thanks for your suggestions too +T but do you want to lose your trip 7's?