Sound stutter

[Michael Bona <mbona@bigfoot.com>]

Hi all,

one things really bugs me about my Linux box: Playing MP3s or Oggs is
frequently interrupted for a split second when there is a little more than
the usual disk activity. Say I open one programme and close another at the
same time. For the duration of that disk activity, sound stutters.

Considering that an old system like Winnt4 (on a slower system) could handle
my way of working there must be a way out ...

I am running Woody / KDE 3.1.3 with aRts on a Duron 800  with 258 MB of RAM.
I have tried several players, notably noatun and kaboodle. Soundserver runs
with realtime priority (setting in KDE control center).

Any advice?

Thanks!
Michael