YEah, Now I know what you are talking about. the settings sere part of it, but I also changed from a msi geforce 440 video card to a msi fx-5600 and between all that it all cleared up. the geforce 440 was not direct x 9.0 compatible, and the fx-5600 was.

the card change made a huge improvement before I began tweaking.

I was having the worst drops on Pop hits monthly nashville..... the one with the love song by jeff bates and it was on that song, I used it for a worst case tweaking song.

Nvidia n Force2
 

Let me share my experience:

I have an nvidia n force2 agp host just like the one you have & I bought my self a new ATI (built by) but I don't remember the model but it was using the same driver you're using and I most say I was getting drop outs just like you are!

What I did was to replace the card with the same one gduns has the MSI FX-5600 and now the demo no longer has ANY drop out.

Now, I'm not saying your video card is not good but I was told when I brought it back that ATI and the nvidia agp host don't work well together which I now believe make sence.

If you could test with an Nvidia card you might have the answer?

I must say that my other computer Dell PIII also had the audio drop out with my old ATI 7000 card and now with an MSI Nvidia it no longer has any!

I hope this can help?
Regards

that will be simple enough to try, I'll uninstall the ATI and run of the on board graphic card in the shuttle and see what happens. thanks.

now I'm discouraged. I un-installed the ATI card, and went with the on bourd card in the Shuttle and it made no difference. One of the specific disc I am speaking of is Pop Hits Monthly 310p track number 4, "Here Without You", by 3 Doors Down does this audio glitch espially well. Any thoughts anyone? This is very discouraging, and I am trying to stay hopeful here.