In support of rlkeeney, so people don't think he is an isolated case, I have been experiencing this buffering issue for some time now. I don't recall exactly when it started, but for at least this year it has been happening. I have used Strawberry for many years and it just started happening suddenly. I kept hoping it would go away with an update, and finally decided to go looking for solutions.

For me it happens when I am streaming, not when I am playing local files. Whether I stream from my LAN icecast server or a remote service like classicalradio.com, I have constant buffering, and if it hits zero the stream stops until I manually restart it.

With high bit-rate streams (FLAC, OGG, or Opus) the buffering peaks between 15% and 30%. With lower bit-rate AAC or MP3 streams it will peak at 60% to 90%. Prior to this happening, I would start a stream and watch the buffer fill, at which point it usually went away. Now it is constantly flickering on the bottom bar.

I use Endeavour (Arch) Linux (updated usually weekly), and the two machines I have used it on are both Intel NUCs with 64GB of RAM and NVMe for storage.

Just thought it might help to add my experience. Thanks.