The mere task of streaming a single audio file saps about 11 milliseconds (@1.8GHz).

Sorry I just realized I need to correct this figure. I mean the task to feed a 176 KB/s wave stream in real-time affords frame decoding and synthing of about 44 milliseconds (per second) on a P4 1800. This means 4-5% of your application is needed to keep a single wave stream going, so I'm looking to improve that performance.

kind regards Jens Lippmann