No, 128 isn't a "magic number".

I have about 3500 songs loaded, about 2400 of them are 128 KBps MP3's (ok, probably 5% of those are between 128 and 192) and the rest are quality 5 (approx 160 KBps) VBR encoded Ogg's. Probably 99% of them I ripped myself, and everything I rip is diligently checked for frame errors, etc and reripped if necessary.

I am *NOT* having issues with the alpha. I have very clean MP3's, and in fact am in the process of slowly reripping everything to quality level 5 ogg's (I'd rip them higher, but I drive an SUV and road noise cancels out any improvements over QL 5 that I could possibly see).

Please don't run off assuming that 128 KBps MP3's are causing the barfs, because they aren't. What I would question is the relative quality of your MP3's, such as are there framing errors in them, etc. Are they self ripped or are they downloaded? Check each of your problem files for errors, and I'd be willing to bet a frozen dairy confection that you'll start seeing a pattern there.

-- Gary F.