After a long night and a bit of sleep, I switched on the P4 again and ran a few additional tests.
It takes less than 30 minutes — and sometimes with a bit of bad luck, the dropouts can occur as early as the very next track.
At this point, I no longer believe the issue is directly related to a specific track or the database itself. I even created a completely fresh database with only around 50 tracks, resynced everything, and left the Prime running idle for roughly half an hour before testing again.
Initially, everything appeared stable, but the dropouts eventually returned. Sometimes a second dropout follows just a few seconds after the first one. So far, these second dropouts have consistently lasted at least around one second or longer.
Interestingly, if I reload the same track — or load another track first and then return to the problematic one — the issue usually does not reoccur immediately.
I was also monitoring the System Monitor during testing. In some cases, the latency indicator turned red and exceeded 200 ms during a dropout, but I also observed dropouts occurring at much lower values around 30 ms. At other times, I even saw latency spikes approaching 400 ms without any audible issue at all.
So at least from my amateur observations, there is currently no obvious one-to-one correlation visible there.
At this stage, I still do not have a fully reliable way to reproduce the problem on demand. Simply loading tracks sufficient to trigger the stuttering. Occasionally, the GUI appears to freeze briefly as well, although I have also experienced audio dropouts without any visible UI anomaly.
If anyone has ideas for additional tests, I’m more than willing to help narrow this down further.
For now though, tonight’s gig will definitely be a Denon-free zone…
I hate the Pioneer Layout.. i hat it i hate it ich hate it.. … … .. . 
And yes — I may quietly cry into my pillow later.
