ITunes stuttering playback

After the big OS X Leopard update, iTunes started skipping or stuttering on playback. It does it often enough that the program is basically unusable. The skipping is NOT related to internet access by my mail program (Mailsmith) or web browsers. It is NOT an mp3 file corruption problem, since the stuttering occurs in different places with each replay of the same song. The songs are those loaded from my own CD's and played flawlessly before the software update. The usual rigamarole of trashing preferences and resetting PRAM has not changed anything.
I have noticed other people with the same problem posting on different boards. I assumed that the 7.6.1 update to iTunes would address this issue. No such luck.
I am at a loss. I have an almost new MacBook which worked flawlessly until the update. I am very disappointed with Apple that 1) this issue is not addressed, and 2) that it is impossible to contact anyone knowledgeable about how to attempt to fix this. As a legacy Mac user (first 128K Mac bought on 2/24/1984 and many, many Macs since, this is a new type of helpless feeling.
Help!

This is a widespread issue, search the boards for "stutter" .... there must several hundred people posting on these forums with the same issue.
I have my 300GB + iTunes library on an external WD My Book Pro (a 2TB version set up as a 1TB RAID mirror) connected via FW800. I solved my stuttering playback problem by transferring my library to another external FW800 drive with two Seagate 200GB drives configured as a RAID stripe.
Thats all I've found so far.....

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