Audio Player Buffering Bug

Can anybody out there help me with this bug? Description:
Audio Player buffers file,
Audio Player goes to play the file (Track name appears)
Audio Player goes back to buffering, interminably
If I click “Pause,” and then “Play” the audio file will play normally

All other features work as intended, according to my settings. However, I cannot expect anybody else to figure out what I know to play the file. So for all intents and purposes Audio Player is broken.

Not to scare anybody off, I have found other help topics by searching “audio player buffering bug” (not in quotes). And all of them had issues with files not playing, getting error messages. They did not know how to insert the proper URL, player instance–whatever. My files will play, but the buffering never ends! I have to take extra steps to start playback. I want to fix this.

Although I have experimented with different settings to see how I can work around this issue, here is what I currently use:
Default buffering time
Encoded URLs setting checked
Remove enclosures checked
Using [audio:file-name.mp3] to place a player instance, and it appears just fine!
. . . in fact, all of my settings are defaulted, except I countdown the time. This way, people know how much more of their precious time I am wasting. I like to respect the time of others. I have tried changing the buffering time higher AND lower than the default 5 seconds. I also have tried leaving the time counting up by default. No dice.

It seems audio player should work just fine using the default settings.

A few more facts:
I use WP 3.0.1 in case you didn’t see elsewhere in this post. I use the Thematics theme. I didn’t code/edit any custom PHP that would affect this plug-in, and I only installed 3 plug-ins. I don’t believe in them and try to hand-code something in place of installing plug-ins every chance I get. I work as a professional Web Designer, certified in HTML Development using HTML, XHTML and CSS. I hand-code all of my Websites with standards-compliant code, use best practices (not hacks), have a strong knowledge of cross-browser compatibility. . . . yada yada. So there isn’t a chance of plug-ins conflicting. I also know a guy who uses Thematics theme with this plug-in, and his works just fine in the same browser I use to view my Website. I am working in Word Press because some of my clients on the freelance side like to blog and maintain their own Website once I have designed it for them. WP is a popular CMS that many people know and feel comfortable using.

Oh, and I am mixing down 24-bit audio AIFFs to Mp3 in iTunes, using the Create Mp3 feature. My settings there are 192kbps, normal stereo audio with no VBR, no special encoding adjustments or bass cut and standard 44.1kHz sampling, which has been the standard since, well, almost forever. Not trying to get all “keeping up with the Joneses” or biblical Tower Of Babel and sh!t. Not to trivialize my Mp3 settings, I have had a similar problem with audio in the Facebook band profile music player. However, some audio with the same settings played without being re-cued there. I tried the no-brainer: create another Mp3 from the same audio file and post it. No dice. I am not going into detail about how this audio originally was created. It was professional grade hardware/software–trusted industry brands. No problems there, or in any other instance for that matter. Just Audio Player and a few Facebook files.

Thanks in advance for all of your suggestions.