There's a few threads around about high pulseaudio usage. It happens with anything that plays any sound.. watch your top when you receive an SMS you'll see it spike too.

The question I have: Is it 20% of 250, or 500, 650... the damn CPU is near constantly ticking up, down, up down, on my phone so I have no idea. If it's 20% of 250 that's not that bad.. if it's 20% of the full processor speed that's a bit of a nuisance.

If I watch it pyradio goes from between 10 up to 20 max, while PA is all over the place. Don't think I saw it go much below 15 though.. so how the media player only has it at 10 I don't know.

Nope, no buffer for pianobar. If you're in weak 3G areas it becomes apparent because it'll play half a second and stop, then again and stop, constantly. pianobar will play music the instant it gets a stream and that gets old quick.

Gstreamer, OTOH, if it loses network connection too long for some reason simply refuses to start up again . You'll just get silence until the end of the song and then it starts the next song and plays just fine (alternatively, skipping to the next song also brings it back.)

Silent: Just tested, No. (thanks Qwerty).

I will try. Let you know how it goes.