[Alex K]

If this has been answered before, I couldn't find it.
A while ago I've added Playercorefactory.xml to Kodi userdata to make VLC default for videos as below. Love Kodi player but on some old shows (offline) it doesn't play subtitles. Today I changed audio to "True":

xml:
<playercorefactory>

<players>

<player name="VLC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="true" video="true">

<filename>C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe</filename>

<hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>

<hideconsole>false</hideconsole>

<warpcursor>none</warpcursor>

</player>

</players>

<rules action="prepend">

<rule filetypes="avi|mkv|mp4|m4v|mpg|mpeg|flv|ifo|vob|bup" player="VLC"/>

</rules>

</playercorefactory>

Now VLC shows as an option in music but not as a default. From the second song it switches to in-built Kodi player.  Can anything be changed in VLC (I don't see anything in Preferences), or in Playercorefactory to make VLC default for music as well? My reason: so-so laptop plus MP3 and M4A downloaded from varying sources are causing Kodi music to stutter, sound drops for half-second in random places.  Same files don't stutter on VLC on laptop or on Kodi player on desktop PC.

Please go easy on me, have just enough smarts to copy what others are doing, not enough to understand what and why

UPDATE:
Scratch that.  It still stutters on laptop with VLC option - random.  Doesn't stutter on desktop with either VLC or Kodi player. Stutter on laptop is only on files of questionable quality, tracks sound good but something must be wrong. MP3 ripped by me personally from CD don't stutter.
Laptop is not that old, I would hate to buy new one: Intel® Core™ i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz   2.71GHz  RAM 12 GB
Compare with desktop: Intel® Core™ i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz   3.20 GHz  RAM 8 GB

Will appreciate any suggestions!

[Jogee]

You have enabled VLC as an external audio player but you have not set any rule for it to follow for audio.  Your existing rule only covers video filetype extensions.

Refer to the External_players (wiki) for editing your existing rule or adding a second rule for audio.  I don't have any experience with external player configs, but you might be able to get away with adding |mp3|m4a to your existing rule.

But I think you are better off chasing what the actual cause of your audio stutter is.  I can't imagine the laptop not having enough power to play an mp3 unless there are other issues.