Up to now I've had reports of skipping with vbr in HPNA setups, but not ethernet.

How big are these files you're experiencing this with? If the files are more than 6 mbytes per minute of audio, I'd suggest you use flac instead. This way you'll have 100% fidelity and tRio seems to cope with it no problems. The only gotcha is that you need to be running jreceiver.

Cheers
Paul