Clip 2GB stutters playing 48kHz mp3 - is this a faulty Clip?

I guess no-one has noticed this problem with the clip. I wasn’t sure if mine was faulty, so I borrowed a friend’s 4GB clip and it is exactly the same. On firmware 1.01.29 the stuttering is very intermittent and hardly noticeable, but upgrading to 1.01.32 makes it much worse. The spec says it should be able to play 48kHz sampled mp3, but it most certainly doesn’t! Are 48kHz recordings so rare that no-one listens to them?

thanks,

Jonathan