Hi,
If you don't tick the AA checkbox, it shouldn't take forever. But, you should tick "Start Engine3 during conversion" in the Settings Area.
A 10 minute track starts within a second here then (FLAC a few tenths of a second).
If it still takes ages with you, you have a very slow connection to the drive the music resides, and/or a very slow processor.
The reason why the tracks are converted to WAV in full before playback is started, is to guarantee no difference in SQ at playback. You may have heard about the perceived differences at various places, which just is true. The way it is done in XXHighEnd makes this impossible.
Note though that when you tick "Start Engine3 during conversion", SQ may be different during the time the tracks from the playlist are converted.
Lastly, note that you can select (Windows like) tracks in the playlist for playback, so if you want to hear a few tracks of the playlist only (never mind why you loaded them there in the first place) just select those few tracks and press Play.
Of course the above counts for Unattended Playback only, because otherwise all is done track per track.
And again, if you were playing Attendedly (which you shouldn't for best SQ), you must have something very slow in there.
The UnicodeTrack0001 thing is a bug for MP3 playback, which by itself may create errors from the ChangeWP thing. If it bothers you you can go to
this post and the Zip in it solves that.
Please ask if you have further problems.
Peter