Hi All,
To make it some educational for others with possibly the same issue, I'll post what I did.
When I logged in the first time before I used K3b, the gnome desktop was the default session, and in my intention to create a correct KDE environment for K3b to work properly, I selected the KDE Desktop before I logged in.
As I stated before, burning data-projects went well, audio-project gave the decoding error.
Then I changed my default desktop from Gnome to KDE via 'Start -> Settings -> Desktop Switching Tool -> KDE.
Logged out & in, restarted k3b, and the audio project burned without problems.
With Regards, Willem-Jan van Dinter