If the empeg is losing serious time, it might be a bad capacitor in the player, or it might be the Stuck Jiffies bug.

What version of the software is running ont he player, and does it have a recent version of Hijack installed?

If it is running a beta version of 2.0 without hijack, then the time loss is almost certainly the stuck jiffies bug. Install Hijack and the bug will go away.