The large playlist had three bad tracks in it. If I started that playlist by selecting it with a bookmark, whatever bookmark I chose next would crash the system. Once those tracks were removed, everything worked properly.

Fortunately it was easy to find the bad tracks, as they were *.wav files without tags (obviously) so they always sorted to the top of the playlist if I sorted on anything other than title (no artist, no genre, no album, etc.). The files were apparently the artifact of a bad rip, they were all three from the same CD, and would not play in Winamp. But wait... I just tested, and my computer won't play any *.wav file. What would cause that? Also, I noticed today that I can't play my empeg (nor my Karma) through the computer's sound card (line out --> microphone in) and I suspect that the two problems are related. It might be some sort of configuration problem with Total Recorder. ??

Anyway, getting rid of those three *.wav files solved the problem in the Karma.

tanstaafl.