Maybe it's actually when the player starts up, and sets the volume??? No, that can't be it either.

I was just trying it here on my desk. I get a pop when I actually push the power into the back of the empeg, and I also get a pop when the Empeg logo first appears, but that's all I can hear. I get these pops regardless of whether I'm using a voladj kernel or not.

I'll try whacking a few different init scripts next (at the moment all my customisation is in /etc/profile, slower, but less memory intensive).

Richard.