Okay well if you need all that other stuff running, maybe ReserveCache=64 will be better for you? The behavior you're describing (emphatic gets WAY behind) sounds like the player is fighting with all your user apps for RAM. When that happens, things get REAL slow and I've seen the player actually complain about not being able to get memory when my ReserveCache was set real low. I'm not guaranteeing this will fix your problem, but it's worth a shot.