Ooh, ooh. Poor form I know to reply to my own post.

Sound dropouts while using the search function even on MP3s (i.e. not WAVs) as the unit searches. I think I may have narrowed it down to the fact that the drives spin down so quickly (like 5 seconds or something) - the spin up seems to cause the whole thing to pause momentarily

Alternatively, if someone can tell me how to disable the spindown stuff (I believe it's in the player code though), I will happily do that. I have no problem leaving the drives running and it will also help me when I skip to the next track and have to wait for the drives to spinup...