Tony, I think you're onto something with the idea of removing the PC from the loop. You seriously have me considering using a Central for my backup needs rather than trying to keep two foreign devices in sync.

Well, even I haven't gotten there yet. But I have to say, with the latest Jemplode release and working hierarchical playlists on the Karma and the Central, I'm having trouble coming up with any reason to keep the MP3s on my PC. I think that the latest Jemplode releases, along with the playlist backup utility, removed the last reasons I had for keeping things on the PC.

Oh wait, I can think of one reason, but it's totally unrelated to to the empeg or the Central. With the beta testing I do for the Karma (or any other Rio player for that matter), I often have to wipe the player and reload it from scratch. This goes much faster if I use USB2 and the source is the PC. But for anyone who's not doing that kind of thing, then yeah, having the Central be your Empeg's backup can work.