If sys_sync() is what's accomplished with the "sync" command, that doesn't help. It seems that whatever mechanism is deferring the write is managed by the player and not the OS.

I actually caught up with Roger on the IRC channel earlier today, and he informed me there had been some work done not too long ago to make deferred writes work properly on the Karma, and offered that as a possible explanation. In this case, deferring the write on the empeg causes playlist amnesia when power is yanked in the in-between time. Dunno if this is new with a7 or has been around awhile, this is certainly the first I've seen of it.