I would recommend trying one of the other players - that will eliminate hardware or player software as an issue.

The continuing playback and pickup of the music makes me think you might have a loose connection on the audio lines going to the amp in your car. You might want to try another empeg here as well - if you have the same issue, it is somewhere from the wiring loom on the sled out.

As for the pausing, any luck with hyperterm? Another thing to try would be to diagnose for a disk error (fsck, visual inspection of the cables, etc.). Given that the menus are still working, I do not think the player application crashed. But I do think that you are hitting some kind of disk errors.