you're not going to believe this, but i figured it out. it has nothing to do with any of my songs.

it's the Favorite Visual setting for DSP! As soon as I add a visual to the DSP setting, it starts failing. i remove it, it works again. i add them to fm, am, aux, and it works. add one to dsp it fails, remove it and it works. over and over again, this is repeatable.

in thinking back, i only changed that setting based on trying to fix what i didn't like about emphatic (remember, i'm the guy that wrote that long list of questions a couple of weeks ago).

so that's it, the Favorite Visual setting for DSP causes the unit to hang frequently.

any suggestion other than to not use it? i don't mind not using it.