Interesting Updates:

1. After a couple of days without problems on Empeg 2, today it locked in stand-by mode too. That was completely puzzling. Same HDD as old player, same displayboard, different motherboard. And, two days of flawless playing in between failures.
I realized then that maybe one thing could be causing this problem: an MP3 tune! That would have explained the fact that the hardware and the boot seemed ok. Thoretically, if a faulty tune was to be restarted upon boot, it could lock the player application.
So, during boot, I pushed "next" several times. When boot completed, the player skipped few songs and entered play mode without any problem! So, mistery solved! The good thing is that I do not seem to have any falty motherboard any more!

2. The empeg 2, which used to suffer from low volume on rear left speaker, is now working perfectly. Maybe moving wires behind the connector worked. So, currently, it seems this empeg is pretty ok too.

3. Tori Amos' Concert was SUPER! I got a picture and an autograph too

I'm happy.

Have a great weekend you all.