Now I'm just getting more confused.

It seems that the first time I open /dev/dsp I get a tiny click out of the left speaker, when my empeg is sitting on my desk. This happens if I use Frank's voladj or my old selecter. The actual ioctl call does not make a click, it's just the open(). But I don't get this click when the player starts up, or when I remove any stuff like this from my init script. But you said you DO get the click when you don't do anything special. I don't understand.

This is what happens when I boot:
- BIG pop when I push the power in the back
- Pretty big pop roughly when the kernel initialises the audio device
- Small (but definite) click when voladj or selecter opens the audio device

I think empeg_mixer_eq_apply() gets called when we open /dev/dsp. Maybe we should open /dev/mixer first, and set the volume to 0, and then open /dev/dsp??? I guess I can try that.

Richard.