Note to all (including the Empeg folks):

Rather than explicitly using "hdparm" (or the IDE ioctl() interface) to spin drives up/down as needed by each induhvidual usermode application (which WILL lead to conflicts..), why not just let the drive do it all for you??

hdparm -S1 /dev/hda

After issuing the above command (once per reboot), the drive will spin up as needed, and spin down again only after 5 seconds of inactivity..

In the case of the player app, it could still issue the IDLENOW1 command to spin up prior to demand, but just let the drive do the spin down again on its own.

Cheers