And what "daemon" would that be?

Perhaps you have added software (the daemon) that uses the serial port? And perhaps this daemon is starting up before the player switches the baud rate, and since the daemon is using the port then the player is unable to switch the baud rate to 4800..

The player switches the baud rate on startup of the player application, after it reads config.ini. On my machines, the last message I see on the serial port (at 115200) is something link "switching to .." and it gets cut off as the rate changes.

-ml