I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles yesterday. It is a 6 hour drive and I took one break, for about 15 minutes, after 3 hours. Needless to say, my Empeg was playing throughout the trip.

As I was approaching LA, after around 5 hours of continuous playing, the Empeg started acting strange. In the middle of a song, it would suddenly go mute, and stay like that for about 5 - 10 seconds. And then the song would come back on.

I ignored it the first time, and the second time it happened, I assumed that the mp3 file was screwed up. So I switched to a track I listen to a lot, and know is of good quality (with no silence, bleeps etc).

The same thing happened again, in the middle of the song. I listened to many tracks after that, but with the same result.

It was a hot day yesterday, and I thought that the unit probably over heated. So I pulled over, and pulled out the unit. It felt fine to me. And there was no smell of burning wires either.

Is my unit defective? Has any one here experienced this before? Any suggestions on why this could have happened?

Thanks!