Thanks for all the info and suggestions Mark. I finally had time to take another whack at 3.0a5. Got it loaded and working fine, and I don't care about the rebuilds for the time being 'cause my deck is full as it is...

A few things I've noticed...

1) MUCH better audio. Even with my crappy system in the car, it sounds great. In fact, I had to drop everything (EQ, hijack tone boost, etc) back to flat to keep it from being TOO bass-y. Quite happy!

2) WAAAYYYYY more stable. I had 3.0a3 loaded for exactly one trip to the grocery store, during which I probably had to reboot about 4 times because of lock-ups. After all day driving around, not a single hang, even on some low bitrate audiobook stuff.

3) Seems that some of the config.ini options are being ignored. I'm back to having the "Plays: X" on the album title row. Blech. Small price to pay, though, for having a stable 3.0

So again, thanks to Rob and company across the pond for such a great X-Mas present. And thanks again to Mark up north for help getting it going.

Not to push my luck, but any hope for DBE (ie. Japanese / Chinese tags) in the future?