So I have been using alpha 5 for a couple of days and I have to say it is much better. Alpha 3 was a train wreck on my Empeg, for whatever reason, but Alpha 5 solves most of the glaring problems (and of course creates a couple of new ones, but what can you do? ) . Responding to buttons is much faster, crossfading works better, the power-on volume ramp works again, and I have not heard any songs skipping around. Stability is the one thing I am a little unsure about. Alpha 3 was very intermittantly crash prone, forcing me to pull it out and pop it back in again a couple of times a week. Alpha 5 has crashed on me once, but at least it rebooted on its own, which is an improvement. But only one crash in the last week is pretty decent compared to Alpha3. All in all, I have been very happy with it, and will be even more so when they get the database rebuild thing worked out.