1. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but just in case: Don't edit the "Configure Player" screen in emplode and edit the "Config.ini" file directly within the same emplode session. Because the settings in the configure player screen get written to config.ini, you could get into a situation where the changes you intended to make to the player settings get written from that edited copy of config.ini, thus losing the changes.
2. As was already said: After editing either the configure player screen or the config.ini screen, always make sure to synch.
3. If synching doesn't write your changes to the player, you might be having
this problem (fsck),
this problem (db rebuild), or
this problem (disk trouble). You can also check for
this problem (favorites bloat) but it's less likely.