The file was one I got on a hard disk borrowed from a friend, so until I get a chance to see him I won't know if a new rip will do the same. VBRfix log says it is a CBR and skipped it, but in Winamp it stopped tonight with a little red "led" in the oscilliscope window, so I am guessing it is really a bad file.
More concerned about my time to connect / disconnect in Emplode. I timed it using first USB and then Ethernet and both took 4 mins to go through all the stages, the biggest pause being reading the player config and writing it.
It was nowhere near as slow until this last few connections