My stereo has randomly lost power over the last month or so. Seems to only happen when I'm playing cd's. Today it happened three times on the way home from work. I'll be impressed with (almost) any guess as to why.

 

battery is going bad ,shutting off nonessentials first

 

+1

 

Wait, even with the car running? If Schatzy says it's so, it must be so....I learned something new today!

I would have suggested thermal protect shutdown of the headunit. Especially if it was correlated to CD player use and the extra little bit of heat it generates.