I'm also located in Massachussets a couple hours from where you are in Boston. I observed cracking on HN photo Rag Baryta when I was using some last winter. All I had to do to induce some cracking in the glossy microporous coating was to take the paper into a backward curl with a diameter of about 2 inches and I could hear it cracking. Your printer has a straight paper path, but are you perhaps trying to de-curl the paper before inserting? BTW, I went back a few months later during the more humid summer months with same batch of paper, and it didn't crack unless taken to a much sharper bend. The cause of the cracking sensitivity is low humidity, and the high gloss microporous papers tend to be more sensitive to the problem (I have seen it on other glossy papers as well EEF included), and the problem is further aggravated in the HN photo rag Baryta because the soft cotton rag base paper doesn't give the coating layer much rigid support.
In the dead of winter here in the Northeast, homes and offices get very dry inside due to heating of the outside air by the building's heating system, the relative humidity dropping to as low as 10%RH. This very cold winter we have been having doesn't help the situation. Even with a humidifier most homes located in a cold northern climate can't be humidified to much more than about 20%RH (still very low) when outside air drops into subzero temperature range, otherwise condensation will start occurring on windows and worse yet in walls and crawl spaces.
The physical delicacy of some inkjet papers is a definite concern. More research is needed to see how much more prone to cracking and flaking the modern inkjet media is compared to traditional silver gelatin papers. Even traditional gelatin has humidity cycling problems, but it usually takes many years of strong seasonal cycling to induce cracks in traditional photographic prints. I never saw it happen so easily before.
regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com
