I think you've missed the point slightly.. our processing engine occupies about a quarter of the main board, and provides a 220Mhz RISC processor with a significant amount of IO and other features (I'll get to that in a sec).

The rest of the board is the power supply (which keeps the sensitive circuitry running under terrible input voltage conditions), the ICE DSP (hardware EQ etc) and the audio stage. That's the clever bit of the hardware, but the clever bit of the product overall is the software - it might seem simple, but you'd be surprised how many man hours have gone into it, and as companies go, we work FAST!

OK, now to open a whole can of worms... :-)

Visitors to Comdex will have seen the prototype of our next production model. It's the good old empeg that you all know and love, but with some extra bells and whistles.. First is on-board 10BaseT ethernet, which will be offered as an option on a special edition model aimed at developers. Then there's an extra 4Mb of RAM, giving 12Mb as standard, and a front panel control (gradiated rotary with push function). The display is unchanged although there's an LCD interface inside, for which we have no plans at the moment. Red display panels will be available (we finally found one that works with IR). The tuner has been removed from inside the player - instead we've created an external tuner interface, for which we will produce an AM/FM/RDS module initially, with DAB planned for the future. A cell phone muting input is provided, and the wiring loom has moved to a standard ISO connector. The grounding leads are nolonger required, and all filters are integral to the player and/or wiring loom.

I saved the best til last - we've licenced some very sophisticated voice recognition technology and fitted a microphone input. Proper nouns (e.g. artist/track names etc) can be taught to the system via the PC software, so you can simply tell the empeg what you want to listen to and it will deliver.

I hope this proves (if proof were needed) that we listen to what our clients have to say. Many (probably most) of these features have been requested by empeg owners and we are very pleased to be able to deliver them. Component shortages are holding up production a little, and in practice this model is likely to start shipping during March.

There will be very attractive upgrade or trade-in deals for existing empeg owners, but don't ask for details just yet because we haven't finalised them. Be assured that the current model will continue to be fully supported, although, of course, features that rely upon new hardware will only appear on players that can support them. Existing owners will be able to benefit fully from new software features that do not require new hardware, e.g. WMA support and so forth.

Apart from Comdex visitors, you guys are the first to hear this. More comprehensive details will go out in a newsletter very soon.

You still want that Libretto? :-)

Rob