Hopefully the next empeg redesign will also involve more emphasis on cheaper part and production costs so we can see an empeg base price down around $600. That would be serious CD player competition.
To be honest, I hope this does not happen. Or at least any redesign should also provide the high quality we are all used to by now. Really, I would like to see an empeg alike device in a more mainstream price region, but I wouldn't want to give up the top of the notch (in terms of quality and usability) type device the empeg / rio-car currently is. But I wouldn't mind a split into two players, a lower cost one with integrated amp (and probably lower quality and a less sophisticated UI) and the high end one with no parts in it but the best currently available.

cu,
sven

proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, #080000113)