Well, you're on the Empeg Car BBS, so you're going to get very biased opinions here. We all think the Empeg/Rio Car is the better of the two. The extra cost is worth it.

Something you might want to consider is simply replacing your current stereo with the Rio Car. That's what I did, and I haven't looked back. I don't miss my CD player one bit. Although if you're certain you want to keep the existing stereo, then you can do that, too. Just make sure there's room in your dash for both.

There are some main advantages the Rio Car has over just about any of its competitors:

- Shock-mounted disk drives.

- Uses laptop disk drives, which are designed for harsher conditions than 3.5" disk drives.

- The software and user interface are VERY advanced, allowing for some extremely complex searching and playlist capabilities that you won't find on any other product.

I could go on and on about how cool the empeg is, but that could take all day. Perhaps it's better if you ask specific questions about features, and we can answer them?

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Tony Fabris