Hypnotised (a brief review of empeg)
===================================

I cannot remember having anticipated the arrival of anything at my house
so much since I was a child waiting for Christmas; well, Christmas came a
bit early (last Wednesday, to be precise) and yes, for once it's as
wonderful as I imagined.

Out of the Box
==============
empeg is delivered in a small, white box, and my first thought was
"where's the rest of it?" Opening it up revealed a neat, delightful piece
of compact packing and a surprising amount of stuff shoved in there. The
unit is packed inside the sled, and around and under the unit is a CD
with the software, a neat little A5 booklet of general instructions,
serial and USB cables, a power supply, and - wonder of wonders - the
correct power cable. This may seem a trivial point, but having unpacked
numerous systems delivered by major hardware manufacturers only to find I
have to walk to the hardware store for the correct plugs, I was not
expecting this - a nice bit of attention to detail.

So around 30 seconds after I had the box open ("it took you THAT
LONG??"), empeg was plugged in and booting... more of that later.

First Impressions
=================

empeg is an incredibly tidy, compact little unit, hefty (but just "so")
and beautifully made - empeg Ltd. have not done this by halves. This is
no amateur construction; professional labelling, quality brushed
stainless steel case finish, protection layer to the front panel, gold
plated connectors, CNC'd handle - it all points to professionalism and
quality.

But dammit, that luvverly handle - as beautifully machined as it is - is
still a dull gunmetal finish, and ouch! it doesn't open far enough out to
get your fingers through it easily. The consequence of this is that when
you pull the unit out and walk with it, it hangs awkwardly and is
somewhat difficult to hold without fear of dropping it. A minor
modification to the handle metalwork should cure this one quickly; and it
would be *really* nice if the securing screws for the front panel and the
handle itself were anodised to the same colour as the facia perspex....

The facia is a coloured perspex plate, secured by countersunk screws
recessed into the plate itself; to the left hand end of the plate there's
a neatly sized and placed group of four control buttons, with a a clean,
controlled operation. You can just sit there for ages pressing them,
listening for that "click"....

The sled is a folded and TIG-welded stainless affair, made of remarkably
thick sheet - more so than I would have expected and definitely a notch
up on the sled metalwork provided by the likes of Philips and Blaupunkt.
An enormous bundle of cable stubs (including a serial cable) poke out of
the back, and a choke is supplied separately for a healthy installation
in the guts of your dashboard; all the accompanying cables are good
quality too, including the afore-mentioned power cable.

Finally, there's the Kenwood Remote control, which is not custom designed
for the empeg, but definitely suited to this application; neat and small,
it's credit card sized and sports an array of feature buttons formed as
domed bubbles; good button press feedback means you don't have to worry
about whether the button was actually pressed or not.
All in all, a genuinely pleasing article with a delightful tactile feel
(in more than one sense!).

Plugged In
==========

The unit runs as soon as you can get it to you nearest power socket;
after displaying the empeg logo with the Penguin, it boots *really*
rapidly (around six seconds) and spits up a small group of text messges
as the various software components start up. In fact, it's almost too
quick; given most computer users' experiences of boot latency, you almost
get a shock at the speed with which it comes up. For a second I was left
there wondering if it was busted, or hung up!

If anything, it's *too* quick; the logo is only on the screen for about a
second, and it would be nice to have it stay up there for a bit longer,
or until you operate it for the first time; that would be a real
street-cred point winner over geeks in the know, travelling in the back...
There's a sample track supplied on the disk; the first thing I did was
press "Play" on the remote and cracked the mask with a grin that would
have left lipstick on my earlobes (had I been wearing any, you
understand! ;^)

Pictures
========

Now comes what is arguably, aside from sound quality, the best bit of
empeg - the display graphics. Centered in the deep blue of that facia
appears a dancing, hypnotic display of light that has to be seen to be
believed (OK, the hyperbole may take over a bit here). You can step
through a choice of what seems to be a huge collection of alternative
visualisations of your music, with variations on a theme; dancing bees,
oscilloscope, "flame" spectrum analyser, bounce box, spinning bass cube,
fast conventional spectrum analyser, slow-decay spectrum analyser, mirror
spectrum, symmetric spectrum, 2-axis Lissajous, negative 2AL, diffraction
grid, negative DG, and a few others I can't call to mind.
Wonderful, dancing, hypnotic - in fact, one of the things I've noticed
about these displays is this hypnotic, calming effect they seem to have
on the people watching them ("I'm sorry Officer, I just didn't notice the
approaching contraflow system, as I was watching the spectrum analyser on
my empeg at the time...").

They have to be seen to be believed, as I cannot do them justice in
print. Since they are the most visible part of the system, I suspect they
may well be the first things that after-market add-ons target, adding
more and more displays to chose from - screen saver package, anyone?
One minor grumble here is that *once*, and only once, did the empeg logo pop up
(to my surprise) while stepping through the displays; a bug, or an Easter
egg, empeg Ltd.? ;^) Now all you need is to have a spinning penguin...

Sound Quality
=============

As you'd expect, it's strikingly good (even to my jaded ears). As always,
this is going to depend on the quality of your MP3s (it goes without
saying that GIGO will definitely apply here). The supplied test track
played back with excellent clarity through my stereo at home; curiously
enough, for the first time, I seem to have found an input source that can
properly drive the pre-amp, which resulted in (for me) quite superb sound
clarity.

Why go into depth? Much like the graphics, you have to hear it to believe
it, and since much sound appreciation is in the end subjective, I will
leave it to experts to review the merits of playback. It has *not*
disappointed me, however, in fact exceeding my expectations. Having only
been able to compare this against a Diamond Rio (with different music
tracks), my impression is - better definition, with improved high
frequency playback than the Rio. I want to try comparing this against the
CDs I ripped for it through the same audio equipment, and against a DAT
source also.

Software
========

The software supplied with the unit is the emplode download and playlist
management software required to put music in your box; it is still Beta,
and this is noticeable. This does *not* however mean "unusable" - that's
not the case. It is sufficiently noteworthy to become annoying on
occasions, however. Additionally, there are a few odd problems with the
the empeg unit software itself, which empeg Ltd. acknowledges.

Is this so bad? Given the clamouring expectation for the product, I feel
that it has been a well-justified decision to release the unit with
software at this stage of development. There are rough edges, true, but
given the quite exceptional time-to-market for what is a revolutionary,
and complex, piece of gear, then empeg have only to be congratulated for
the monumental achievement this represents.

Problems? One or two small display bugs, a playlist hierarchy problem,
and (at the moment) somewhat limited features - but this can only improve
as the software is enhanced and developed, so I for one await the next
release with great anticipation.

That's the bad news out of the way - the good news is, the menu structure
and operation is just *sooo goood*, especially the sideways-scrolling
action of the menus. The menus are available through both keypad and
remote; fading, balance, volume, loudness, playlists, power, AUX
selection and visualisation are all controlled by the feature menu. With
the menus off, play control and source selection can all be rapidly
carried out, including changing to the radio and back, selecting presets,
turning track info on and off, stepping to the next visual - all with a
single keypress. What's missing, however, is the ability to step to the
next playlist with one press, and an audio feedback cue to let you know
the remote keypresses are getting through to the unit without having to
look at the display while you are driving (a la Philips, Alpine, Sony,
etc.). No doubt this will be addressed at a later date.

(As a side note, I have found that I can bounce the remote off the back
kitchen window, across a 5m room, off a mirror and still control the
unit!)

So, to sum up the software - "close, but no cigar!" (yet ;^)

Conclusions
===========

So what's my overall impression? In spite of the fact that I am utterly
besotted by the thing and am being rather less than totally objective, in
the end it is very hard not to be impressed by empeg. Small things such
as the packaging, build quality, heft, the little touches in the menus
and software, and (of course) the sound and graphics make this one
"pretty awsome consumer experience".

So - hang in there! Yours is coming (soonish)!!