You're right, there is no direct-track-number access.
That's because the Empeg isn't playing CDs. it's playing from a database of songs. You have to think about your music collection a little differently. You no longer think about it in terms of "CD/Track" any more. You have to think about it as a huge database of thousands of songs, and decide what you want to listen to based on that concept. Organizing the database as Artist/Album/Track is just one possible (and very limited) way of listening to the music. There are other much more interesting ways to use it.
It's true that if you're listening to a given album, you do have to press the "next track" button 12 times to get to the 12th track (assuming you're on track 1 right now), but the Empeg makes this a lot easier in the following ways:
1) If you've got the track info up on the screen, you can see the names of the songs as you scroll through them. That way, if you don't remember exactly which tracknumber the song was, you'll see the song title.
2) If you have "Now and Next" up on the screen it's even easier. You can see four songs in advance and scroll to the song you want.
3) The track switches are instantaneous, making it a lot easier to get to the 12th song.
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Tony Fabris