PhatBox review from an empeg owner

I had an empeg for about 2 years in my VW. But I recently bought an Audi allroad (A6) and wasn't willing to rip up the dash. PhatNoise is once again selling standalone PhatBoxes that integrate with factory systems and it seemed to be my best choice for getting more than 6 CDs worth of music in the car. It was a painful decision but as I thought about it I realized that, frankly, most of the bling bling features of the empeg have little value to me besides being cool. So I ordered the PhatBox fully expecting it to be a letdown after years of empeg use. So far I've been pleasently surprised and, dare I say, it does some things better than the empeg.

Obviously, where the PhatBox stands out is OEM integration (if they have one for your car). The PhatBox simply plugged into the prewired CD changer cable in the trunk and it worked. It took about 10 minutes (though I haven't permanently mounted it yet). The empeg would have required me to change every piece of the Bose factory system in addition to fabricating a new dashboard piece.

But what surprised me is how good the SSA interface is. For the basic job of picking music to play while on the road I find it superior to the empeg. SSA works through voice prompts and the cd changer controls. When you are browsing for music to play, CDs 2-5 correspond to different browsing modes. For example, selecting CD4 puts you in artist mode. Then you scroll through the artists with the track up/down buttons. PhatBox "speaks" the artists as you browse through them (or not if you are scrolling quickly). When you've found the artist you want you can simply stop and all of that artists tracks are queued up. Or you could then go to CD3 and you would be in album browse mode and you can pick the particular album you want as it speaks them. It's hard to explain and even PhatNoise doesn't do a very good job explaining it. I was pretty skeptical at first but it actually works quite well. I can completely control it with my steering wheel buttons and I never have to take my eyes off the road. I expected it to be slow but browsing with the voice prompts feels about the same speed as using the empeg's sideways scrolling menus.

The text to speach engine is pretty decent. They now use one from ATT which is much better than the MS engine they used to use. It pronounces most things correctly and the voice speaks at a good pace. (Ironically, one word it does mispronounce is PhatNoise. It pronounces it fat-nwah.)

The other neat feature of the PhatBox is the dynamic playlists that you set up using the PC software. In additional to the usual static collection of songs, playlists can be queries based on things like artist, title, genre, timestamp and the playlists are generated every time you sync the hard drive. I really like having a playlist that is the last 50 songs I've put on the drive. Multi-genre playlists are also nice.

Because the SSA interface has built in artist/album/genre browsing there is no need to maintain manually created playlists that correspond to these. I've always felt that it was ridiculous I had to maintain my own artist/album playlists on the empeg. The PhatBox Music Manager also syncs with a directory structure on my hard drive and the sync cradle is USB 2.0. These features will make it less time consuming to keep my collection organized and up to date.

This wasn't meant to be a post about which product is better or worse. I would still choose the empeg in a situation where I was willing to replace the entire factory system. But the PhatBox has been soundly dismissed on this board as a poor product when very few of you have ever used it. I wanted to post a counter opinion because I think it's a very well conceived and executed product given it's goal of OEM integration.

Flame away.

-Dylan

Thank you for the review.

Greetings!

Thanks for the review. It does sound pretty decent, especially with the limitations of the OEM interface. It sounds like it was fairly well designed to meet those issues, and it could be a very good choice for people who cannot make, do not want to make or are not familiar with making the needed modifications to their car systems.

In a way, I am glad it wasn't available like this until now. When I first got the empeg, there was nothing else that came close. But I had (and still have) fairly little experience with upgrading car audio systems. This would have looked very attractive back then, and the OEM capabilities would have made it a very strong favorite. But I have no regrets...

That's it. We NEED TTS people! Man would it ever be incredible to have the empeg read what's being scrolled through so i don't have to look at the screen. Seems like it should be doable by now... i know there have been plenty of threads on it in the past... and because i'm a lazy bastard... could anyone recap what's preventing this from being implemented? Is there not a good Open Source TTS engine?? I'd pay for this feature.

-loren

But the PhatBox has been soundly dismissed on this board as a poor product when very few of you have ever used it. I wanted to post a counter opinion because I think it's a very well conceived and executed product given it's goal of OEM integration.

I think the only people flatly "dissing" the PhatBox on this board were ones who had trouble with their particular model. Otherwise, it comes down to feature comparison.

Well... okay, I might have made some snide remarks about the name...

Anyway, yeah, the OEM integration thing is something you just can't do wtih the Empeg in many cases, so if that's your goal, I'm sure the PhatBox is a fine product. I know that I certainly would rather have the empeg than a PhatBox, but if I were left with no choice I think the PhatBox is what I'd use.

ahem...

Short summary: I tried to prove that TTS is possible on the empeg, and nobody seemed interested, so I lost interest in trying. Most of the ingredients are there, we just need to connect them. The memory consumption of the TTS engine might be a little too much, but that could possibly be tweaked.. We have the source to the engine. There are others out there, but Flite seemed to be the closest to what we need.. Doesn't work right "out of the box" though.

A hA! I knew i remembered someone trying it. Damn. I wish i had a lick of a clue about programming and/or the time to learn. This seems like such a killer feature i don't get why more people aren't jumping all over it.

Food for thought... the PhatBox doesn't have the horsepower to do TTS so it's all pregenerated on the PC and saved as WAV's on the PhatBox drive. Perhaps an approach like that would make it easier to implement for the empeg.

-Dylan

Ah, so that's about the same approach the neo35 used with it's latest firmware chip. This one also added speech to the unit by putting hundreds of little soundfiles on the harddisk.

I don't know if I like that approach that much, but I guess it's a good start.

That would not be too bad of a solution. The sound files wouldn't be too bad since most of the Empeg's have TONS of space. Wouldn't it sound horrible to have the empeg reading track names off when you are playing a song though???

I made a simple little program for the empeg that I call "TTS Clock r1" It is available at http://www.zabaware.com/empeg/ Basically, when installed, your empeg will greet you, say the date, and say the time a few seconds after ignition before the player app starts.

I also started a discussion on the programming forum at http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hackers_prog&Number=125368 on creating a prerecorded TTS app that will announce the title of a song before it starts playing.

is there any more help available for this? i have not been able to get it to work. i have beta 13 running, hijack 300 and i followed the directions on your web site:

http://www.zabaware.com/empeg/

thanks.

Read through this thread http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=hackers_prog&Number=125368 to see if your problem was addressed and if not describe your problem in more detail.

In the same thread, Rob noticed something about Q3... TTS... ???

thanks... i got it to work using the developer's image. that's all i changed.

DomoKun,

I finally got this to work, but i had to install the developer's version. Anyway, i had some thoughts for you. Maybe someone else has some answers...

1. How can i convert home made 44.1 16 bit wave files into raw files to use in this app? Will it accept 44.1 and 16bit? I can create a new set of voices.

2. Can you add an additional check for morning, afternoon or evenging? Then it will say "good morning" insted of welcome. But i like having welcome in there becuase i can replace it with a voice saying my name, like "good morning steve, today is..."

3. Bug: it wont say the right time. its always 5 hours off, even if i change the clock using the empeg menus... are there any known bugs with the clock? It works except it says its 10am when its 5am, its only the hours voice that is off by a few. Does it have something to do with the time zones?

Please help!

or can this program just use a mp3 file??? (maybe the decoder needs to be installed to decode the mp3, and therefore you are using the raw becuase it can be passed straight to the dsp....?)

In the same thread, Rob noticed something about Q3... TTS... ???

Yeah... and (looking at wristwatch with a "fiscal quarters" dial on it)... Gee, it's Q4 already...

Is there any way you can add maybe an option in the config.ini file where we can set the voice volume fixed, like:

[tts]
;@DC VoiceVolume=50 ;50% volume when saying the time in the car
;@AC VoiceVolume=Auto ;use the volume that the player last was turned off with, during AC operation

Would that be hard to add?

You can create your own PCM audio files in an audio editing program like Cool Edit (from http://www.syntrillium.com/ ) It can save audio to the raw PCM format. It must be be 44.1 in 16-bit stereo in order to work with the pcmplay program on the empeg. You play any PCM file on the empeg if you have the pcmplay program and you type
pcmplay < audiofile.pcm

You can replace the morning.pcm afternoon.pcm and evening.pcm with your own pcm files if you want to customize my TTS Clock to greet you in whatever way you want.

And as for the 5 hours off problem, until we figure out how to sync the timezone in the shell with the player app, you have to set your time zone in the player app as "Universal" and set your time accordinly.

awesome ! it worked. i added some windows start up sounds for now, until i can find something better. I think i'll have my friend so some voice overs for me... someone with a smooth voice, i would prefer something that didn't have that 22k 8 bit crakle sound to it, i prefer something that was recorded live at 44.1 16bit, in a studio and edited.

I haven't followed up with the vendor, although I will need to do so soon.

Rob

it works, but just as the pcm file is about to play, i hear a loud clicking noise. I'm not sure if that's becuase i have the volume hard coded to 50% or something else. I dont remember hearing that before i fixed the volume (made that update to the script that you mentioned)

do you have any ideas on how to get around that?

anyone get this error from the time/date TTS script?
it doesnt run for me

sh-2.03# ./B10tts
mount: proc already mounted
mount: /dev/hda4 already mounted or /drive0 busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda4 is already mounted on /drive0
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
/dev/empeg_state: Device or resource busy
cat: /drive0/var/tts/0.pcm: Input/output error
sh-2.03#

Dylan,

Enjoyed reading your review of the PhatBox. I hate the name, but there have always been aspects of that product that I found appealing. Your post may inspire me to start a long-contemplated thread in OT....

Dylan has motivated me to buy one. My girlfriend does not want me to touch the dash or disable any steering wheel controls on her new BMW convertible. When I'm in her car it's cd's or radio, I feel like I've gone back in time. This sounded like a good compromise for us. I'm sure that I will constantly compare it to my empeg, and I an sure that I'll bitch about some feature that it doesn't have, but at least I'll be listening to mp3's while I'm doing it.

Yeah, but you can give us an even better review, as you'll be living with both at the same time. Let us know!

As soon as I play with it I will report back. So far the install sure looks easy, and since we have a BMW I was able to get the voice feature, that part has my attention. I should be up and running by early next week.

has been working great, but yesterday and today it only says,

"good morning, today is november. The time is 10:03 am"

its missing the number in the date. Has this happened for anyone else?

<kinda scared>.... um, is this phatbox going to become better than the empeg? I mean, it TALKS!

Oh well, I think I just figured out the Gamipon (or however it's spelled) visual today. Nothing will be as good as the empeg until it can create something in assembly that looks THAT good. props to the "demo scene" of the early 90's (and before, and after).

Oh, I wouldn't worry about the Phatbox. We have things up our sleeve that we've been working on for many years, which are soon to be revealed to the world.

Ooo, I love being cryptic.

Hugo

Heh... empeg MK3? Patrick shipping the tuner kits!? I can hear the gears of the rumormill grinding now.

I bet it's some sort of AI that fits into a 5cm cube and stores 300 gig of music...

/Ooo, I love being cryptic

Yeh, let me translate: Vaporware

SCNR

Ooo, I love being cryptic.

Yes you and Rob seem to enjoy it too much ! ;-)

Yeh, let me translate: Vaporware

So where can I buy one of those much heralded (and then never mentioned again) Visteon Phatbox products?

Rob

Actually, Phatnoise offer the "ford" edition now. Not sure if that's a visteon box or not, though. Nothing new over the old Phatbox design, though.

As for "vapourware", it's rather more "secretware" - we've had many new car products which have never been shown publically (though they've appeared at many specialist automotive industry shows, without our name on them). One or two will appear at CES, though...

Hugo

One or two will appear at CES, though

That's what I was waiting to hear.

Man, can't you auction those prototypes to your loyal followers here on the board! I've ALWAYS wanted a working prototype of something cool. Think about it, one of a kind! (or, few of a kind).

If they were available I'd already have one in my car!

Rob

It does get hard, wiping the drool from prototypes on an almost daily basis... even the customers drool over them and they're not strictly geeks

Hugo

You two are truly horrible! Constantly dangling a carrot in front of us!

So taunted by all the "leg" of a new "car type" (maybe) device from rio/empeg/altman et al........should we all wait (till CES at LEAST), or buy whats available today thet fits the (really overpriced) AudiBMWVW set with their non standard radios and associated signal processing complications??????

When is CES again? Wasn't that the beginning of january ?

Hugo,

will you be at CES this year? Do you know the booth # that will be showing off these products? I'm going to attend this year in Las Vegas.

are these "new" things complete new products, or empeg related upgrades? ;-)

- Complete new products, not empeg upgrades.
- I'm not yet sure if I'll be at CES (if I am, I'll be there the last 2 days as I'm snowboarding immediately before it, in France)
- I can't tell you the booth # as that would give the game away as to who we've been working with...

Hugo

Once CES begins, will you be able to reveil who the partners are?

yes, if so, let us know just before, and we'll check it out.

Yes.

Hugo

I think I saw tech tv talking about a pda esque device devloped with sonicblue and intel. Now I can't find it on their website so maybe I dreamed it or something.

The PVP - personal video player. There's a thread about it somewhere on the BBS.

Rob

Once CES begins, will you be able to reveil who the partners are?

No one who really knows can answer that question until CES, but, in a serious effort to avoid real work, I couldn't help flipping through the CES exhibitor list and cooking up a speculative list:

Kenwood, Pioneer, Sony: Unlikely. Already have offerings. Pioneer I could see.

Harmon Kardon, Klipsch, Marantz, Polk, Rockford Fosgate, Sanyo: Either a small/modest presence in mobile audio or not a very big company overall.

Delphi: Are they still GM-oriented?
Visteon: Why not? My number 3 pick.
Nakamichi: Doesn't seem like their style

Panasonic, Clarion, Jensen: My 1st, 2nd, and distant 4th pick.

I am of course prepared to be *completely* surprised!!

Methinks Jim might be looking in the wrong category for guessing at partners.

Methinks Jim might be looking in the wrong category for guessing at partners.

Well hot dog, another clue!

I may have over/misinterpreted from Hugo's "- Complete new products, not empeg upgrades. " that at least some of the partnership was for mobile/car audio.

Dang! Now I'll have to avoid real work some more and go through that list *again*.

Tony is contributing guesses, not clues

Rob

Right.

Ooh! Are there any washing machine manufacturers listed?!?

LOL....front or top loading??

We all know they're british, and they only use front loaders over there.

I've got to say I'm looking forward to my car dockable iPod killer.

Matthew

I always give them back to you wiped clean of any drool!!

Halt: Identify yourself.

Fully indentifying myself would ruin all Hugo's cryptic fun!! I'm a well-meaning "not strictly geek" keen on spreading the Empeg word to a wider audience.

Okay, fair enough.

It took me longer than I expected to review the Phatnoise system I purchased for my girlfriends BMW, work, Christmas, etc.
After getting familiar with the player I went back and read Dylans review again, it is extremely accurate, however I don't enjoy this player as much as I think he does.
It is a great option if you do not want to change your factory head unit. The install was about an hour, all of it in the trunk, and if I had never heard of the empeg, I would love this player.
I have installed almost 8000 songs on the 40gig (largest available) hard drive, and I have the voice interface, which is alright, it seems it is more of a gadget to impress your friends than anything else. I realize that without it, it would be very difficult to find any music since the BMW diplay will only show CD number and Track number.
Nothing beats the display of the empeg. I use track mode to display as much information as possible. When I'm in the BMW I constantly miss that feature.
As far as uploading the songs, I did not encounter any problems nor did I find the software difficult to use. The SSA interface does an OK job reading the ID3 tags, however it reads everything. For example, if the tag shows Train, Train it will read Train comma Train. It you have a live album, it reads live as in living.
My original feeling turned out to be true. I knew I would miss the empeg while I was in the BMW, but is is better that the radio or CD's. She is happy with it, and I can listen to mp3's while I'm in her car, but I personaaly feel I would rather change my entire system, (if that is what it took) to be able to have all of the options of the empeg.