Actually, I never had any turn-on or turn-off thump at all on my Mark 1. If it's wired properly, it shouldn't do that. There was an odd thump when I started the car with the player running, but that was an unrelated problem and I fixed that myself. Now it's completely thump-free.

The Mark 1 is a great unit, and I'm very happy with mine. The Mark 2 has more features, but the Mark 1 is certainly not "incomplete" by comparison.

The features the Mark 2 gains over the Mark 1 are:

- Rotary input knob.
- New faceplate style.
- Microphone input for VR (not yet implemented).
- Availability of a red faceplate (Mk1 is blue/green/amber only).
- Cell phone mute input.
- Headlight dimmer input.
- Ethernet input.

Features that the Mark 1 still has, same as the Mark 2:

- Nearly unlimited storage potential.
- Amazing VFD display and visuals.
- Incredibly flexible EQ.
- Great playlist managament and searching capability.
- Tweakable shuffle modes.
- Fast uploads via USB.
- Use-anywhere flexibility.
- Pull-out security.
- Constant software upgrades and improvements.
- Fantastic customer support.
- "Wow" factor.

The Mark 1 had one other problem which is fixed on the Mark 2: The floating ground outputs. On some installations, the floating ground adapters didn't work as intended and there was still a ground loop in the system causing some noise. In my case, this was caused by having a multi-amp system where every amplifier had a different ground potential, so it was my fault. I simply tuned the amp gains properly and the noise floor is quite good now. In single-amp systems, or systems that are properly grounded, this shouldn't even be a problem, so don't let that scare you.

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Tony Fabris