This means that, either my Yamaha CD player is loud or the EMPEG is quiet

hmmm... Is this a CD player hooked up to an external amp? Does the CD player have amplified outputs? Forgive me if I am stating the obvious, but my CD player has both amped and non-amped outputs... I hooked the wrong ones into my amplifier and is was overly loud. (?)

And I really like your "Stupid Feature Request." Light of day or not, it would be a cool feature to play with... I'd like to add different codecs as well!