there is no other player on the market that is as feature rich as the empeg, or as extensible

...and how can you go to an owner's meet, if you haven't got an Empeg - it's your passport. I should think a Sony owners' meet would be a pretty dire occasion, everybody knocking six bells out of each other over whether they're on the side of the RIAA and the record company, or the MP3 and the player!