You may be overlooking a salient point here... when talking to the empeg, you are not going to be in a public place -- you are going to be in your car, isolated by glass and sheet metal. Outsiders are not going to notice you talking to your empeg.

The "insiders" -- i.e., any passengers in your car -- will be so totally entranced and impressed by the "cool factor" of a stereo that you can talk to that you will be looking for opportunities to show it off, not embarassed by it. In fact, you will get precious little opportunity to talk to your empeg because your passengers will be competing for the privilege of doing it themselves!

I think when it comes to control of appliances, the best sort of interface is either a barely audible or not audible interface.

Well, maybe... but it depends on the amount of information you need to impart to the appliance. If it's just "TV: On", then yes, simple is better. But when you want something like "Empeg: Haydn Trumpet Concerto, second movement, the performance with Winton Marsalis as soloist, use equalizer setting #7, set volume to plus 3", then a wink and a nod just isn't going to do the trick.

Given those circumstances, I think voice recognition is the best way to go -- certainly better than navigating through layers of submenus by keeping one eye on a little credit card sized remote, another eye on a small in-dash screen, and your third eye on the road...

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"