Hi all,

now I finally have my long-awaited Empeg and got it installed in the car. So here's my feedback.

First of all, please don't flame me for the criticism, this is meant constructive. :) I will NOT trade my Empeg, I love it! Still, there are a few things where I though they should be fixed:

- the manual that ships with the Empeg _sucks_. That one definitely has to be made foolproof, especially for people that are not absolute pros with a computer. Just one example, a step-by-step tutorial for hooking up the Empeg to the computer with trouble-shooting notes is missing. I had to try a bit until I found out how that was all meant to be setup (of course, plug it into USB and it works - but I tried with networking first and nothing happened. Who told me that the unit needs networking setup before trying to use networking for the first time?) It's all there "somehow" but not in one place.

- the trouble shooting section in the manual should be extended

- The online manual in Emplode and the written manual differ a lot. They should contain the same information.

- Make Emplode itself and the manuals etc be online updateable, also include a check for new firmware!

- The usability of Emplode is uhm, well, down to a minimum. While Emplode does what it is supposed to, there are lots of things that could be improved (double clicking on a playlist entry brings up the properties of the item, double clicking on the same item in the tree does nothing, etc etc etc - there are quite a few things)

- The IR remote is really bad. I think that this one still ships because nobody got around to design a better one yet and the first one was probably a plain vanilla industry remote? The keys are hard to find and the layout is just plain illogical. (at least for my thinking)

- The player needs a usability check-up, too. Just one example: the left/right/down keys and the knob have duplicated functions, they basically all do the same. This unit has _so_ few keys, I'd prefer to have a better key assignment. At least if you're using the left/right keys to choose the tracks, they should keep that function no matter what (only exception _might_ be in the menu). Whenever you're adjusting the volume, you first have to exit the volume control screen before you can change the track. That sucks.

- You've got such a huge screen, use it! Except for the huge list of visuals (which may be cool but while driving I'd rather have information there) only the track info screen and the playlist screens make efficient use of it. I do like the feature that the menus show up kind of 3D, but the eye will always be focused on the top level so eventually there should be done something different too (I thought about clustered menus but I think that won't work)

- for some reason if I use files encoded with variable bitrate the skip forward/skip backward function doesn't work anymore

- one last thing not player-related: make the carrying bag just a little bit larger - the unit hardly fits - and add something for carrying it on your shoulders (it looked like you could in the pictures at the store)

Oh, and as for the IR thread that I saw going on somewhere else - how about adding a "learn new remote" feature. You enter learn mode, press a key on the old remote, then press a key on the new remote. That way the Empeg could easily learn (and not the remote would have to be "teachable").

Well, I think most points relate to software, which should be easy to fix. I really like the player itself, it seems to be pretty solid. Putting it into my car was quite a bit of fun as there was hardly any room for all the cables. :)

Till