Then randomly, it came out of standby and started playing! Could I have hit something on the remote maybe?

This is the most logical assumption. Any signal from the remote will wake up the empeg from standby mode.

The other thing that would do it is if there was something wrong with the ignition wiring or the car's ignition switch. If the empeg senses voltage on the ignition wire, it will wake up.

It's also possible it got some sort of a negative spike on the ignition wire, causing the empeg to wake up. Do you need the diode adapter? See the FAQ section of this BBS for the relevant entries on power on/off/standby oddities.

I set the dimmer to less then 100 then the display will flip back and forth between 100 and the low value (mostly at 100, occationaly dimming to set lights-on value) when the illumination is on.

Yes, this sounds like a wiring problem. Check your wiring. Use a voltmeter to determine what the light-sense line is doing when you turn your lights on and off.

Also make sure you are running the latest version of the empeg player software. The earliest releases had some bugs in that area.

does it matter if the grounds of the rca plugs (speaker channels) touch each other or the car chassis?

Yes, it matters. Grounding the audio channels can result in a ground loop, causing unwanted voltage to flow backwards through the audio lines. This can cause alternator whine and other noises to come out of your amplifiers. It also could possibly cause some of the other problems you're describing, although I've never heard of those specific problems being caused by grounded RCA shrouds.

Also, my old radio dimmed up and down with the dash lighting with a dimmer on the dash. I think the Illumination line is a sliding voltage (guess, not checked) instead of a 0/+12 thing. I think thats fairly common in cars, could/should the empeg take advantage of that?

Since modern cars have different ways of implementing this feature (some do a sliding voltage, others do pulse modulation, etc), it's hard for third-party stereos to implement it properly. The on/off with adjustable dimness is the catch-all solution.

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Tony Fabris