This news seemed likely about the time Empeg became Rio/SonicBlue, whatever. I feared something so horrible would happen. Having worked for companies that buy other companies, I've seen it all first hand. I wish all the Empeg'rs the best of luck!

I'm certainly not mad at the Empeg folks... In fact, the first time I had to use their tech support was just this month and I've owned my Empeg MK2 40GB since before they where bought. (I think I bought my Empeg in December) I've loved it from day one and wouldn't want anything else in my car stereo system for playing music. (Sorry guys, $2000 for on demand MP3's vs. $300 for some CD MP3 player... I don't think there should even be reason to compare, the $2000 is well worth it...to me!)

Amazingly, I haven't killed the MK2 with my subs (seven 10" subs in my truck, my car rattles *ALLOT*), so the shock proofing they did has paid off. In fact, one of the main reasons for the switch to an MP3 hard drive system, in my car, was because the high end Alpine skip proof CD head unit I have can't handle my car's massive amount of bass... the CD's would always skip on competition bass and quite a few "normal" songs!

As for keeping the code closed source, I'm ok with that, on one condition, they release updates. If it gets to the point where they are going to abandon support for us 3000 owners, then they need to give back to the community that built them into what they are/were. I guess only time will tell, but it's sad that the most likely option is that we will never see source code.

My only other concern is warranty, and upgrades. I'm sure soon enough, 40GB is not going to be enough. What are the limits to upgrading the drives in the unit? What is entailed, and how can we go about obtaining the necessary information to upgrade our units at some point? Obviously, this isn't something I'll think about until my warranty is void, but after that, I'm pretty much willing to have the largest capacity Empeg on the planet! Anyone have the information I'll need to accomplish this? Any of the Empeg guys willing to share the in's and out's and how-to's of swapping/replacing hard drives?

On to SonicBlue/Rio, I really have no respect for the belligerent assholes that run that company. I don't see how they can sit on a gold mine and throw it away because it's not cheap enough for the general populous?! The products they make (Rio Portable MP3 player for example, which I happen to own) are complete pieces of sh^H^Hcrap! I can't stand their pathetic tech support, crappy software, and poor product design. The Rio handheld scream poor design, and I don't know how they even got $200 for them when they came out. If any market could use digital audio, it's definitely the high margin car audio market. It's a shame that they didn't do a little more market research and technical partnering to turn the Empeg into the next "killer app" for car audio. It wouldn't have been hard... I'm sure companies like Alpine would jump at the chance to buy up OEM agreements for value priced components, like an Empeg-MP3 Jukebox to plug into Alpine's AI-Net. Maybe I'm just dreaming, but I know allot of people into car audio, and I know ever more people who love my Empeg... It's always the center of attention... Piss poor move SonicBlue!

Oh, and to that guy who was talking about GPS, etc, I'd love to support effort into that! I drooled over the Empeg geek site listing of the Palm/GPS solution, but I assume that never materialized! :(


MK 2 - 40GB - Green