sorry if these are really dumb. the people here are sophisticated enough that i am a little intimidated from posting but i will anyway :)

always ask questions, how else will you learn? Don't worry no-one here bites.

question 1 - is there a way to get sonicblue to add a HD to my unit? the FAQ suggests it but i don't see an "order form" for a HD upgrade anywhere

If you have just bought your player (congratulations on your new toy!), you have the option of buying and instsalling the HD yourself or you can contact Rob or customer support for them to do it for you.
If you choose to go it yourself you will void your warranty and you must be sure of what you're doing, so read the FAQ and plug us with questions if you don't understand ANYTHING!
The HD can be installed yourself without too much difficulty and should probably be attempted before you put your entire collection on it.

question 2 - is there a way to automatically add IDV3 tags to my MP3's that are missing the info? like some kind of cddb query, as opposed to me right-clicking every file and hand-entering all the data?

Also in the FAQs are a few pointers to tag editors. It is REALLY important to have all your tags correct before you get them into emplode. V2 now does a great job of tag editing, but wasn't designed exclusively for that purpose. Besides there is no easy way to retrieve your changed tracks from the player, so should anything go awry you'll have to do it all over again.

question 3 - what does the config.ini do and how do i get to it? is it doable with just emplode or do i have to do some kind of terminal connection to the unit somehow?

I'm not the expert here but i believe that you need the developer image on the riocar/empeg, a terminal prog and some instructions on where to find it. I'm giving this one the flick pass.


question 4 - how do you move around in your music? i'm used to the traditional continuous/program/shuffle modes of other devices, but i'm not sure how to interact with the empeg UI to find a song and play it, or to choose a group (artist, CD, etc) to play.

The FAQ should help lots, briefly:
Generally, all your music is in Playlists. You can have any track appear in any number of playlists without duplicating the physical data as the playlists are just references in a database. these playlists can be played as a whole or you can select eny of its children (playlists or tracks) to be played.
Additionally, you can search for tracks by PIN, year, trackname, artist, genre and source. the results can be added to the end of the playlist (append), added next (insert), or replace the current playlist (search(?))


Does this clarify things a little?

Murray
new styleee