Review of Empeg Car unit number 144, 4Gb Blue.
by Tony Fabris


First of all, let me start out this review by noting that the unit was purchased used. I got it from a kind gentleman on Ebay who purchased his in September, but suddenly needed some extra cash. I had all but given up hope on getting an Empeg by Christmas, but lo and behold, this one turned up the week before Christmas. Santa came early this year.

As far as I know, I'm at no disadvantage whatsoever for having purchased a used unit. It was in perfect condition, and Rob at Empeg has informed me that they will continue to honor the remaining warranty period. The unit looked new, without even so much as a scratch on the faceplate.

I've only had the unit for a day now, so this is very much an "initial impressions" review. Okay, here we go...


- Installation -

Installation wasn't much more difficult than installing a regular stereo. My car (a 1988 VW GTI 16v) has a DIN-sized opening in the dash, but there is one slight problem with it. The car's plastic dash bezel isn't made to accommodate a full-pull-out, and had to be cut to allow the full pull-out. Fortunately, I'd done this before (for a pull-out CD player), and it wasn't a problem.

One issue was that the Empeg's docking sleeve is a bit deeper than many regular stereos. I was able to install it fine, but I had to remove an inner support bracket that was on the back wall of the dash before it would go in all the way. Since the bracket was riveted, I had to drill it to get it out. Again, not much of a problem for me.

There is more cabling dangling out of the back of the Empeg than most stereos, when you factor in the FM amplifier, the serial cable, and the ground adapters, but I was able to work it out OK. You have to use care, though, to make sure you don't cram and kink the cables.

I was worried about the 4-volt outputs going into my old amplifiers, but this turns out to have been no problem at all. It works just as well as my previous CD players.

The quality of the wiring is reasonably good, except for the floating ground adapters, which are visibly cheesier than the rest of the cabling. It doesn't appear to be much of a problem, and since the Mark 2's will eliminate the floating ground issue, future buyers won't need to worry about it.


- The Empeg Itself -

The first thing that comes to mind when describing the Empeg is that it's exactly what I expected it would be. I wasn't disappointed by it. Everything they said it would do, it does. It's not an over-hyped product. The visualizations are just as impressive as you'd expect them to be. The display looks just as good, if not better, than the pictures at the web site. The construction is solid, and the buttons feel crisp.

Visually, the unit is sleek. The smooth, featureless faceplate is great. I've heard complaints that it looks low-tech. On the contrary. To me, it's more high-tech looking than any car stereo I've ever seen.

The Linux software that runs on the unit seems very solid. It boots very quickly, almost as fast as a consumer car stereo. The menus are logically laid out, although the 4-button limit makes it hard to select certain features from the faceplate. Fortunately, the remote allows you to access most of the important features with one button-press. The Mark 2's will have that new knob, making the four buttons perform more logical functions, so it won't be an issue for new buyers.


- Surprises -

I've read everything about the Empeg that I could get my hands on, and still there were some features that pleasantly surprised me. These are features that I haven't seen mentioned in any other review:

The "standby mode" LED is cool. When you put the unit into standby mode, the LED pulses slowly, fading from dark to light instead of just blinking. There's something viscerally emotional about the way it pulses, as if it's hinting at the amazing power bottled up inside the unit. Like a sleeping dragon waiting to be awakened.

There are two independent volume controls, one for the "in-car" mode, and one for the "at-home" mode. When I have it plugged in at home, the volume is set at full power for the line-level outputs, correctly assuming that you'll be controlling the volume via an external amplifier or mixer. When it's plugged in the car, the volume is set wherever I had it last in the car, assuming that I'll be using the Empeg's volume control to set the level. It's so perfect and transparent that I did a double-take when I realized what was going on. I was second-guessing myself, worried that the volume would be too loud when I moved it to the car, but instead it just Did The Right Thing for me. This is a great feature that shows Empeg's attention to detail.

The "loudness" feature, usually just an on/off switch in most car stereos, is actually a sliding scale in the Empeg. You can adjust the amount of loudness contour you want. Again, attention to detail is what this thing is all about.


- Nonissues -

While waiting for my chance to buy an Empeg, I paid close attention to user's complaints on the BBS and the mailing list. I was a little worried about them. I'm happy to report that most of those problems have been solved, or they are nonissues for me:

The booting/power issues seem to have been solved. My car has a very serious voltage-drop problem when I start it. Early reports indicated that this might lock up the OS. For me, it works fine. When I start the car while the Empeg is playing, it simply drops out for a second or two, then resumes playing without having to fully reboot. Just like a regular car stereo.

I had seen several complaints about noise. Well, OK, there is some electronic noise in the audio outputs. But for me, the noise is so quiet that it can't be heard at all when the car engine is on. It's no more noisy than my previous car CD player was (it made the same kinds of noise). I will probably spend some time trying different grounding options to see if I can reduce it further, but at the moment it's no big deal.

The fact that the track up/down buttons are the same as the volume up/down buttons was a cause for concern. It turns out that it's no problem once you're used to it. Yes, you can occasionally make a mistake, but for the most part, it's no big deal. And of course, the Mark 2's will solve this problem with the knob.

The radio reception seems to have been a universal complaint. For me, it's fine. I still get all the stations I wanted to get. The tuner isn't up to par with some of the newer "super-tuners" in consumer car stereos, but it's fine for me. Besides, the only time I ever listened to the radio was when I was bored of the three CD's I'd brought with me. I'll no longer have that problem.

The lack of an AM radio is a problem for some people. Again, not a problem for me, since I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. One possible issue would be for highway information when traveling: Where I live, there are sometimes road signs saying "Traffic info, tune radio to AM 1610 when flashing". This usually means that the state transportation department is announcing a snow-closed highway, construction ahead, or something similar. I've noticed that many areas are broadcasting this information on FM bands as well (although not in my area). I think that I can live without this information. And of course, this will be fixed when the Mark 2's come out, since they will have an AM tuner as well.

The lack of a built-in clock is a complaint for some users, but for me it's not a problem. Personally, I'm glad it's one less clock I have to set. My car already has a clock anyway.

Bumpy roads were a worry for me, since my CD players always skipped like crazy when I drove to work. I was worried that the hard disk would get ruined if it was reading when I hit a bump. Well, that seems to be a nonissue, too. There's a little icon that indicates when the hard disk is accessing, and I've gone over some bumps while it's loading a song. It was just fine.

The fact that it's a large, bulky pullout unit is going to put some people off. Many people would rather have a removable faceplate for theft protection. For me, the full-pull-out is an ADVANTAGE. You can't get full-pull-out CD players any more, and they're the only thing that won't get stolen. Trust me, I had a removable faceplate unit, and it got stolen anyway. So the full-pull-out is the only way to go.

I'd heard that using multiple USB devices might screw up the synchronization process. It works fine for me, and I have a USB mouse that's active at the same time the Empeg is synching. I've had other sync problems, but they weren't related to the USB mouse.

Creating playlists and uploading songs turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Since I already had all my MP3 tags filled out, it was a simple drag-and-drop operation. I didn't have to type anything except for the playlist name. I even had a directory full of out-of-order files, and they were a snap to reorder correctly in the Emplode software. All I had to do was view details and drag the songs up and down in the list.


- Problems -

A prototype product like this is bound to have a few minor problems. Fortunately, the only problems I've noticed so far are very minor ones:

When setting the Equalizer, there doesn't seem to be a way to save the settings with the remote control. You can select the "Save" option with the remote, but you can't actually CONFIRM the save with the remote. You have to press the down-button on the unit's face in order to confirm the save option.

When changing tracks quickly, the system sometimes pauses because you've outrun its read-ahead cache. Not a big deal, and understandable.

The unit was supposed to play tracks gapless. For instance, I'm supposed to be able to hear "Dark Side of the Moon" without dropouts between the tracks. Before getting the Empeg, I went to a lot of trouble to make sure my Pink Floyd MP3's were all perfectly seamless. They're now perfect, and I can play them perfectly using WinAmp's Gapless Output plug-in. But with the current Empeg, there are still some tiny gaps between the tracks on playback.

The Windows Emplode software is less stable than the Linux software that runs on the unit. I crashed it once simply by using the cut-and-paste options to move a sub-playlist back up to the parent position in the tree. So for now, you have to organize your playlists in small groups, perhaps only a couple of albums at a time, synchronizing after each one. That way, you don't lose a lot of work if Emplode crashes or if a sync crashes.

The synchronization process seems to be excessively timing-sensitive. I crashed a sync by trying to do some floppy-disk access while the sync was running in the background. So, for now, you have to let your computer just sit there while it's synchronizing. No playing Quake 3 while uploading Mozart.


- Wish List -

Despite how good the unit is, there are still some improvements I'd like to see. These are all things that could be done in software, so they're not far-fetched:

A progress bar showing the current position within the song would be nice in some modes. For example, one of the visualization screens (my favorite one) simply shows the track/artist/album/year, with the time in the corner. On this screen, there is a stylish horizontal line running across the screen. If that line could also be a progress bar, that would be cool. For instance, a few pixels could be shaded darker and scroll from left to right as the song plays.

When fast-forwarding or rewinding, a progress bar would be very nice. For example, if I wanted to fast-forward to a guitar solo, it would be helpful to see an indicator of how far along (percentage-wise) I was in the song. I know the audio plays during this, but without the percentage bar, I can't tell whether I'm speeding past the first chorus or the third chorus.

Auto-normalization for the volume of songs would be nice. This would be a pretty serious software undertaking, but it would be so cool. The unit could peek ahead at the next song (using some free CPU cycles) and decide what relative volume level the next song should be played at.

Being able to turn shuffle-play on and off with a single button on the remote would be nice. I don't like having to go two menus deep to toggle shuffle-play. Any one of the number keys would be fine.

Being able to program the EQ and tuner presets from within the Emplode software would be nice.

Making the Synchronization process more bullet proof and less prone to crashes would be very useful.



- Overall -

The Empeg is probably the coolest piece of electronic gadgetry I've ever owned. Being able to play my entire CD collection in my car is just the ultimate feeling of power. I never have to worry about which CD's I'm bringing with me.

Despite the fact that this is a prototype unit running beta software, I think it's worth every penny. It's unique, visually stunning, and it sounds great.