Some more info on the Sony and Pioneer models:

Sony:
- I didn't hear the size of HDD; 6GB or 10GB sounds plausible.
- Power load tray, up to 8x ripping; not slot load
- Usual AM/FM/4x45w amp stuff. Built in fan.
- Has a VFD about the same size as the empeg's one, but monochrome only (not even greyscales) so looks fairly poor. Visuals pretty poor, mainly because of screen and low framerates.
- Two rotary controls, one for volume/sound and the other for finding music.
- Doesn't appear to have a search function, you can just scroll through artist names/album names.
- Didn't appear to have any track naming capability, but I could be wrong here.
- No CDDB, so it will read CD-TEXT or you input the titles character by character
- Can copy MP3 files from CD-ROMs. Not sure how this content would be managed, as they only had 2 audio CDs loaded onto the unit for demo.
- Had a "most acsessed" and "least acsessed" (yes, spelt like that - must be beta!) mode, anong with a timestamp mode to find CDs, which looked fairly promising (eg, play me the CD I most recently ripped).
- Will download content to memory stick for listening to out of the car
- Has firewire port (4 pin) behind front panel for a future backup HDD, allowing user to back up their collection to a blessed HDD.
- Out sometime in 2002 for $1500 list.

Pioneer:
- 10GB hdd
- Slot load tray. 1x (real time) ripping.
- Compresses to ATRAC internally.
- Usual AM/FM/4x45w stuff. Built in fan. XM & DAB radio control support.
- Gorgeous OEL display, as with other high-end pioneers.
- Lots of flashy animations, but no music-linked visuals that I could see apart from scope/fft.
- Gracenote CDDB, so knows track titles. Can be updated using memory stick slot.
- No rotary control, music management *VERY* slow (could be a beta though) - eg, about 3 seconds disc to disc, listing 6 disc titles on screen takes ~4 seconds. Painful to navigate!
- No search. Access modes "analog" (lists recordings from XM/DAB tuner - won't record from AM/FM strangely!), "digital" (lists rips) and "all" (lists everything). Can list by artist or album name.
- Some sort of playlist building, but I couldn't figure out how to use it.
- Will play MP3 cds, but will not copy files to HDD - "copyright issues" cited.
- Out in next quarter for $2000 list.

I've got some video of both units in operation, when I get back I'll try and work out how to use my firewire card and put them online somewhere!

All in all, very underwhelming - especially if you're used to an empeg!

Hugo