Will this affect the RioCAR team at all? Hopefully not.

(looks like the CTO is out)

Although I'm not suprised, this is definitely terrible news. If it has to be anyone, hopefully its the order fulfillment guys and customer service people.

I hope all will be well tomorrow in the UK.

Well you mean *today* being Friday right?
It is now Friday [morning] in the UK.

25% is pretty savage, still it sounds like they are consolidating from 3 US sites to one (in Santa Clara).

That may mean more than a few products are EOL'ed.
When you "let your CTO go" thats a pretty major decision, but that may simply be a reflection of the (low) stock price of Sblue.

I wonder if the guy who decided to hold a fire sale of EOL'ed Empegs on Xmas eve last year is now still there?

I don't know if any Empeg guys are affected - I guess we'll find out within 12 hours or so.

Rob was advertising for two new posts only a couple of weeks ago, so maybe they've escaped the cut.

Yes, we've escaped. We're now the only audio software team in SONICblue, hence all the new audio stuff that comes out was done here in Cambridge.

It does remove the "is this an empeg product?" guesswork every time SB release a new audio toy though, so less fun there! There may well be tell-tale signs of our involvement though, like that the product is really quite good

Hugo

Hrm. ... Now if there was a way to just buy stock in the Empeg guys and skip the rest of Sonic Blue ....

When I originally bought my RioCar last year, Sonic Blue's stock didn't look good, but I wanted to support the company anyway. But as I guessed, something about don't buy the trash bin to get at the gem inside, comes to mind.

Greg

But the SonicBlue stock is on sale!!!

At last! Maybe someone with brains will set you 'quietly working' on a replacement for realplayer... If something like that came out, I'd look @ SB products seriously again.