I'd like to start a thread here on the BBS just for fun.

I'd like folks to list cool things they've done/noticed/experienced related to the Empeg. For instance, someone posted on the BBS recently that they got extra work out of a British Telecom technician because he was interested in the Empeg. Another said he got out of a traffic ticket because of the Empeg.

I'd like to continue in that vein, but open it up to anything cool or unusual, not just "getting extra stuff".

Here, I'll kick it off with this one:

The band They Might Be Giants has one album with a unique feature. Their 1992 album "Apollo 18" contains a section of 21 separate tracks titled "Fingertips". These tracks are all tiny little humorous songlets, each about 10 seconds long. They are written so that they can flow into each other or into any other song smoothly. The idea is to use shuffle-play on your CD player so that these tracks get mixed up with the regular songs on the album (in fact, the album's liner notes state this specifically.)

Well, with the Empeg, these tracks get shuffled in with your entire playlist. So you could be listening to several regular songs, then suddenly get a 10-second songlet, then regular songs again. It's great because passengers in your car will go "what the hell was THAT?"

It's almost as if the band was predicting the digital music craze back in '92. Sure, it works when you use shuffle-play on a CD changer, but it's not as funny because there's a pause as it switches discs. With the Empeg, the song switches are instantaneous, so when the "Fingertips" tracks get played, they really make the listener do a double-take. It's great.





-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

A few things in my experience:

- coming home to find a small white box waiting for me after tracking it's delivery to my house, and the feeling of being a little boy on Christmas day coming to me so strongly that it was almost real

- standing in front of the unit that evening with my neighbours, in the dark, watching the blue glow of the graphics playing over their faces; the frozen, hypnotised grins on everyone's face

- sitting stalled in a traffic jam in the rain, in the dark, when someone recognised my empeg sticker in the back window and got out of his car, ran over and knocked on the window to have a look at the real thing

- the buzz I get every time someone comes round to see a demo

Wonderful thing!

I don't even have an empeg (yet) but I have already gotten a lot of vicarious enjoyment from listening to the lucky 400 talk about theirs. But most of all, I have benefitted from and enjoyed corresponding with dozens of helpful, unselfish people on this bbs. Altman. Rob. Mac. Cambscar. Schofiel. Verement. Tfabris. Mafisto. BasicGuy. Bonzi. Dmoore. Jazzwire. The list goes on and on. There are some very good people indeed on this bbs. If you compare the general level of civility and intelligence displayed on this bbs to that of other public forums, you will quickly come to the conclusion that this is indeed a special place.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

If you compare the general level of civility and intelligence displayed on this bbs to that of other public forums, you will quickly come to the conclusion that this is indeed a special place.

Agreed. It'll change a little bit when the Empeg "goes big" in a few months. A large population sampling is always bound to have some bad apples. Anyone remember the day that AOL opened up Usenet to its subscriber base? Newsgroups have never been the same since.

Fortunately, this BBS caters to a special group: Owners of the Empeg Car, which by virtue of the product's price point, will keep the user base reasonably well-filtered.

OK, that made me sound like a snob. I should talk. If the Empeg owners are an "exclusive club", then I'm a gate-crasher, having obtained my membership second-hand.

So who's got more Empeg stories to relate?

I've got a couple other ones to add:

After scrounging some extra power supplies and audio cables, I now have three indoor stations where I can easily plug in my Empeg: 1) Next to my computer at home. 2) Next to my computer at work. 3) In my home entertainment center in my livingroom. I don't have to reach behind anything or cart cables from place to place. And I still have the original power supply that shipped with the Empeg, all packed up nicely in its carrying case, so if I find myself at a friend's house, I can plug it in there if I want. I highly recommend this to anyone who owns an Empeg. It literally makes it so that you can bring all your music with you wherever you go.

Here's another:

Make a playlist named "Test Audio" or something like that, and drag all of your favorite audiophile tracks onto the list. You know, the ones that really test your speakers and amplifiers to the limits. That way, when you want to make adjustments to your system (or show it off), you just hit that playlist and go to it. Now someone like tanstaafl would probably have a specific test CD for this purpose, but I just make do with plain old songs from my collection. Here are some examples of tracks I've put in that playlist:
- Tori Amos: Liquid Diamonds (from the album "From the Choirgirl Hotel"). This opens with some serious subsonic bass sounds. A bit dirty, but great for testing overall output.
- Madonna: Substitute for Love (from "Ray of Light"). 40 seconds into the track, there are some really great clean low electric bass notes that will show you just how tight and accurate your system's low-end response is.
- Madonna: Ray of Light: That whole album is great for testing stuff, but the title track specifically has some synthesizer filter sweeps that go all the way from subsonic to hypersonic. Great for testing the whole range.
- Peter Gabriel: Red Rain (from "So"). A very well produced track with a wide range of sounds and textures. Great for testing overall tone and feel.
- Dire Straits: Why Worry (from "Brothers in Arms"). The last section of this song has some very delicate sounds and textures which let you test how well your system delivers the proper warmth during the quiet passages.
- Rush: Cut to the Chase (from "Counterparts") the second verse has an incredible energy with some very powerful high-volume rhythm section hits across the whole spectrum. Crank this one up and see how hard your system can hit.


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

"Make a playlist named "Test Audio..."

Add to your list the digitally re-mastered version of "Moving Pictures" by Rush. It's an oldie, but the production is exceptionally crisp and clean. (It is also the only rock and roll CD that I own...)

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

heh; I thought I was the only person that still had that cd:)sounds surprisingly sharp and crisp despite being a 128k mp3..
-m

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

Wow, Moving Pictures. Where do I start?

I don't own the digitally remastered version, but I do agree that Moving Pictures is one of the greatest-sounding albums ever produced. In fact, I do have a few tracks from my regular-mastered version in my test list. Not because they are particularly good for audio testing, but because I listen to that album so much (still) that they have to be in my test tracks as a "baseline".

That album is great on so many levels, I could start a whole separate thread on it. It was the first CD I ever purchased. It was my prerequisite for purchasing a CD player: I wouldn't buy one until I was sure I could get Moving Pictures on CD. It was also the first CD I ripped into MP3 format. I can play every note of that album on the guitar, including simultaneously playing the synthesizer-bass parts (I have bass pedals like they do). Can you tell I'm a fan?

Interestingly enough, the first copy of Moving Pictures that I purchased was one of the flawed ones. Their first pressing of the CD had the first second missing from "Tom Sawyer". That wonderful drum/synth explosion that opens the album had its first second cut off. I exchanged it, via mail with the record company, for a corrected pressing. That's the one I still own.

One thing I use the album for is stereo sanity-check testing. The opening synthesizer chords on "The Camera Eye" alternate between the left and right channels. Any time I work with the speaker or line-level connections, I play that cut to make sure I've got all my channels correct.

Do you have any notes on the comparison between the original pressing and the remaster? What are the differences in the sound quality?


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I recommend Song #2 No More I Love You's from BOCA Volume 3 (http://www.casa.org/boca_info.html). It's an Acapella track, which means no instruments and voices only. This particular one is all female, and has all the voices clustered in the high end. This song really stresses the ability of your sound system to separate out the 5 or 6 different voices in the song. I've heard this song on some lower end systems and you get distortion.

For low end testing, the IASCA competition CD has a couple of "unlimited SPL" music tracks that emphasizes the low end like you wouldn't believe...

Cleanly recorded vocals can definitely show an audio system's imaging capabilities. So can well-recorded solo piano or acoustic guitar.

Of course, with the MP3 format, these things also allow you to locate compression artifacts.

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Do you have any notes on the comparison between the original pressing and the remaster? What are the differences in the sound quality?

It's been a while since I replaced my original CD with the remastered one (following an unfortunate attempt at CD scratch repair) and about all I can remember is that the new one is cleaner, brighter, crisper. More dynamic range.

That wonderful drum/synth explosion that opens the album...

Ohhhhh, Yes! That is exactly why I use *that* track anytime I want to surprise/impress somebody with my stereo. They get in the car, look around, see absolutely no visible sign that there is a stereo installed other than a cheap Panasonic CD player, and then the explosion hits and they start twisting around and looking to see where all that noise is coming from and still can't see anything... The most common reaction is "Holy S**t!" I'm such a hypocrite -- I pretend to be an audiophile when I really get my enjoyment out of showing off my stereo. ;-(

As a general rule, I don't care much for Rock 'n Roll music -- Mozart is the god I worship. But I have to admit that my Rush CD actually has more hours of playing time on it than any other three CD's that I own put together. I use it to tune my system for competition, and once I get it in the CD player, I tend to leave it there for days at a time. (In my defense.... I am rarely in my car for more than 40 minutes at one sitting...)

So, how can I be an elitist, classical music snob when I *really* like that Rush CD? I guess I'm just a bit schizophrenic at heart....

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

One of the cool things I just noticed is that I can click on many of the songs that I already loaded on my unit, as I read about them here. Of course I looked all over for that Rush CD, and figuring it was lent out or lost, I just ordered one from Amazon. I guess I'm impulsive.

Rush
"Moving Pictures"

Regards,

Mark Miller



--> Get Paid
to Surf the Web!

I see nothing schizophrenic or hypocritical about liking both Rush and Mozart. I think that if Mozart were making music today, he'd probably be making progressive rock like Rush. Anyway, if there's one rock album in the world which could please the ear of a classical music buff, that's got to be it.

Question about the way that album sounds on your system:

The beginning of track 3, "YYZ" opens with a bell sound which pans left and right. When I am listening to the song on a perfect system, or on a really good pair of headphones, the bell sound doesn't just pan, it swirls in a circle around my head. And I'm talking on a stereo-only system, with no surround sound or Q-sound or anything like that. But the listening conditions have to be perfect for that kind of imaging. Have you noticed that, too?

(Interesting side note: The rhythm of that bell and the opening of the song are the morse code letters YYZ, which is the code for the international airport in Toronto, their home town. The song is called YYZ because, according to the band, "it's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags".)



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

It warms my heart to know that our discussion just sold another copy of Moving Pictures. What a timeless album.


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

heh; I thought I was the only person that still had that cd:)

You and over four million other people. I just checked- that album is certified multi-platinum.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Question about the way that album sounds on your system:

No twirly sensation.... just very hard right followed by very hard left imaging -- no sense of the sound traveling or "panning" across. I think in a competition scenario the twirly bit would count against you. The idea is you should be able to close your eyes and then point to each instrument as it plays, and the judges have diagrams of the instrument placement when the recordings were made.

One thing I do notice on my system (he says, bragging) that is lacking on most stereos I have heard YYZ on, is that the bell sound (probably a triangle?) has definite tonality to it -- it is not a single point source frequency "tink tink tink" but each bell sound actually falls off in frequency as the volume fades "teeuunng teeuung teeunng".

I did indeed know about the Morse code. And YYZ may well be my favorite song out of all the music I have. Funny story here (probably boring to everybody else in the world but me...) One of my sons convinced me that despite my lack of enthusiasm for rock music, I might just like Rush. So I borrowed some Rush CDs and played them, and they were OK, nothing earth shattering.... and then YYZ came on. I can still remember pulling the car over to the side of the road and stopping, and punching the repeat-play button on the CD player, and I let it play over and over for the next several days. That was where I became interested in Rush. Their earlier works and their later works don't inspire me -- but the 1980--1983 stuff I kind of like.

Who would have thought that a 20 year old album would spark this much response on the bbs?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Although this discussion has now become completely off-topic for this BBS, I'm having fun. If anyone thinks we should be continuing this elswhere, let us know...

I think in a competition scenario the twirly bit would count against you. The idea is you should be able to close your eyes and then point to each instrument as it plays, and the judges have diagrams of the instrument placement when the recordings were made.

I'm pretty sure that they deliberately intended for that effect when they produced that piece, and therefore it wouldn't count against me. The position of the instrument is supposed to move in 3D around you. There's more than just panning happening there (more on that below). Another clue: When they play the piece live, they do a special lighting effect during that introduction. They darken the stage and use a ring of tight-focused spots around the drum riser, sequentially lighting them in a circular motion as Neil plays the bell intro.

the bell sound (probably a triangle?) has definite tonality to it -- it is not a single point source frequency "tink tink tink" but each bell sound actually falls off in frequency as the volume fades

Oh yeah, I hear that, too. I don't know if the instrument is a triangle or not, but it sounds like one. The MP3 version I'm listening to now reproduces this faithfully when played back on the Empeg, although some of the ultra-high frequencies are lost-- a known limitation of the Fraunhofer encoder at the 128k bitrate. (Wow! He manages to write something on-topic!)

Though some of the frequency falloff, is, I believe, doppler shift. Listen through a pair of good headphones on your home system and see if you agree with me. I have no information on the recording of that particular bit, but I know that during the recording of the album, Neil experimented with different miking techniques to get more interesting drum sounds. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually rigged something physical with stereo mics in an attempt to produce the 3D circular effect. Remember, this is before Q-sound existed.

An example of the unusual recording techniques used on that album: Neil had long been complaining that his recorded drum sound, when played back, didn't sound like it sounded to him while he was recording it. He wanted to capture the characteristics of the drummer's listening position on tape. So when recording the song "Vital Signs", they actually taped a mic to his chest as they laid down the drum tracks. You can see this in the video for the song. I don't know how much of that track ended up in the final mix, though.

I can still remember pulling the car over to the side of the road and stopping, and punching the repeat-play button on the CD player, and I let it play over and over for the next several days. That was where I became interested in Rush.

Yeah, YYZ is one heck of a piece. It sure stands up to repeated listenings. It's a great example of how they can flaunt their technical talent but still manage to make good music while doing so. The fast ascending odd-tempo scale they play together (just before the first main theme) is amazing-- they are so tight as a band. Those little rhythmic stunts they pull are my favorite bits.

Their earlier works and their later works don't inspire me -- but the 1980--1983 stuff I kind of like.

Everyone who likes Rush seems to have a different favorite "era". That's my favorite, too. The stuff they were doing around then is special because they made a conscious choice to write tighter, more focused songs instead of drawn-out rock operas. The album prior to Moving Pictures contains their last long-format operetta ("Natural Science").

Don't discount 1985's "Power Windows" album, though. Every bit as powerful as Moving Pictures, but it's the first album where they decided to go for a big production. Up until that point, they refused to do anything in the studio that they couldn't actually play in a live concert. By 1985, synthesizer and sampler technology had advanced to the point where they could safely add extra parts to the live act without adding more musicians. That album marks the beginning of an era where they were no longer afraid to overdub extra parts in the studio. Now they spend a lot of time onstage stepping on synth pedals or triggering sampled background parts from a keyboard controller. I've heard 'em trigger samples late in concert before (the orchestral bit on "Manhattan Project", for example). It's not pretty.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

From my *cough* experiences, I've noticed that college chicks really dig the empeg.

Must be something about a guy in a Jeep with over 1000 songs at his fingertips.

Either that or all that beer........ ;)

(O|||||O)

Here's another cool thing about the Empeg...

If you have it next to your computer, and you plug its audio into your computer via your sound card's "line input" plug, then you can listen to its output mixed with your computer's audio.

The advantage is: You can listen to MP3s while playing video games.

See, most sound cards only let one program use them at a time. So if a game is running and using sound effects, WinAmp can't run in the background because the game has already got the sound card tied up. With the Empeg, you can play your MP3s at the same time as your video game, and have the game sound effects going at the same time as the MP3s.

Some of the new souped-up sound cards allow multiple programs to access them simultaneously, but even if you've got one of those, there are still advantages to using the Empeg instead: 1) WinAmp isn't running in the background eating CPU cycles and sucking away at your game's frame rate. 2) You can control the volume and the track changes without having to exit your game.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Here's another cool thing...

Even after owning the Empeg for over a month, the novelty hasn't worn off yet. I can't think of any other gadget (other than perhaps my computer) that has kept me so captivated for so long. I'm still playing with it the way a kid plays with a brand new toy. Sure, the software is still under construction- but I even enjoy reporting the bugs.

Today I finally got my subwoofer and installed it, and it was like getting the Empeg all over again, tweaking my EQ's and levels again, scrolling through my playlists as if I was listening to them for the first time. Just this week I discovered a new visual. I mean, I had always known it was there, but I never paid attention to it and just scrolled by it. Then just this week I stopped and looked at it and said, "wow that one's cooler than I thought" and left it up. And just think: pretty soon, they're going to ship a new version with even more visuals. Man, that's cool!







-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

And just think: pretty soon, they're going to ship a new version with even more visuals. Man, that's cool!

And just think, not two weeks ago you said "Personally, I don't think we need any new visuals." in response to a post that I sent asking for new visuals... ;)

More visuals more more! I can't wait for the visualization API to come out... we are going to see some really amazing stuff then.

(O|||||O)

Did I really say those exact words?

I probably meant that I'd rather see bugfixes and certain other features before new visuals. Fortunately, it's a moot point, because the visuals are supplied by Toby at Prolux: The development of new visuals doesn't have an impact on the other features (at least I don't think they do, do they?). Bring on the new visuals!



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

The advantage is: You can listen to MP3s while playing video games.

How about taking this one step further??

I have my empeg, 3 computers, my turntable, CD player, tape deck, drum machine and midi sound modules all routed through a mixing desk and my hi-fi.

Get them all going and I just can't stop in from sounding terrible ;-)

Maybe I should get out more!

Phil

First off, a little background: I'm big into whitewater kayaking. I own a Perception 3D playboat (red/purple fade) and can be found nearly every weekend on some section of the Chatooga River. (Or Nantahala, Ocoee, etc)

I've lived in Easley, SC (the home of Perception kayaks) for the past 12 years, moving 20 minutes away to go to school at Clemson University 5 years ago.

Not two weeks after receiving my empeg and putting my listing on the empeg registry (at http://www.empeg.mars.org I believe, don't have the URL with me), I received e-mail from a guy at Perception asking if he could drive up to Clemson and take a look at the empeg. I ended up asking him if it would be cool for ME to drive down to the Perception plant (where he works) and I'll give him a first-hand demo of the empeg, and in return he hook me up with a tour of the plant and maybe some free stuff.

So in the end, I ended up with a bunch of Perceptiong gear (t-shirt, stickers, frisbee, yo-yo, nylon bag, etc) and a tour of the place, and he got to sate his thirst for seeing an empeg in action first hand.

It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

(O|||||O)

I have had my empeg for about 2 months now and on 2 hour drive home today I noticed sometime really wild! I placed a few songs from a bass CD on the empeg just for showing the frequency response, and to make a lot of bass. What I never noticed was while playing a track called "bassgazum", a few of the visuals do some really neat stuff! the first 2 full screen ones are really wild and some of the others have a strange reaction to the continuous bass. The flat square that jumps with the music was doing things that made it look like a jelly flowing around. i was soooo amazed, I almost smashed my van!

Even if you don't like bass, Check it out!

i can't wait to see the new visuals

To everyone at Empeg, I enjoy your product more everyday, and to date, the unit has been working perfectly and I use it alot. You guys are great, keep up the awesome work!

Yeah, I just recently noticed that, too. Some of the visuals seem to be tuned specifically for bass, and do practically nothing with treble tones. It's really cool watching the patterns that are generated by different bass frequencies.

Here's a fun thing with the visuals: Turn on one of the linear spectrum analyzers, preferably one of the ones with really fine spectrum lines. Then play the Madonna song "Ray of Light". Starting around 3:28 there are some synthesizer filter sweeps that you can watch animated perfectly in the spectrum graph as they go from 22khz all the way down to low bass.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I used to have mine hooked up in the office to another Linux box.
That way I was able to control it remotely from anywhere on campus
with the web page displaying the currently playing track and then a list of the
available tracks (from the CSV file exported from EMPLODE). I just need the
info on extracting the playlist info directly and the website will be completely
self contained.

It was also nice to be able to confuse visitors by having them wait in the office and continually change the music from the other side of the site.


David

Now that's cool!

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I like my Empeg; it does what it's supposed to do and I've only encountered one problem with it that the Empeg team nailed down rapidly. Exceptional for beta hardware and a new team supporting it...

However, what I like best about the Empeg has nothing to do with the unit. Instead, the fact that its creators actually listen to its userbase is what has to be the most interesting experience I've had in years. It's a declining trend in today's world, yet the Empeg team frequently does little, un-necessary (by other companies' stanrdards) things that make us feel like we're a part of that team...

It's rather interesting to see your questions answered by human beings instead of automated email systems. It'll also be interesting to see whose suggestions show up in the next batch of players, because those of us who frequent this BBS will be able to recall that tfabris (Tony) suggested this idea or schofiel suggested that one.

Unusual, optimistic, and very very pleasing...

-- Bleys



"If you would judge, understand." -- Seneca

I'd like to chime in (a few months late ) to say the coolest thing about my empeg is it has brought my CD collection to life.

Like anyone else, I've collected a number of CDs over the years, but it seems I rarely listen to any unless a particular song comes to mind and then I dig around for the CD containing it. The exception of course is immediately following the purchase of a new CD.

I've only just recently (!) started to encode all of these CDs and put them on my empeg. In the process I've come across quite a number of songs I'd forgotten about -- and now they're instantly available any time I want to hear them!

What a marvelous invention.

-v

I totally agree with this.

Another cool thing is the fact that I've been buying more CDs lately than I was when I just owned a CD player. There's something about encoding a new album and uploading it to the empeg that's more satisfying than just sticking in the CD.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144