Okay, here's one I noticed just last night.

I went out to my car to get something. It was parked in the garage, and it was pitch black in there...

Except for this pulsing green light shining out of the car windows, illuminating the walls of the garage. It looked like one of those effects in a bad sci-fi/horror movie, where you were supposed to assume there was an alien or something inside the car.

I was able to navigate to the car, get what I needed to get, and get out of the garage without turning on the light...

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

I've just recently registered for this BBS because I've been tracking the empeg for some time now. Unfortunately my registration number was somewhere around 11,000 or so. So I'm not going to get one anytime soon. And to make matters worse, when my time comes I'm not even sure if I'll have enough money to purchase one. :( But I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts on the empeg, it almost makes me feel like I own one. I've got some odd 1300 mp3s on my HD right now, and fortunately a burner so I can at least compile all the songs I want on to custom CDs. But I think the best thing about the Empeg (And I don't even own one!) is that you no longer have to lug around 30 pounds worth of CDs, you don't have to worry about your favorite song skipping during your favorite part either. And as far as making driving more pleasureable, mp3s have made sitting at my computer much more enjoyable. If any of you are overly wealthy :) and would like to upgrade to the Mark 2, I'll wash your car if you can sell it cheaply. I've been eating Ramen noodles for months now to save money for an Empeg. How bad is that? Enjoy your Empegs and most of all, the music that is plays.

It's now how far you go, it's how go you far.

If any of you are overly wealthy :) and would like to upgrade to the Mark 2, I'll wash your car if you can sell it cheaply.

Have you done a search on this BBS on the word "sale"? There was one being sold about a month ago, and just last week one was announced as going on sale on ebay. I got mine on ebay, so I know it's not impossible.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

I've been eating Ramen noodles for months now to save money for an Empeg. How bad is that?

Not bad at all. Ramen is good. Where else can you get 5 bowls of delicious ready-to-eat food for 1.00$? I got so hooked on Ramen through school that I have to have a weekly Ramen intake or else I don't function properly.

Keep saving up those pennies, bud... The empeg is well worth every last one of them.

(O|||||O)
6Gb Blue

Like mine for instance....

I have a 10GB blue for sale. email me at [email protected] if you are interested

Phil

Parking in the middle of a field, with no houses or lights within 10 miles, turning only the empeg on, and listening to Little Fluffy Clouds with some Funnelweb visualization kickin....

Mesmorizing.

(O|||||O)

Using the empeg as background music at sporting events and knowing it will last the entire day without pauses.

Being able to stack up songs on the fly using the append mode. (Desparately needed in the playlist menu)

Being able to see track names etc while driving. If only radio stations did this too!

____________________________
Murray

> Being able to see track names etc while driving. If only radio stations did
> this too!

Some of them do. RDS includes radio text - this is the bit that scrolls across the bottom of the screen in tuner mode - and it can be updated quite regularly. Although most stations only transmit details of the current show, some actually update for each track. An example in the UK would be Classic FM - of course their tracks tend to be longer than 3.5 minutes so it's not as much hassle for them to do this.

Unfortunately those of you in countries slow to adopt RDS (which is now a rather old technology!) miss out on all of this.

Rob

Are you saying that the Empeg displays this data right now, and that I'm missing out on seeing this? Darn radio stations. Doug, do something about this.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Yes, the car player displays the radio station ID next to the frequency, and the radio text scrolling along the bottom of the screen next to the time of day. Preset names are also filled in automatically from the station ID.

If your local stations don't broadcast RDS you don't get to see any of that, sorry!

Rob

Last time I tried the tuner both the station names and radio text did not work (I think I last tried with beta10). Admittedly I still haven't got the unit fitted to my car, so the attenna I was using was far from idea, however they worked in earlier versions and they don't appear to now.

By the way, are we expecting full RDS functionality any time soon (in particular auto tuning and time codes) ?

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

You do have to have Info turned on before switching to the radio for it to work, though. You should get an RDS warning indicator on the screen if your station is sending with RDS.

We've not heard of any problems with RDS - works fine for us, both in the car and on a home antenna.

I believe that more complete RDS functionality is scheduled for release 1.0, very early in June.

Rob

Hmm Our local stations often seem to send long Strings that the empeg does not display correctly ... I do not know HOW long the empegs maximum is, but *very* often the sent text is only displayed partially ...
( Just imagina a slogon or announcement, that kind of texts ... so empeg only shows a limited amount ( 40 ?? 80 ?? ) of letters and then starts with letter #1 ... )


Nils

I've just done another test (on beta10), even though I have several stations with full signal indicated and the stereo indicator on I don't get any radio text or station names (I do get station names for a couple of frequencies, but they seem to be stored from when I did get station names to work).

I realise that my antenna is inadequate (I'm touching a screw driver to the antenna terminal)...

However, I have seen this RDS stuff work before in the same circumstances (on an earlier version of the software, back on beta8 or something). Does anyone else have problems getting RDS data ?

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Speaking of RDS, I think it gives my Empeg the ability to have a clock. But for some reason it only works if I turn it on by my house, even if I listen to the same radio station else where, it will not come up. Its pretty neat because once its there, it stays there even after leaveing the area of that radio station. It also runs in a 24 hour mode instaed of am/pm

I love my Empeg

Over in another thread, Dionysus made a comment about the difference between CD players and the Empeg. I realized it deserved its own "cool" entry. In fact, it's really the root reason I bought an Empeg in the first place. It's sort of the whole point of having an Empeg, but I don't think it's really been verbalized in these terms before.

If you own a car CD player, or even a changer, the physical act of choosing and swapping CDs becomes a chore. I tended to go through this procedure:

1) Decide I was bored of the 6 CD's I had in the car already.
2) Promise myself I'm going to pick 6 new ones tomorrow before work.
3) Forget about step 2 until I'm pulling out of the garage.
4) Go to step 2.
5) Eventually, get SO sick of the CDs and break out of the 2-4 loop. This can take up to three weeks (I'm quite absent-minded).
6) Bring the 6 CDs into the house and put them back in my collection.
7) Stare at my collection for ten minutes, trying to decide which 6 cd's I'm willing to listen to for another three weeks (because, although I am absent-minded, I'm still aware of steps 2-5).
8) Finally, I decide upon the 6 CDs I want to take with me, and invariably, they're 6 of my favorite albums. Ones I know I like and that I've already listened to over and over again. Because I know I've got to live with them for three weeks, they have to be the cream of the crop. As a result, I end up cycling through the same 20 albums in my car. I never get to hear the rest of my collection.

The Empeg, of course, breaks this cycle and lets you hear parts of your collection that you didn't even know existed. It's like your collection becomes new music all over again. Most of the albums have really good songs that you never heard (or at least never listened to closely). The Empeg lets you rediscover the music you always had.

Try this. Count the number of CDs in your collection. Subtract the number of CDs you listen(ed) to regularly (such as the 20 I mentioned above). The remainder of your CDs are more or less "wasted". Multiply that number of "wasted" CDs times the average price of a CD. That's how much your "wasted" CDs cost you. For instance, if you own 220 CDs, and you only listen to 20 of the regularly, that's 200 "wasted" CDs. Times about $16.00 per disc (depending on where you buy your CDs), that comes out to about $3200.00. Compare this to the price of the Empeg, and the Empeg sounds less like a luxury toy and more like an inexpensive investment in keeping your CD collection alive.


Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Try this. Count the number of CDs in your collection. Subtract the number of CDs you listen(ed) to regularly (such as the 20 I mentioned above). The remainder of your CDs are more or less "wasted". Multiply that number of "wasted" CDs times the average price of a CD. That's how much your "wasted" CDs cost you. For instance, if you own 220 CDs, and you only listen to 20 of the regularly, that's 200 "wasted" CDs. Times about $16.00 per disc (depending on where you buy your CDs), that comes out to about $3200.00. Compare this to the price of the Empeg, and the Empeg sounds less like a luxury toy and more like an inexpensive investment in keeping your CD collection alive.

---

I like your logic:) except in my case, I have a single-cd player.. which meant carrying a 6-10 disk cd-case in the car, and switching out the single cd about every other week:)
-mark

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

I'm gonna put it in my yacht (a 30 ft racer / cruiser) and spend the entire weekend out of range of local radio stations and with my entire music collection with me. Perhaps I can rig some servos to the com port: "Empeg! Trim the genoa in!" Hmmm. Empeg + GPS + Autohelm. Can anyone write a moving map display for me?

Cheers
Jon

How about this?

Having the Empeg playing quietly at my desk with the "Tripping Prisoner" visual running and no info text. A new song starts up with a super-quiet fade-in intro, and I can't hear any of the song yet (it's noisy in my office and the Empeg is playing very quietly).

Looking at the visual, I can tell which song it is. The rhythm of the visual clues me in. As the song fades in louder, I start to hear it, and my guess was right. (In this case, it happened to be Robbie Robertson's "Fallen Angel".)

___________
Tony Fabris

That's like my ability to tell what connection speed I'll get out of my modem from the 'pling.pling' noises it makes.

My girlfriend thinks that it's geeky.

.

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

That's like my ability to tell what connection speed I'll get out of my modem from the 'pling.pling' noises it makes.

I haven't mastered that yet; I'm still learning the V.90 connect sequence. It goes through the usual connect jumble and then gets this clear part, which gradually increases in pitch (like phase distortion getting narrower) but I can't pick it yet.

It's still geeky though.

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

I don't have a choice - my modem is old and has one volume setting BLOODY LOUD.

I think that my neighbours can tell what speed I connect at too .

A total pain in the [censored].

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

Don't tell me - US Robotics?

Scary, but very very true.

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

Coolest thing I have done with my empeg (#73): My then fiancee and I used it to play the music at our wedding reception. We made two track lists, one for dinner, and the other for dancing. We used the pin numbers to jump straight to a few specific songs. Between that and the remote, who needs a dj?
Course, it sold her on getting the Mk 2 so she can have one in her car, too!

Oh, how cute! Rob, did you see that? That one is so perfect, it has to go on the new web site.

In fact, you should round up a bunch of testimonials from all us fans. Whaddya think?

___________
Tony Fabris

We'll have enough material for an empeg soap soon :-)

Rob

I will be using mine to play at my cousin's Wedding. She has given me a stack of CDs, which I'm ripping and will put them into a separate set of playlists. she has specific songs to play at key points which i will fire off with PINs.

the best part is that we drive down in my Empeg equipped car (5 hours) and then get to use my Empeg at the wedding & reception and drive back the next day (5 hours).

Rockin!



____________________________
Murray

Hey, is playing music off the empeg at a wedding legal? hmm!! Can you see the RIAA busting a wedding, complete with guns and men in black suits?

Calvin