Well, I'm finally getting around to writing this up...better late than never, I guess.

Every October my company exhibits at a trade show in London, and so every October (OK, twice now) I make a point to take the train up to Cambridge and buy the folks at empeg a round.

When flying from the west coast of the US to the UK, the flights usually leave in the evening and arrive in the morning, and the best way to fight jetlag is to do your very best stay up until some reasonable hour, UK time, and then try to get a good night's sleep. Take an afternoon nap and all is lost.

The annual pilgrimage to empeg Ltd. fits this nicely. After checking into the hotel, I'm 2 for 2 on catching the 14:45 to Cambridge. Hugo was kind enough to pick me up at the station and give me a lift to empeg HQ, where there seems to be a near infinite quantity of Red Bull available. This greatly facilitates the "stay up" part of the equation, though "reasonable hour" has proven to be well past Last Train both times now. Last year, Hugo (was?) volunteered to ferry me back to London at great speed on B roads in his turbo Miata. Roundabouts take on a whole new dimension when you're in the left seat, but have no steering wheel, and therefore no way to get the car back on the right side of the road. This year, we did the Pub part of the evening much better, and therefore the proper course of action was to crash at Hugo's.

The empeg guys are friendly, witty, and some of the best developers I've ever seen. empeg HQ has the feel of a real startup, something I've missed in the Sand Hill Road-funded world of Silicon Valley today. These guys really are doing this because they love it, and it shows in the product.

The visit to empeg HQ has was surreal as usual. Last year, Patrick was soldering together the very first Mk.2 boards. It's not a myth, this guy really can solder all those gnat's-eyelash-pitch PQFPs by hand, and he doesn't really like the fancy SMT rework kit, preferring a fine point soldering pencil. Granted it's a nice one, but it's nothing anyone would confuse with SMT gear. This year, there were prototype Rio/Dell Receivers everywhere. Last year, the secret prototype hardware I wasn't supposed to see was the Autochanger emulator that's now on the web site. This year...

I did get a demo of the Rio Receiver, and it's a great product. I'll be ordering a couple for home and one for the trade show setup kit. That is, as soon as they actually start shipping. (Hugo? Any news?)

We all had a good laugh about the Nomad Jukebox I brought along...it's pretty hard to take Creative's software guys seriously when (at version 1.73!) their inital release didn't have half the features of the first public betas of the empeg. (Though if you hang out in Creative's newsgroups, they're trying very hard to emulate the design-by-your-early-adopters approach that empeg has perfected...I just don't think they can pull it off the way empeg does.)

For two years running, Hugo and I have noticed something interesting on a hardware datasheet, and five minutes later John was trying new code. Last year, it was a compressor in the DSP. (It didn't work at all well...rjlov's kernel patch works much better.) This year, it was a cool feature or two in the tuner module. Which is real. I saw one. I listened to AM broadcast through a Mk.2!

Last year, I showed Mike how I could outrun the caching from the front panel. That still isn't fixed, but will be in 1.1. This year, I showed him how I could outrun the menus themselves, which I think will also be fixed in 1.1.

And the crowning glory of this visit was a major timesaving feature for emplode 1.1 that Roger had implemented before we left for the pub. And let me tell you guys, emplode 1.1 will blow your mind. After Roger's quick demo of the new stuff in 1.1, I keep thinking that 1.0 is broken. But I won't steal Roger's thunder, you'll have to wait and see. (duck, run like hell)

Let me tell you guys, if you think it's incredible to mention something on the boards here and have it implemented in the next release, it's absolutely mindblowing to suggest something off-the-cuff and see a demo fifteen minutes later.

Last year, I collected two of the first few FM preamps (Mk.1 owners understand...) and this year I saw (but didn't collect, alas) the AR screens. I think these will make a big difference in the sun, though the display does look just a little softer through the coating.

There were a few other things that I tossed out as suggestions, we'll see what materializes in reality. I think there's another trade show in May, so send me your feature requests.

Thanks again to Hugo, Rob, Mike, Roger, John, Peter, Toby, and anyone else I've forgotten for your hospitality and enthusiasm!

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39