Just a "new owner" post. After watching units on ebay for a long while managed to get a 10G mkIIa unit (well actually had a 12Gb travelstar in it, waranty seals unbroken) with evidence of only 16 tunes ever on it. Curious. Had the original version 1.02 software on it, which I've replaced with v2.0 beta 13 plus the Hijack v413 build.

Aside from there being a small hole drilled in the top (looks like someone attached a ground lug screw once) and some minor bending of the sled tabs from installation, there was only one problem. Looks like someone tightened the fascia scews too much and cracked the blue lens badly (nearly broken clean through, hanging by the inside film coating) in the upper right side. It's under the fascia, and you can't see it until you remove it.

I've got a few questions for y'all. Are the Filener lenses the only ones still available? Are they anit-glare coated? and whats the major advantage between loading the developer image vs the consumer image?

Looking foward to upgrading drives to (60 + 60) or (80 + 80), and getting amps in to get this installed in my jeep!

Welcome to the community!

As Cushman said, go ahead and install the 2.00final version of the software (not the beta). Some of us had a discussion a while back, and other than download size, we can't really think of any reason to not install the developer version. Not only will it let you install some 3rd party software, it helps in trouble shooting and you'll need the developer if you ever plan on upgrading those drives of yours.

I don't think the Filner lenses are anti-reflective, but to be honest, I don't really care for the anti-reflective lenes. They tend to make text "blurry" and hard to read. You can send Filner a JPG or GIF image of a Jeep logo and they can laser etch the logo on your lens too! (I have several very cool Subaru ones.)

I recommend only buying the capacity that you need now. It will take you months to rip your CDs (if you are really looking at 120 or 160GB). In that time, drive prices will drop and capacities will grow. It also works as a way to keep your drives new and fresh!

EDIT: Oh yeah... I recommend getting ethernet working on your player as soon as possible. Also, make sure you have Hijack installed. Once you do both of those, you can start using Jemplode. Jemplode will let you do all of the things that emplode does, but you also get to update your boot logos (both static and animated ones), upgrade you Hijack version via ethernet, copy music between two empegs, build "soup" playlists and it's also faster than emplode.

Welcome to the forum. Filener lenses are definitely not reflective coated. They are made from sheets of cast acrylic that are laser cut to size. The reflective coated lenses were made by Rio/Empeg via a casting process which makes for the unique colors. The Filener lenses are the only ones readily available although the originals pop up from time to time.

True, but its not the same beast. I tried to get a clear plastic with the AR coating like on monitors that I believe to be similar to the original lenses. It wasn't available in small quantities so what I wound up with was the AR acrylic used for picture frames. It is not the same in terms of clarity as folks reported shortly after receiving their rainbow sets. It adds a blur to the display.

Welcome to the empeg community. From a different thread, here are my photos of Filener's lenses and the original lenses.

And I second what SE_Sport_Driver said. If you are just starting to rip your CDs, just get one 80 gig for now (better price than the 100's) and get the second 80 gig when you need it. The price will have gone down by the time you buy the second.

You should probably not keep using your 10 gig along with your soon-to-be-purchased 80 gig. When you swap out the 10 gig for the next 80 gig, you'll loose that 10 gig worth of music. And the empeg doesn't put specific songs on specific drives, so you'll probably loose half of every playlist when the 10 gig comes out. At least, that's how I understand it.

Quote:
You should probably not keep using your 10 gig along with your soon-to-be-purchased 80 gig. When you swap out the 10 gig for the next 80 gig, you'll loose that 10 gig worth of music. And the empeg doesn't put specific songs on specific drives, so you'll probably loose half of every playlist when the 10 gig comes out. At least, that's how I understand it

Have you done a hard drive upgrade? As part of the process, he can transfer the music from his 10GB to his new 80GB. The tutorial explains how to either add a 2nd drive or replace one of your existing drives. Replacing a drive involves copying the music.

Thanks for the answers, looks like I'll have to reload the final 2.0 version & hijack. I'll have to give the filener lenses a shot, and it sounds like firefox is going to be doing a color button run shortly.

I already have quite a large number of tracks to load into this unit, just need the space. I've been running a NEO 35 (yes, I know .. the N-word, better than it was originally with rockbox-like open source firmware now) in my jeep for the last two years or so, it currently has a 120gb drive thats about 85% full. When I installed it, the empeg/rio units were just out of reach. I'll be switching that & the CD head unit out for this unit and an amp, I don't have need of the CD player anyways.

I've done some experimentation already with installing the second drive, and plugging it into my network, but I'll have to give jemplode a shot.

of course, many of us have yet to install the player in an actual car......
Mine spends its days at home playing random music for us

I already have quite a large number of tracks to load into this unit,

You probably won't believe me, and you'll end up doing like many of us (including myself) if not most of us have done, and you'll rip and encode the music and get it into the empeg as quickly as possible so you can listen to it, figuring that you'll clean up the tags later.

Do yourself a favor, take your time, and before you even start come up with a good plan for directory structures/playlists, and most important of all, spend a lot of time getting your tag information just as accurate and complete as possible. When I add music to my player, I spend more time on tagging than I do on ripping/encoding/uploading.

This will benefit you in (at least) two ways. First, the empeg's software relies to a considerable extent on the tag information when it comes to setting up playlists, Second, the empeg has powerful capabilities for displaying, searching, and listing by tag information.

I promise that you will never regret a single minute spent on your tagging.


tanstaafl.

My suggestion is to rip and tag at the same time using something like Audiograbber or EAC. That makes sure the tags are good when the encoding is done. Instead of re-tagging afterwards.

In the meantime, throw whatever MP3s are available onto the empeg and start enjoying it and learning the interface. When done with the final ripping and encoding, clear the empeg and load it up fresh.

Bruno

I actually kind of regret the year and a half I spent tagging (and verifying by listening to each of) my MP3s. Reason is, I didn't plan the structure well enough. I had this grand plan to have a "matrix organization": playlists organizing my music one way and genre tags organizing it completely differently, giving me two methods of organization for the price of one. Unfortunately, the playlist and genre structure evolved into the same damn thing, so it was a huge duplication of effort.

To contribute, I'll say to consider "mood playlists" or some alternative forms of organization. If you're going through your entire collection, create a few different ways to organize the music in that one effort. You can either do playlists one way and genre tags another way (like I tried), or even copy songs to multiple playlists (which doesn't duplicate the song's hard drive space usage). This could give you, say, a playlist tree by genre then artist, and a mood playlist tree, and a "favorites" playlist tree.

So yeah, think about it, realize the many possibilities, and get it right the first time. Otherwise you'll be like me who may have to spend another six months creating a new organization system because my genre structure is getting tiresome. If only there was a "mood SOUP mode" or something.

My suggestion is to rip and tag at the same time using something like Audiograbber or EAC

Oh, absolutely. I was just trying to make the point that the ripping and encoding is the quickest and easiest part of the process -- setting up the tagging for each CD is what takes the time, particularly if you are anal enough about it (as I am) to be certain that there are no typos, that you have researched (using Google where necessary) to get the proper information, etc.

How many people (besides myself) have gone through and re-done their entire collection just to get the tags right?

tanstaafl.

I'm very carefully fixing everything now. Dr.Tag is what I've fond to be the best program for it. Just tagging, not re-ripping. The majority of all my tracks have perfect ID infom but some mistakes did slip through the cracks. Also come incosistencies in capitalization or band names, etc.

Bruno

I rip on a machine not connected to the internet, so I tag all mine manually (in Audiograbber) which ensures they are all correct and consistent in format.

Doesn't take that long...

I didn't have that kind of patience when ripping my 500 discs. I always verified and corrected the FreeDB info, but it was nice having most of it already there. I also submitted practically all of my corrections back to FreeDB so the next guy would have better results.

Now with Dr.Tag I've been doing a lot of batch manual edits and referencing All Music Guide for missing information/details/dates.

Bruno

I essentially went through my entire collection to tag everything. Before I had the empeg, I would intentionally strip tags from every song I had because I had no use for them. When my empeg came, I spent the 18 months to carefully tag everything.

But frog, man, tagging everything by hand? That's so intense. I used the program Tag&Rename to query AllMusic and FreeDB in order to populate the tags on an entire album in a single click. But ensure consistency, I would reformat the tags by hand when (almost always) necessary. Heh, even no I find a few stray & signs and miscapitalized letters. But no underscores, those are evil.