And it is just TOO COOL for words....

Ok, so this makes me a nut or a fanboy for posting just because I bought one... I accept it. I suspect I am among like company.

A buddy of mine from work had one of the first units and encouraged a couple of us who are really MP3-heads to buy one. Finally, when it was announced that production was discontinued, he sent around an email again telling us about it. Oh, it was so temping... I thought about it and thought about it and thought some more. I got my firend at work to bring in his car with it, and give a 'Test Drive', so to speak. I was stunned at how well made, powerful, and easy to use it was. I was sold. Then, I brought it up with my wife (As any married guy can tell you, this is most important and delicate step) and she gave me the OK. Then, when I went to order it, I discovered the prices had just been cut. Oh no! Could the end of stock be almost here? Wait! I'll turn it to my advantage and get a bigger unit! Type.. Type.. Type... It doesn't say anything is out of stock.. Whew!

I went all out and got a 60gb unit, the tuner and screen kit (and just ordered a spare remote). Not so crazy for a guy who has a dedicated MP3/File server, with 60gb of RAID 1 storage, on his network at home. (and 1500+ Audio CD's in his collection)

Now... the only thing missing is the car to put it in... No problem. I just purchased that last week. Only thing is -- it won't be here until Feburary, so it's a desktop unit until then. But.. It's a very special car, and a very deserving home for the empeg player.

Certifiably nuts over MP3s and cool gadgets,

Wow when you buy toys you go all out, oh wait I do that too. Congrats on your puchase(s) you didn't make a mistake. I can tell you for myself this was about the only item I've owned that I didn't have buyers regret, the other was my Harley.
Yes it is way too COOL.

BTW-what kind of car did you purchase, put photos of install on the BBS if you install it.

Congratulations on your new toy. Make sure to read through the FAQ at Riocar.org.

Make sure to tell the Rio people who recommended the unit to you, he's supposed to get fleeced, er, I mean, get a free fleece out of the deal. (Assuming that offer is still good?)

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Wow when you buy toys you go all out, oh wait I do that too.

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I sort of felt that I had to get it all now, since production has been discontinued. No guarantee that I could go back and buy a tuner module in 4 months. Everything may be long gone soon.

As for getting 60gig, The price difference to go from 30 to 60 was only $300 -- basically the cost of the drive plus $100 to install it. For someone like me, having it factory installed (and remaining under warrenty) is worth it.

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BTW-what kind of car did you purchase, put photos of install on the BBS if you install it.

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It's a BMW M5 Touring (Station Wagon). I'll have plenty of photos when it arrives.

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Congratulations on your new toy. Make sure to read through the FAQ at Riocar.org.

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Thanks for the link!!! I just read the F.A.Q. and added Riocar.org to my bookmarks

I sent Chris (the guy who turned me on to the empeg) the fleece info, and my order info, so he can send it in. :-)

DAMN I knew it was a german car when i read that it wouldn't be here for 3 months, i thought maybe a new m3.

I have an m3, the red matches PERFECTLY

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DAMN I knew it was a german car when i read that it wouldn't be here for 3 months, i thought maybe a new m3.

I have an m3, the red matches PERFECTLY

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Love it. A great car deserves a great stereo :-)

This car I'm getting is an E34, with a 6-speed and the nurburgring suspension :-)

Doing the installation on the E39 5-series would be horribile, with the custom size and everything being super integrated, but the E34 has the standard size radio, so installation should not be too crazy

yah! nice car, i have an e36, i love it.

M5 Wagon: a $70,000 Station Wagon?!? What will they think of next? Hey, if you have to drive a station wagon, that's the one to get I guess!

I still want to see pics of Hugo's NSX install. Hint, Hint.

Hey, if you have to drive a station wagon, that's the one to get I guess!

<Tony ducks and waits for Doug to show up>

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M5 Wagon: a $70,000 Station Wagon?!? What will they think of next? Hey, if you have to drive a station wagon, that's the one to get I guess!

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Actually, it's a 1995 - the very last of the previous generation M5's (360hp). They don't make the current M5 in Wagon (Touring) form. So my cash outlay is less than half that of a new M5.

I'm a new dad. I justfied it with "but what if our girl is late for school...."

Now, I am planning on racing my boss'es NSX with it. (Haven't told him) The look on his face will be priceless.

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Tony ducks and waits for Doug to show up

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Did I just breach some unwritten board protocall by talking about the car??

Or is there a story here somewhere?

I'm a new dad. I justfied it with "but what if our girl is late for school...."

Living up to your BBS nickname, I see.


Now, I am planning on racing my boss'es NSX with it. (Haven't told him) The look on his face will be priceless.

I remember the first year that one of the american car companies started making those high-performance trucks. A lot of people were saying "I just spent HOW much on my new sports car, only to have my clock cleaned by a PICKUP?!"

Did I just breach some unwritten board protocall by talking about the car?

No, you're just going to get an earful about Doug's new station wagon. Speaking of clock-cleaning.

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Living up to your BBS nickname, I see.

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Actually, it's more for my mad programming skills. I acquired the handle for speeding up Age of Empires by a factor of 10 in the months before it shipped.

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I remember the first year that one of the american car companies started making those high-performance trucks. A lot of people were saying "I just spent HOW much on my new sports car, only to have my clock cleaned by a PICKUP?!"

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I think both GM and Ford had some hot rod pickups back in the early '90s. Couldn't carry much (the GM one, it's name escapes me at the moment), couldn't do much off road, but sure were quick in the 0-60..

So, tell me what sort of wagon does Doug have, and what did he do to it? (short version will suffice..)

I acquired the handle for speeding up Age of Empires by a factor of 10 in the months before it shipped.

Hey, I ran into a few of your colleagues in the lobby of our hotel when we went to E3 this year. They were getting rather drunk, as I recall.

So, tell me what sort of wagon does Doug have, and what did he do to it?

I'll let Doug handle that one.

Speaking of Age of empires...

We just got our copy of Galactic Battlegrounds here at work yesterday (which is based on the Age of Empires engine) and it looks pretty sweet. I'm not a big RTS fan, but those who are should check it out. I've been hearing good things about it.

Hey, I ran into a few of your colleagues in the lobby of our hotel when we went to E3 this year. They were getting rather drunk, as I recall.

Yup, that sounds like our guys.

We just got our copy of Galactic Battlegrounds here at work yesterday (which is based on the Age of Empires engine) and it looks pretty sweet. I'm not a big RTS fan, but those who are should check it out. I've been hearing good things about it.

Customer reaction has been split on Galactic Battlegrounds -- It's really a matter of expectations. Some people want an all-new totally revolutionary RTS game. Other just want a (very) good RTS game. The former group is more likely to be the nay-sayers.

Personally, I think you guys will enjoy it. I was one of the main people who supported the Lucas Arts guys on this project. I can tell you that they understood and were really committed to making a game that played to the strengths of the (genie) engine and established RTS game conventions (read: they didn't try to make things different just for the sake of different or not-invented-here.). The game play is sufficently different enough (shields, flying units, power grids, etc) that the gameplay is mostly new, yet it uses the established strengths of the engine like good pathing, formations, hundreds of units per player, multiplayer that works, etc, ad nausium... Thus for a first release, no patch yet game, you'll find it to be exceptionally stable and polished.

Oh, and you can make your own scenario called "200 AT-AT's vs 1 Jar Jar Binks". It's actually a first for Lucas Arts - and the guys making it had to fight and pay for the privlidge - Battlegrounds is the first game that gives end users all the Star Wars characters and content, and let's them make thier own missions and campaigns... and share them with the world.

Yeap to aeverything you said. The team is really proud of the artwork and what they've pulled out of the engine. One of the interface designers sits right behind me so i've been hearing endless critiques on game flow and interface quality. It looks damn good.

In other LucasArts news... we all got our copy of Rogue Leader for GC today... which sorta sucks since none of us have a GC to play on, them not being out until next week and all. argh... i gotta go hunt down a development machine to commandere for an hour. I've seen some of the testers playing it though... and it's pretty safe to say you'll be blown away by the graphics. It's a step above what Starfighter was for the PS2 in regards to graphics quality breakthroughs for a console.

Matt, where do you work? I see you're a game developer. (I work at LucasArts in case you haven't gleaned that yet =)

Yeah, when I saw Rogue Leader at E3, I was blown away by the way it looked. It was also noteworthy that it was the only non "cutesy-kidsy-mario-luigi-pokemon-zelda" game for the Gamecube available.

Matt, where do you work? I see you're a game developer. (I work at LucasArts in case you haven't gleaned that yet =)

It should be obvious from my earlier posts.. I work at Ensemble. I wrote a big chunk of the AoE & AoK Engines incuding (but by no means limited to) all the graphics stuff.

I guess it's not that wierd to run into another industry person on the empeg board....

That's easy, the GMC pickup hotrod was called the Syclone, and there was a Blazer-based SUV too, called Typhoon. That one was pretty amazing, I had a friend who owned one, it could dust about any "normal" car. It drank gas like an M1 Abrams, though.

The red does indeed look great in the M3's. In fact I just got my '98 M3 upgraded with a Vortec supercharger from Dinan. It seems to add that much more meaning to Sammy Hagar's "Can't Drive 55" during the evening commute!!
--Andrew

Hmm. It seems that many of us are as much car nuts as we are audio/MP3 nuts. Is there a board or registry here just for discussing our cars?

Hmm. It seems that many of us are as much car nuts as we are audio/MP3 nuts. Is there a board or registry here just for discussing our cars?

Yes. It's called Off Topic. It was created specifically because the clientele of this BBS likes to discuss things such as their cars.

Ummmm, you guys are missing the point. Cars are merely a supporting infrastructure for the Empeg which allows one to quickly pick the correct piece of music which directly reflects your mood as you see you boss's NSX disappear in your rear view mirror! :-)

Probably belongs in Off-topic, buts its a fine line...

Hey, you get no argument from me. A car is simply a mobile mounting point for the empeg.

No, you're just going to get an earful about Doug's new station wagon. Speaking of clock-cleaning.

Well, OK...

In appearance it is an absolutely stock Ford Taurus station wagon.

The catch is... it has powertrain, interior, brakes and suspension bits from the Taurus SHO.

There are probably fewer than a dozen of these cars in the whole world. Ford never made them -- they only happen when lunatics take a standard station wagon and transfer the parts from a (presumably) wrecked SHO. This is not a trivial undertaking, involving swapping out the wiring harness, the front sub-frame assembly, engine, transmission, struts, brakes, hydraulics, controls, dash, interior, instrumentation, seats, etc. I cannot imagine it taking fewer than 100 hours of fairly skilled labor.

It is a car capable of running with Corvettes and BMWs. I'm not saying it will outrun them, or even actually keep up with them if they are well driven; but I guaran-damn-tee you that I wouldn't be embarassed in the attempt and would surprise the hell out of anybody who thought he could outrun me. It'll see 110 MPH (175 Km/hr) in what seems like the blink of an eye on a freeway on-ramp. A brief anecdote might be telling, here...

The service manager at the local Ford Dealership made me promise to bring the car by when I got it into town (he had seen pictures of it earlier) so I showed up at the shop. He didn't know it was me, hit the button to open the big doors into the service-writing area. I idled in, then punched it and laid 30 feet of rubber (both wheels!) all the way to the service desk. Got his attention, it did. And then all the mechanics and service writers and salespeople gathered 'round and poked and prodded at it for the next 45 minutes.

Driving 6600 miles from New Hampshire to Alaska, I found I could get 27 miles per gallon at a steady 70-75 MPH. I expect to do better than that when the engine is running right -- at present it is running pretty rich (black exhaust pipes) because I think the O2 sensors are bad.

It is a car I have wanted for 10 years -- the ultimate sleeper. I even went so far as to obtain a SHO engine for my older Taurus wagon... and then found out just how big a job it was to do the conversion. (I still have that engine if anyone wants to buy it. ) But that was how I found about this car... a friend of the guy who sold me the engine forwarded to him a classified ad from a website run by a radio station in New Hampshire with a swap and sell program, and he forwarded the ad to me, and I was on the phone buying the car sight unseen literally within seconds of reading my email.

The person selling the car was not the person who built it, he had bought it used, and was really pretty clueless about what he had. Definitely not a "Car Guy", all he knew was that it wasn't the normal engine, and the Ford dealer wouldn't give him anything for it as a trade-in because with all the modifications, they couldn't sell it and stand behind it. So, here was the ad:
"For Sale: 1993 Taurus Station Wagon with SHO powertrain. Loaded. Excellent condition. $1495 or best offer."

$1495. I could have sold that car in 48 hours on ebay for $6000.

I have got my stereo system for the car pretty well designed now, it will be a very serious high-end competition quality stereo, with enormous tweakability (I will actually be able to send 100% of the sound from either head unit (empeg or CD player) to any one of the 9 speakers in the car just by adjusting amp gains and balance/fade settings), dual 30-band equalizers (one for each channel L/R) with time-shift capability on each band, and enough power (800 watts) to give fast, effortless transients. Speakers will be MB-Quart and Boston Acoustics. Main amplifier will be an A/D/S 8-channel unit, subwoofer amplifier will be a Class D, make/model undecided at this time. Sound quality is paramount! The entire installation will be totally stealth.

Oh, and actually... the clock IS pretty clean (a little Windex polished it right up.)

tanstaafl.

*eep*

That is Insane!!!

Sick!!!

Twisted!!!

I Love It!!!