Well it was a long weekend on the road with the empeg - almost 1000 miles since Saturday morning. I was frantically trying to dump about 8 GB of MP3's to the unit before I left Friday afternoon. Well it turns out that 8GB's of MP3's takes about 12 hours.... So I didn't leave until 3am.

A few observations: the emplode software is Beta. I figured out a work-around for it blowing up that I described elsewhere so I could batch all of the files up and send them at once. I did get an error message at the end of the upload: Syncro Failed During Stage 9 with error 0xffffff92 but everything seemed normal and so my heart started beating again... :-)

I haven't had the time to put the empeg into the car's dash so I'm running it through a cassette tape adaptor. This works pretty good but I understand from one of Hugo's posts that the line level out's aren't isolated so I was picking up some while from the empeg. For power I bought a 6' (2M for you metric people) cigarette lighter extension cord, cut off the female end and soldered a power connector to the end.

I packed the car, wired up the empeg and.... couldn't get the power connector to stay in the socket. Seems that I needed a longer and thicker plug. Thankfully I bought two because I wasn't sure which one was the right size. The used the better looking adaptor - which turned out to be too short, so I cut that off and put on the other one which was slightly larger in diameter and ended up using lots of electrical tape to ensure that I didn't short anything out.

So the car is packed, the MP3's are downloaded, I've got the tape adapter that I used in my rental car the week before and I hit the road. Push the tape adaptor into the player and wait - it kicks it back out. I push it in, it pushes it out. (this goes on for a while as I'm suspending belief considering I've got a six hour drive ahead of me and the DARN tape adaptor apparently doesn't work my my tape deck!) Denial sets in and I give up turning to the radio instead.

About 30 minutes later I'm still pissed about the tape adapter - it worked in my rental car darn it, it should work here. So I think, hey what if I turn it around so that the side that the cord comes out goes in first (which the instructions that came with the unit explicitly say not to do). So I do it and it works! So remote in hand, empty highway ahead of me I'm listening to my empeg as I go.

I don't know how many hours of driving I did this weekend but I didn't listen to the same song or artist twice. In fact, with so many choices available, I found myself skipping artists that I like for those that I really like.

The whole kludge setup worked great, no skips and no issues other than some alternator whine picked up off the line-level outs. I'll probably put some caps and inductors on the alternator of the car to lower the noise level even though I'll be using the isolated outputs when I finally get it mounted in the DIN slot.

For those of you worried about temps in the car, I was driving through death valley yesterday and the thermometer was indicating 119F. The empeg was quite happily working away the whole time (I don't have AC in the car).

The bugs are there - it is Beta software. I got a few lock-ups needing a power cycle, a few display problems with the software, the unit reboots everytime I start the car - from the voltage drop and finally there are some interface issues I don't like. But it's really cool. I'm glad I didn't wait for the software to get ironed out.

The visuals are great, it will be better when it's not down in the passenger footwell and I can see them more easily. It facinates everyone who I show it too.

I've got most of the remote's buttons down now. I can switch playlists withouth looking at the unit, and do all the stuff that you would need to like fast forward and next song and change the volume. I do wish there was a way to turn the unit off and on with the remote and not using the buttons - if there is I couldn't figure it out. Maybe I should read the manual?

So about 18-19 hours of driving, high temps and lots of music. Audio quality is great (aside from the alternater whine) and should be outstanding when I get it installed with quality speakers and I'm not running it through a tape adaptor.

If anyone in the San Jose area wants to see one in action, drop me an e-mail at: [email protected]

Cheers,


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List 351, empeg 00045, 10gb, Amber

When I pulled my unit into the bright light of the audio shop tonight I noticed that the handle is fitting tight enough against the front panel that it's starting the wear the black finish off the handle when it's pushed down into the closed position. I suspect that after a month of two of pulling it in and out, the top portion of the handle is going to be worn down and no longer the same color as the rest of the handle. It's already got an impressive collection of scratches on it.

Also the handle doesn't fit quite flush with the front of the unit when the empeg is fully seated into the docking bay.. In other words it's still sticking out a bit at the bottom and isn't parallel to the front of the unit when looked at from the side. It's very minor and almost un-noticable.

=-Clarke


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List 351, empeg 00045, 10gb, Amber