Review of Empeg Car unit number 144, 4Gb Blue.
by Tony Fabris


First of all, let me start out this review by noting that the unit was purchased used. I got it from a kind gentleman on Ebay who purchased his in September, but suddenly needed some extra cash. I had all but given up hope on getting an Empeg by Christmas, but lo and behold, this one turned up the week before Christmas. Santa came early this year.

As far as I know, I'm at no disadvantage whatsoever for having purchased a used unit. It was in perfect condition, and Rob at Empeg has informed me that they will continue to honor the remaining warranty period. The unit looked new, without even so much as a scratch on the faceplate.

I've only had the unit for a day now, so this is very much an "initial impressions" review. Okay, here we go...


- Installation -

Installation wasn't much more difficult than installing a regular stereo. My car (a 1988 VW GTI 16v) has a DIN-sized opening in the dash, but there is one slight problem with it. The car's plastic dash bezel isn't made to accommodate a full-pull-out, and had to be cut to allow the full pull-out. Fortunately, I'd done this before (for a pull-out CD player), and it wasn't a problem.

One issue was that the Empeg's docking sleeve is a bit deeper than many regular stereos. I was able to install it fine, but I had to remove an inner support bracket that was on the back wall of the dash before it would go in all the way. Since the bracket was riveted, I had to drill it to get it out. Again, not much of a problem for me.

There is more cabling dangling out of the back of the Empeg than most stereos, when you factor in the FM amplifier, the serial cable, and the ground adapters, but I was able to work it out OK. You have to use care, though, to make sure you don't cram and kink the cables.

I was worried about the 4-volt outputs going into my old amplifiers, but this turns out to have been no problem at all. It works just as well as my previous CD players.

The quality of the wiring is reasonably good, except for the floating ground adapters, which are visibly cheesier than the rest of the cabling. It doesn't appear to be much of a problem, and since the Mark 2's will eliminate the floating ground issue, future buyers won't need to worry about it.


- The Empeg Itself -

The first thing that comes to mind when describing the Empeg is that it's exactly what I expected it would be. I wasn't disappointed by it. Everything they said it would do, it does. It's not an over-hyped product. The visualizations are just as impressive as you'd expect them to be. The display looks just as good, if not better, than the pictures at the web site. The construction is solid, and the buttons feel crisp.

Visually, the unit is sleek. The smooth, featureless faceplate is great. I've heard complaints that it looks low-tech. On the contrary. To me, it's more high-tech looking than any car stereo I've ever seen.

The Linux software that runs on the unit seems very solid. It boots very quickly, almost as fast as a consumer car stereo. The menus are logically laid out, although the 4-button limit makes it hard to select certain features from the faceplate. Fortunately, the remote allows you to access most of the important features with one button-press. The Mark 2's will have that new knob, making the four buttons perform more logical functions, so it won't be an issue for new buyers.


- Surprises -

I've read everything about the Empeg that I could get my hands on, and still there were some features that pleasantly surprised me. These are features that I haven't seen mentioned in any other review:

The "standby mode" LED is cool. When you put the unit into standby mode, the LED pulses slowly, fading from dark to light instead of just blinking. There's something viscerally emotional about the way it pulses, as if it's hinting at the amazing power bottled up inside the unit. Like a sleeping dragon waiting to be awakened.

There are two independent volume controls, one for the "in-car" mode, and one for the "at-home" mode. When I have it plugged in at home, the volume is set at full power for the line-level outputs, correctly assuming that you'll be controlling the volume via an external amplifier or mixer. When it's plugged in the car, the volume is set wherever I had it last in the car, assuming that I'll be using the Empeg's volume control to set the level. It's so perfect and transparent that I did a double-take when I realized what was going on. I was second-guessing myself, worried that the volume would be too loud when I moved it to the car, but instead it just Did The Right Thing for me. This is a great feature that shows Empeg's attention to detail.

The "loudness" feature, usually just an on/off switch in most car stereos, is actually a sliding scale in the Empeg. You can adjust the amount of loudness contour you want. Again, attention to detail is what this thing is all about.


- Nonissues -

While waiting for my chance to buy an Empeg, I paid close attention to user's complaints on the BBS and the mailing list. I was a little worried about them. I'm happy to report that most of those problems have been solved, or they are nonissues for me:

The booting/power issues seem to have been solved. My car has a very serious voltage-drop problem when I start it. Early reports indicated that this might lock up the OS. For me, it works fine. When I start the car while the Empeg is playing, it simply drops out for a second or two, then resumes playing without having to fully reboot. Just like a regular car stereo.

I had seen several complaints about noise. Well, OK, there is some electronic noise in the audio outputs. But for me, the noise is so quiet that it can't be heard at all when the car engine is on. It's no more noisy than my previous car CD player was (it made the same kinds of noise). I will probably spend some time trying different grounding options to see if I can reduce it further, but at the moment it's no big deal.

The fact that the track up/down buttons are the same as the volume up/down buttons was a cause for concern. It turns out that it's no problem once you're used to it. Yes, you can occasionally make a mistake, but for the most part, it's no big deal. And of course, the Mark 2's will solve this problem with the knob.

The radio reception seems to have been a universal complaint. For me, it's fine. I still get all the stations I wanted to get. The tuner isn't up to par with some of the newer "super-tuners" in consumer car stereos, but it's fine for me. Besides, the only time I ever listened to the radio was when I was bored of the three CD's I'd brought with me. I'll no longer have that problem.

The lack of an AM radio is a problem for some people. Again, not a problem for me, since I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. One possible issue would be for highway information when traveling: Where I live, there are sometimes road signs saying "Traffic info, tune radio to AM 1610 when flashing". This usually means that the state transportation department is announcing a snow-closed highway, construction ahead, or something similar. I've noticed that many areas are broadcasting this information on FM bands as well (although not in my area). I think that I can live without this information. And of course, this will be fixed when the Mark 2's come out, since they will have an AM tuner as well.

The lack of a built-in clock is a complaint for some users, but for me it's not a problem. Personally, I'm glad it's one less clock I have to set. My car already has a clock anyway.

Bumpy roads were a worry for me, since my CD players always skipped like crazy when I drove to work. I was worried that the hard disk would get ruined if it was reading when I hit a bump. Well, that seems to be a nonissue, too. There's a little icon that indicates when the hard disk is accessing, and I've gone over some bumps while it's loading a song. It was just fine.

The fact that it's a large, bulky pullout unit is going to put some people off. Many people would rather have a removable faceplate for theft protection. For me, the full-pull-out is an ADVANTAGE. You can't get full-pull-out CD players any more, and they're the only thing that won't get stolen. Trust me, I had a removable faceplate unit, and it got stolen anyway. So the full-pull-out is the only way to go.

I'd heard that using multiple USB devices might screw up the synchronization process. It works fine for me, and I have a USB mouse that's active at the same time the Empeg is synching. I've had other sync problems, but they weren't related to the USB mouse.

Creating playlists and uploading songs turned out to be a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Since I already had all my MP3 tags filled out, it was a simple drag-and-drop operation. I didn't have to type anything except for the playlist name. I even had a directory full of out-of-order files, and they were a snap to reorder correctly in the Emplode software. All I had to do was view details and drag the songs up and down in the list.


- Problems -

A prototype product like this is bound to have a few minor problems. Fortunately, the only problems I've noticed so far are very minor ones:

When setting the Equalizer, there doesn't seem to be a way to save the settings with the remote control. You can select the "Save" option with the remote, but you can't actually CONFIRM the save with the remote. You have to press the down-button on the unit's face in order to confirm the save option.

When changing tracks quickly, the system sometimes pauses because you've outrun its read-ahead cache. Not a big deal, and understandable.

The unit was supposed to play tracks gapless. For instance, I'm supposed to be able to hear "Dark Side of the Moon" without dropouts between the tracks. Before getting the Empeg, I went to a lot of trouble to make sure my Pink Floyd MP3's were all perfectly seamless. They're now perfect, and I can play them perfectly using WinAmp's Gapless Output plug-in. But with the current Empeg, there are still some tiny gaps between the tracks on playback.

The Windows Emplode software is less stable than the Linux software that runs on the unit. I crashed it once simply by using the cut-and-paste options to move a sub-playlist back up to the parent position in the tree. So for now, you have to organize your playlists in small groups, perhaps only a couple of albums at a time, synchronizing after each one. That way, you don't lose a lot of work if Emplode crashes or if a sync crashes.

The synchronization process seems to be excessively timing-sensitive. I crashed a sync by trying to do some floppy-disk access while the sync was running in the background. So, for now, you have to let your computer just sit there while it's synchronizing. No playing Quake 3 while uploading Mozart.


- Wish List -

Despite how good the unit is, there are still some improvements I'd like to see. These are all things that could be done in software, so they're not far-fetched:

A progress bar showing the current position within the song would be nice in some modes. For example, one of the visualization screens (my favorite one) simply shows the track/artist/album/year, with the time in the corner. On this screen, there is a stylish horizontal line running across the screen. If that line could also be a progress bar, that would be cool. For instance, a few pixels could be shaded darker and scroll from left to right as the song plays.

When fast-forwarding or rewinding, a progress bar would be very nice. For example, if I wanted to fast-forward to a guitar solo, it would be helpful to see an indicator of how far along (percentage-wise) I was in the song. I know the audio plays during this, but without the percentage bar, I can't tell whether I'm speeding past the first chorus or the third chorus.

Auto-normalization for the volume of songs would be nice. This would be a pretty serious software undertaking, but it would be so cool. The unit could peek ahead at the next song (using some free CPU cycles) and decide what relative volume level the next song should be played at.

Being able to turn shuffle-play on and off with a single button on the remote would be nice. I don't like having to go two menus deep to toggle shuffle-play. Any one of the number keys would be fine.

Being able to program the EQ and tuner presets from within the Emplode software would be nice.

Making the Synchronization process more bullet proof and less prone to crashes would be very useful.



- Overall -

The Empeg is probably the coolest piece of electronic gadgetry I've ever owned. Being able to play my entire CD collection in my car is just the ultimate feeling of power. I never have to worry about which CD's I'm bringing with me.

Despite the fact that this is a prototype unit running beta software, I think it's worth every penny. It's unique, visually stunning, and it sounds great.

Follow-up review of Empeg Car unit number 144
by Tony Fabris

I've now lived with the Empeg for over five days now, and I thought it would be a good time to update some of the things I mentioned in my original review.


- The Faceplate and the Handle -

I paid my 40 bucks (52 with shipping) and got a green faceplate from Rob, to match my car's dash lighting. I figured that if I was going to get one, I'd better do it right away, since they were going to start making them with an extra hole for the mark 2's pretty soon.

Installing the new face was easy, but the pullout handle tends to rub against one edge of the faceplate now. The tolerances between the faceplate and the handle are way too close. Empeg needs to design a small amount of clearance there. It's not a large problem, just something to note for future designs.

The green faceplate seems to make the display a tiny bit brighter than the blue face. This might be my imagination though, since I didn't do a direct comparison. Of course, now my car's dash lighting looks pale and dull compared to the Empeg...

I now agree with previous complaints regarding the handle's extension travel. It only comes out by about 45 degrees or so. It needs to extend to 90 degrees to make transportation more comfortable. Also, it would make it easier to plug into the dash if it extended to 90 degrees. As it stands right now, I have to press against the faceplate itself to plug the unit fully into the dash. If the handle extended to 90 degrees, I could just push on the handle and not have to touch the faceplate. Again, it's not a large problem, just something that would make the Mark 2's better.


- The Floating Ground Adapters -

In my previous review, I stated that the system noise wasn't a big deal. It's still not a big deal, but I thought I'd take a stab at reducing it even further.

When I got the unit from its original owner, he had installed the ground adapters on the Empeg's end of the stereo cables, with the ground leads attached to a screw on the docking sleeve. I knew this wasn't the intended installation method, but I thought, "Hey, if it worked for the original owner, I might as well try it." The system noise wasn't bad in that configuration, so I didn't bother to change it at first.

So when I decided to try to reduce the system noise some more, I moved the ground adapters away from the head unit and down to the amplifiers, as intended. This was a lot of work (about two hour's worth-- it's tough working on my car because of where I've mounted the amps), but when I was done, the system noise had been reduced by about 50 percent. Not gone, but mostly gone. I was pretty happy with it.

Then I started the car to put it back in the garage.

Adding the ground adapters to the amplifier end of the system was a mistake. I got the worst alternator whine I'd ever heard. Even the act of turning the key to the "Acc" position created a terrible noise from my electric fuel pump firing up.

I have a theory as to why this happened, but I'm not sure yet. I have a noise suppressor on the power lead that goes to my head unit. I've had it there through three different car stereos, and it's always worked great. I don't have any noise suppressors on the power leads to the amplifiers, and they've never needed them before. I think that adding the ground adapters at the amplifier end of the system somehow bypassed the noise suppression I had on the head unit.

So I took the ground adapters off of the amps. The alternator noise went away.

After messing with the ground adapters for another couple of hours, I discovered that there was no difference in the noise level between the original installation method (adapters at the docking sleeve), and having no adapters at all. So for now, I've left them off of the system altogether and I'm living with the same amount of noise that was there when I installed it in the first place.

Someday I might add noise suppressors to the amps and see if I can safely add the ground adapters back in at that time. For now, the system noise is still not a big problem, and I'm too tired to do anything else about it right now.

Let's hope the Mark 2's have this issue licked, eh?


- The Equalizer -

In my previous review, I was having problems programming the EQ from the remote. I figured out which button confirmed the save (it was the DNPP button, I was trying to press the OK button, silly me). Now I have separate EQ's for home and car. In the car it's 4-way, with the rears EQ'd differently than the fronts. At home it's straight stereo.

Although I'd rather see the two-way EQ wired in such a way so that it's front-back instead of left-right. That way, I could get more bands out of it when I'm in the car. Why have separate left-right EQ's? It seems much more useful to have separate front-back EQ's...


- Playlists -

I have discovered just how cool hierarchical playlists are. At first, I didn't realize the power. Now I have seen the light.

For those who haven't seen this in action, it works like this:

Let's say I've got one playlist that's all my Rush albums. The parent playlist is "Rush". Then each sub-playlist is a separate album: "Moving Pictures", "Power Windows", etc. In each album playlist are the songs. Note that I have no songs in the parent playlist, ONLY in the album playlists.

When I go to the "Playlists" feature with the remote control, the first default option it gives me is PLAY (the little triangle). If I hit it, it'll play every song on the Empeg- every song contained in any sub-playlists anywhere. If instead, I press the >> button and choose the "Rush" playlist, then it again gives me the PLAY option as a default. If I hit it there, it'll play all my Rush albums- all the songs in all the sub-playlists under the Rush playlist. But if instead, I press the >> button and choose the "Moving Pictures" playlist, it again gives me the PLAY option for Moving Pictures. The granularity continues all the way down to a single song- I can drill down and just play one song, or I can play any group above the song at any point in the playlist tree.

So the beauty is this: You don't have to set up separate playlists for listening to a whole artist's catalog or just a single album. Create your album playlists as sub-trees of the artist playlist, and you only need to have the songs entered once in their individual album playlists. Get it?

Now, if you want to make your own special playlists of mixed songs, you can still do that. I've made a "Low Key" playlist and a "High Energy" playlist, separate from my artist playlists. So when I go to listen to something on the Empeg, I can choose to play the whole Empeg, or I can choose "Low Key" or "High Energy", or I can drill down to a specific artist or a specific album. It's very elegant once you see it in action.


- Music Database -

I had a tense moment when the Emplode software and the synchronization process seemed to be totally hosed. I thought I had completely lost my database. Fortunately, a couple of re-synchs seems to have solved the problem, and the unit is working OK now. But for those who might be curious, here's what happened:

I was working on my "Low Key" and "High Energy" playlists. I had completed the "Low Key" one and done a synch, everything was working OK.

I was about half-way through making my "High Energy" playlist. I had been listening to some of the individual songs before dragging them into the playlist. I did this by hitting the "Play" button in the Emplode software. Emplode does a brief communication with the Empeg, telling it to find that song and start playing it.

Once, when I hit that "Play" button in Emplode, the Empeg player froze. I think it's because I hit the button too soon after I had already hit it once for a different song. It's like the player didn't have time to recover from the previous handshake before I asked it to do another one. The visualization was frozen in mid-wave, and the unit did not respond to commands from the remote or from the front panel. I couldn't even tell it to go into "standby" mode. It was totally locked.

But since I had already done a lot of work organizing a playlist in Emplode, I didn't want to lose that work. That was my mistake, as you'll see below.

I physically removed the power plug from the Empeg, forcing it to reboot. It seemed to be working fine. But, and this is the key, I did not exit and restart the Emplode software after rebooting the frozen Empeg. I didn't want to lose my work. So I tried to do a synch, so that it would take the changes I'd done so far. The synch failed, the Empeg locked up, and things got worse after that.

Upon rebooting the Empeg, it hung for a long time at the "loading music databases" prompt. Instead of the boot messages scrolling by, it froze on that prompt for about ten seconds. Every time it booted.

I tried reloading the Emplode software several times, and each time, it got a synch error when it tried to connect to the Empeg and get the music database. It was beginning to look like I couldn't even get Emplode to talk to the Empeg at all. I was sure my database was hosed and I would have to start all over again.

Fortunately, the problem seems to have magically fixed itself. After rebooting the Empeg and the Emplode software a few more times, it finally synched and looked OK. The Empeg no longer hung on its boot screen. The playlists seemed fine, although I lost the work that I'd done so far on my "High Energy" playlist.

I don't know why the problem happened in the first place, and more importantly, I don't know why the problem fixed itself. But I'm glad it did.


- Software Support -

I sent Empeg a bug report, because I thought I'd found a memory leak in the uploading process. I was thrilled to see "Mac" reply the same day and ask me direct questions about my experiences. It's great to know that they're on the ball and working actively to improve the software.


- New Items for my Wish List -

Emplode software: When dragging songs up and down (changing their order) within the same playlist, it would be nice if it would scroll past the top/bottom of the screen automatically during the drag. If I want to drag a song up more than one screen, I have to do it in multiple stages, manually scrolling between each move.

Empeg firmware: It would be nice to be able to remove a song from a playlist without having to use Emplode. An example: I made a "Low Key" playlist that I thought would be appropriate to play in my wife's presence. The playlist hit a certain song that she didn't like, and she complained. I wanted to just be able to delete it, right then and there, but I couldn't. I had to wait until I got the unit plugged back into the computer before I could delete it. If there's a way to do this right now, I'd like to know about it.


- Showing off the unit -

I got the chance to show off the unit while doing some last-minute Christmas shopping, and I was able to show it off to the relatives on Christmas day. Everyone was very intrigued by it. One girl at a record store commented on the cool color of the faceplate. She seemed amazed when I told her that the unit contained my entire CD collection inside it. The relatives were suitably impressed, and it sparked a discussion regarding the future of the music industry, and how this little MP3 format was throwing a giant monkey wrench into the record companies' marketing/distribution machine. (I don't condone music piracy, I just believe that in the future, we will probably buy our music directly from the artists instead of from record stores, leaving the record companies completely out of the loop.)

Overall, I'm still very happy with the unit. My comments above sound like complaints, but they're not. I'm posting them just in the interest of making sure the Mark 2's are the best that they can be.

Just curious: is your amp and headunit grounded to the same spot on the car to eliminate grounding loops?

is your amp and headunit grounded to the same spot on the car to eliminate grounding loops?

No, they aren't. I have two separate amps, and one of them is in the trunk, making a common ground difficult. The front amp is ground to the same point as the head unit (the in-dash radio wiring harness). The noise filter is on the power lead that goes to the front amp and the head unit, and is grounded to the chassis (as per its instructions). The amp in the trunk is getting its power directly from the battery and is grounded to the chassis in the trunk.

I've had four different head units (counting the Empeg) with the same amplification setup. Ground loops have never been a big problem for the most part. One of the head units I had would make some electronic noise similar to the Empeg, but others have not.

I'm not totally clear on the concept of a ground loop, and I'd love to hear more about it if you're an expert on the subject.

Drakino's post about #359 reminded me that I hadn't updated my review with a long-term report, something I'd promised myself I'd do. So here we go:

I've had the unit for nearly two months now. It's been great the whole time. I haven't had any mechanical or electronic problems with the unit in that entire time. And it runs all day: In the car when I drive to work, all day on my desk at work, in the car on the way home, then in the evening after I get home. I haven't listened to this much music in years.

I have taken care of the noise problems by simply tuning my amps' input gains correctly. Now "0db" is the maximum volume I want on the Empeg, and the overall noise floor is quite low (better now, in fact than the CD player that the Empeg replaced).

The software improvements to the unit have been great. I spent a lot of time on this BBS championing the equalizer, and have been rewarded with seeing Empeg implement the coolest and most powerful EQ I've ever seen in a consumer product. The only thing left on my "must-have" wish list is the ability to associate a particular EQ preset with a given song. That would allow me to fix the EQ on a few albums which are to bassy or too bright, or to normalize songs that are too quiet.

Empeg's tech support and customer service have been fantastic the whole time. All of my questions are answered promptly, bug reports are followed-up, and new software releases are frequent. I've been allowed to test pre-release software builds, and I've seen some of my specific suggestions implemented.

I recently added a subwoofer and I am now completely thrilled with the overall sound of the car stereo. The woofer allowed me to tune my amps and the EQ properly (instead of trying to over-boost the bass on my rear deck speakers), so that the quality of the Empeg's output shines through much better than it ever did.

In fact, the audio output quality of the Empeg is so good, that it's allowed me to hear certain compression artifacts on some of my MP3s that I hadn't noticed before. The ones that I'm noticing were done with an older encoder and without normalization. I might re-encode them with a new encoder when I get a bigger hard disk for the Empeg.

Which is, by the way, the only real problem I'm having now: I love the unit so much, and I listen to it so much, that the 4-gig drive is just not enough. I was getting by with just putting "most" of my music on it. Now I want all of my music on it, even the stuff I don't like very much. Fortunately, a new hard disk is supposed to be easy to install and configure, so once I've saved my pennies, it's a no-brainer.

The visualizations are something that I'm surprised at... I figured I'd be bored of them by now. I'm not. I like having them up while I drive. I don't stare at them while driving, they just kind of sit there in my peripheral vision. My daughter likes to cycle through them with the remote while she rides. My wife makes me turn them off if we drive at night, because the display is so bright.

Transporting the unit is a lot easier for me now that I bought a Case Logic PDC-1 bag. I'm looking forward to seeing the Empeg cases when they come out- perhaps I'll buy one of those, too.

Overall, I still love the unit. It gets five out of five stars for long-term enjoyment.


-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I thought I'd say how great it is to hear this kind of feedback. I mean, if you hated the product we'd want to hear that too, but it's nice to hear that people are appreciating what we're doing at empeg.

Today we gave our first ever refund - it's not that we've ever refused them before, we've just never been asked to give one! I shipped the player back in, tested it, and it works perfectly. The client swears that the audio output is screwed, that he's blown a lot of money on installation, and that - essentially - the product is crap. I know for a fact that the fault was with the installation - the symptoms he describes can be exactly duplicated if the grounding leads are not fitted.

It's a bit depressing to know that someone is unhappy with our service and is probably bad mouthing empeg to his friends and colleagues, even though there was absolutely nothing wrong with the product. I don't blame the client, I blame the so called professional installers, who got to charge him for two failed installations attempts and then finally sold him a CD system and made their margin on that as well. I guess they decided it wasn't worth the effort to read the installation notes - they made a lot more money this way!

Anyway, it's depressing when something like that happens but reading stuff like this on the BBS more than makes up for it.

I think it would be cool to start a list of installation companies that have done a GOOD job installing empegs. This would be useful when clients ask for reccommendations in their area.

For now, though, I'm going to bed :-)

Rob

I think it would be cool to start a list of installation companies that have done a GOOD job installing empegs. This would be useful when clients ask for reccommendations in their area.

This is a good idea! Whoever has recommendations, start a new thread in the "Installation Notes" section, then everyone could add to that thread.

Personally, I've met the people who do installations, and I know how much they get paid per hour. If you want my opinion, steer clear of all of them. Actually, I'm sure there are some great ones... I just haven't met them yet. Hence the need for a list.

On the topic of grounding leads: I found that I got better noise reduction by simply reducing my amps' input gains than I did by installing the grounding leads. Since I had some ground-loop issues in my system to begin with (my fault), I couldn't make proper use of the grounding leads anyway. They're not installed in my system at all right now, but the system noise is practically nonexistent (and if I got rid of my ground loop problems, it'd probably go away completely). Rob, perhaps you should emphasize that gain-tuning technique in the next rev of your installation instructions.

Question about the ground leads: You've altered the output electronics in the Mk2 so that they're no longer needed, right? I thought you guys had mentioned it a while ago- is it still true? What did you have to do internally to accomplish this?



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

That is a fantastical idea! I am becoming increasingly nervous as the MII release date arrives, in part because I am not certain if I can find a shop that will do a good job on my Empeg. I'm also not certain if I will be good enough for my Empeg (which I will affectionately name 'Schmitty the Empeg, Friend of Bobby the Ninja Pony') or if I will be beaten and robbed of it, but those are more personal issues. In the same spirit, I wouldn't mind seeing a formal list o' gotchas - things that people find to be universal installation truths. Then again, the MII sounds like it may be different enough that any current advice will be moot...

XXXOOO
Your fiend, mafisto

Having a good installer is crucial.. About two months ago, in an effort to get rid of my alternator whine, I had my installer put in 4 guage wiring to everything.. Although the alternator whine was gone, the empeg's grounding problem was shown (tick tick tick tick when it was playing..) the installer had aparrantly tested the system w/ my cd-player... anyways when I saw it, the first thing I noticed was that the ground wire going to/from amp/empeg was cut, so I told the installer that this is what was causing it and asked him to provide the necessary tools for repair.. After hooking up the wire, the problem still persisted (getting the installer to just "grin" at my failed attempt...)

Anyways when I brought it home and took it apart, they had cut the ground wire on both sides, amp and empeg, so hooking it up on the amp side obviously didn't do any good...
-mark

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

(I should probebly add that after this attempt, all of my alternator whine DID go away, although I still have the noisy cricket in my empeg - low enough w/ the gains turned down not to be bothersome anymore...)
-mark

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

The Mk2 should be easier to install: as default, the outputs are not floating ground (they can be made floating ground if required though, the circuitry is similar). This means that as default, it's about as easy to install as any other stereo: the ISO power connector means that for most cars, hooking up power, lights sense, etc is a simple plug-in operation.

Hugo

The Mk2 has a cleaner PSU and better audio layout, which has meant that an isolated audio ground isn't needed anymore - it's not a mod that can be retrofitted to a Mk1, sorry!

Hugo

Rob,

While I agree this is a great product. The person's problems might not of been
as easy to fix as you said. I to got bad noise from empeg through my amps. and
tried every thing that you said to try and some things that other people posted
here. Nothing worked. By the way my amps were Rockford Fosgates. And I to heard
from the stereo shop that I bought my amps at that the audio outputs where bad.

So What I did is went out to the stereo shops around town and tried out a couple
amps what I found out are with some amps you get a bad noise through them and
with others none. I think it has something to do with the way the system grounds. So I bought some new amps that worked with the empeg.

But trust me its worth every cent I spent on it because now It sounds great.
And there was no way I was giving up on getting my empeg to sound great because
once you have a empeg player theres no way you can go back to a cd player.

Thanks,

Brad Graff

my amps were Rockford Fosgates ( . . ) I think it has something to do with the way the system grounds. So I bought some new amps that worked with the empeg

Funny, I use a Rockford Fosgate too, to satisfaction. Initially I had some whine, but that was killed by connecting one of the ground leads to the Empeg player (!). Since then, no whine, good sound (but loud pops on turning off ignition - possibly caused by Rockford's MOSFET design that are said to be more sensitive to current discharge)


Henno
# 00120

This may or may not have any relevance at all.... but the stereo shop I patronize is more professional in knowledge and installation technique than most, and has been instrumental in preparation of many cars that have participated successfully in IASCA competitions. The shop owner is admittedly an opinionated man with definite biases for and against certain equipment, but has no particular axes to grind, as he is perfectly happy to sell you any particular brand you might want.

The reason for this lengthy preamble is this... he has an *extremely* low opinion of Rockford Fosgate, both in terms of quality of sound output, and frequency of failure. This last is relevant, because he offers his own lifetime guarantee, parts and labor, on anything he installs.

I have no first-hand knowledge, one way or another, about Rockford Fosgate equipment.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

he has an *extremely* low opinion of Rockford Fosgate, both in terms of quality of sound output, and frequency of failure.

He may well be right. The Rockford Fosgate amp couldn't handle the Empeg pop and is now back with Rockford for a repair (under guarantee). To prevent this from happening again, I have 'big johns' delay switch (see elsewhere on this board) ready when it comes back.

Quality of sound of the Fosgate hasn't bothered me yet. I believe that a car is such a bad listening environment that 'sound quality' will be very difficult to achieve (if at all, but you probably disagree ). Empeg and Fosgate thus do fine for me in the car.

(At home, I use the empeg/MP3 for background music and it is great at that!. For proper listening, any decent CD played on a decent installation still beats MP3 compression -- and thus the empeg -- with a long shot)

Henno
# 00120

In this particular case the client's installer appeared to have ignored the grounding leads, and drew his final conclusions by powering up the player on the bench and connecting the car outputs to some headphones. It sounded horrendous - but all he need have done for it to sound ok was touch the RCA shields against the player chassis to provide a ground reference (or fit the grounding leads).

Rob

Please don't get me wrong If I turned the gains on the Rockford Fosgates
way down the noise was better, but then whats the point of haveing a big system
if all your amps are turned down?

I went to a MTX Thunder 1000D(1000D is not out yet so In the mean time I'm useing a 500D) to power my subs and a Nakamichi PA-1002 for my mids and highs and now can turn my gains up with out any noise.

Oh yea I had two Rockford fosgate Punch 225.2 pushing four Punch DVC 12inch subs
and when I switched amps I decided to switch subs too. SO I bought two 12 inch
MTX 8000's and they sound louder and cleaner than the Rockford subs sounded.
So that will probley be that last time I buy any Rockford Fosgate stereo stuff.
The reason being I was very inpressed by MTX car audio line.

Thanks,

Brad Graff

Empeg S/N 00247

Please don't get me wrong If I turned the gains on the Rockford Fosgates way down the noise was better, but then whats the point of haveing a big system if all your amps are turned down?

Because you get the best quality from the audio if your desired "maximum" volume is 0db on your head unit. This adjusts the dynamic range of the amps to match the dynamic range of the head unit. Remember that your amps aren't really "turned down", you're just balancing the input gain. The overall capability of the amp to "get loud" isn't affected, you're just dialing in the cleanest possible sound in relation to the desired maximum volume from your head unit.

Obviously, for some installations, ground loop problems can induce enough noise so that even when the amplifier inputs are tuned properly, there is still noise in the outputs. I don't know if this was the case for you or not. But if you're ready to blow out your speakers when the head unit is set at -20db, then you're not getting the best possible sound out of the system.

This is a good rule of thumb for all car audio installations, not just the Empeg.



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

I think you miss understood me I didn't mean that I want my system to blow
my speakers at -20db, but when I have to turn my amps gains to the lowest
setting and I still get a little noise through my system. And lets be real
a lowest setting I could crank up the empeg to 0db and it was to be honest
not loud of nuff to blow a speaker or to sound half decent either.

Now I'm not that very good with words so my post maybe came of wrong to you.
But trust me I'm not a stereo newbie by any means and I know if my amps gains
are turned up to high.

I'm sorry if it seems I'm coming off a little strong on you but, I've been competeing in the States for about 5years and know a little about what I'm
doing. I'm not implying you don't but your not here to see what I was trying
to explane so its probley my fault for not wording it better.

Thanks,
Brad Graff

I think you miss understood me I didn't mean that I want my system to blow my speakers at -20db, but when I have to turn my amps gains to the lowest setting and I still get a little noise through my system.

Ah, then obviously there's more going on than just amp gain issues for you. The floating ground issue on the Mk1's isn't an easy one to solve for some folks. In my case, it's my fault that I've got ground loops: My amps are grounded in different locations than the head unit, and my power filtering on the head unit complicates matters even further. If I ran some heavy ground wires in the right places and chassis-isolated everything, I know I could get rid of the noise completely. I've just reached a point where I've reduced the noise enough so that I no longer notice it, so I'm satisfied.

I'm glad that Emepg has taken care of this issue on the Mk2, though. They've done a really good job listening to their early adopters.

-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

" I believe that a car is such a bad listening environment that 'sound quality' will be very
difficult to achieve (if at all, but you probably disagree )."

Well, yes and no...

Remember that for my ultimate sound quality purposes (i.e., competition) the stereo is played with the car parked, engine off, doors and windows closed.

When the car is in motion, I just crank the volume up enough to cover the road noise, and the quality is still pretty much there. So I do find it worthwhile to strive for sound quality, even in "such a bad listening environment." The downside of attempting sound quality in a moving vehicle is that music with a lot of dynamic range is not easy to listen to. The quiet sections are inaudible, and the loud sections tend to rattle the mirrors.

My ultimate plans are to put my really "important" music in uncompressed -- Rob says that eventually the empeg will be able to play .wav files directly, if I understand him correctly -- so my IASCA competition disk and a few individual tracks I use to impress unsuspecting onlookers will not go in as MP3's at all.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"