empeg as portable audio player

I'm going to London via USAir, on planes not equipped with at-seat power. It occurred to me that my laptop will not have a charge for the full flight, so no music for me, at least part of the time. I could buy a portable audio device, but I'd rather wait. Has anyone contemplated some sort of battery pack for their empeg? Something that wouldn't run afoul of air security? The empeg and a set of headphones would seem to make a reasonable device to use.

I think this is the thread you're looking for.

I've got to say, just pick up a $50 MP3 CD player, burn two MP3 CD's and be done with it. You'll save time and space, and won't have to worry about your empeg. I'm still a slave to my minidisc player when it comes to airplanes, as it's the only thing that gets me through some flights...

Matthew

MP3 CDs blow. My wife actually has an MP3 CD player (admittedly several generations old, but probably not too far behind what you'd get for $50)...

I think instead I'm going to buy a few spare batteries for my laptop and play off
the hard drive. Even if the lifetime is as crappy as usual, 4 of the 3800mah batteries instead of 2 should get me over the ocean. Then I just need to charge them in my hotel while I'm there. Which reminds me, I should figure out which power cord adapter I need and figure out where it went.

Have you considered one of the flat external laptop batteries? You might be able to get one of them to work with the empeg, too.

I did, but I don't think I want to overly need to screw around before this trip. It's coming up fast and I have to many things to do before I go.

I wonder if you *really* need to have music the whole flight? For me, just being able to break up the monotony for a while does the trick.

Another thought... get a cheap solid-state mp3 player instead of extra laptop batteries, and then just power up the laptop when you need to change the music

If there are babies on the flight, I need music while they're being noisy, so it's easier to just leave it on. I put in my earplugs at takeoff, and when allowed, I pull out my laptop, put on my earmuff-style headphones, turn the music all the way up, and then I can *almost* not hear the baby crying in the row behind me

put on my earmuff-style headphones,

The empeg will not drive those headphones.

The only headphones you can use plugged directly into the line-outs of the empeg are efficient in-the-ear Walkman-type headphones that require very little power. Even cheap Walkman-type 'phones won't work. If they cost less than $20, they probably won't do the job.

tanstaafl.

I've plugged Sennheiser HD 545s into mine without an amp, and while they're far from loud, they're certainly usable. I don't know about how they'd fare in the noisy environment of an airplane, though.

The empeg will not drive those headphones.

It did last month. You know something about them I don't?

Hm, I'd just grab a RioVolt MP3 CD player. What's so bad about MP3 CDs? 11CD's worth of music on a single disk. Ok, not searchable or indexed, but the RioVolt has a nice directory structure navigation method. And the newer ones are pretty nice, I've heard. I have the original (which isn't SO hot, but it's kept me company on my overseas trips many a time). Consider it.

What's so bad about MP3 CDs? 11CD's worth of music on a single disk.

There's nothing wrong with MP3 CDs, unless your goal is to never have to swap CDs again for any reason. To me, that was the primary selling point of the empeg.

But for a plane trip, an MP3 CD player is fine.

What's so bad about MP3 CDs? 11CD's worth of music on a single disk.

<valley girl voice> Ugh...removable media is, like, soooo last century! </valley girl voice>

I don't want to have to premake shuffled MP3 CDs, and if I don't, doing a useful shuffle is hard. I played this game, and it was hard using Nakamichi MBR-7s (4 of them) to house the CDs... no actual changing.

Really, I absolutely won't do MP3 CDs. Not going to happen.

See my last note. If I knew what I wanted to hear, yeah, one CD for the way, and one for the way back. But I don't, and I don't want to, and I'm not.

I'm trying to excise CD from my life except as an archival medium, and even there, if it makes sense to use DVD-R instead...

Well, I'd say it's time to buy an iPod if you've decided to stick with mp3s and need a portable solution. Rumor has it Apple has refurbished 5gigs for $200. But of course then you've got the whole iPod-killer allusions we've been hearing lately to scare you off.

Matthew

The thought of you on a plane, with an empeg, a battery and some wires, doesnt hold good.

I think security would escort you from the plane to be honest.

Someone else packed a gel-cel battery and used his empeg for the flights from Florida to the Euro-empeg-meet this year. I even added a "power off empeg display" feature in Hijack to cut down the current drain, just for him.

Cheers

Secretly I gave up and bought extra batteries for my laptop, and will just clean off a few gigs and use that.

I've listened to my empeg on a plane as well (post 9/11). I never even had security ask me what it was. I guess they assumed it was a regular car stereo. I used a universal auto/air power adapter from Targus. That option isn't available to poor Derrick.

I have the universal air/auto adapter from Targus. One of these days I should get a new tip for my laptop, because the original broke!

But it doesn't matter for this trip.