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.