Halt: Identify yourself.

Fully indentifying myself would ruin all Hugo's cryptic fun!! I'm a well-meaning "not strictly geek" keen on spreading the Empeg word to a wider audience.

Okay, fair enough.

It took me longer than I expected to review the Phatnoise system I purchased for my girlfriends BMW, work, Christmas, etc.
After getting familiar with the player I went back and read Dylans review again, it is extremely accurate, however I don't enjoy this player as much as I think he does.
It is a great option if you do not want to change your factory head unit. The install was about an hour, all of it in the trunk, and if I had never heard of the empeg, I would love this player.
I have installed almost 8000 songs on the 40gig (largest available) hard drive, and I have the voice interface, which is alright, it seems it is more of a gadget to impress your friends than anything else. I realize that without it, it would be very difficult to find any music since the BMW diplay will only show CD number and Track number.
Nothing beats the display of the empeg. I use track mode to display as much information as possible. When I'm in the BMW I constantly miss that feature.
As far as uploading the songs, I did not encounter any problems nor did I find the software difficult to use. The SSA interface does an OK job reading the ID3 tags, however it reads everything. For example, if the tag shows Train, Train it will read Train comma Train. It you have a live album, it reads live as in living.
My original feeling turned out to be true. I knew I would miss the empeg while I was in the BMW, but is is better that the radio or CD's. She is happy with it, and I can listen to mp3's while I'm in her car, but I personaaly feel I would rather change my entire system, (if that is what it took) to be able to have all of the options of the empeg.