I have recently sold my Empeg, Tuner & Amp and bought a Dension DH102. The main reason was that I am getting a company car and wanted an install that didn’t involve pulling the car apart to fit and amp and tuner unit. I promised Phil O’Hare (who bought my Empeg) that I would post a review of the Dension. I have been waiting for the latest firmware, as there were so many faults in the original that it was hardly worth writing about. Anyway the new firmware is out and is a huge improvement so here is my review:


Installation

Compared to the Empeg that required space for the tuner module and a separate Amp, this was a breeze, apart from one problem – the unit is deeper than any DIN unit I’ve ever had. To get it flush to the dash in my VW Golf MKIV I had to “Dremel” off the back face of the plastic support cage. Fortunately there was sufficient gap behind that for the unit to fit in, but if you wanted to use the line-outs rather than the internal amp you would need even more clearance for the plugs. Anyway once plugged to the VW to ISO adaptor (that I already had) and switched on, it worked fine.

Hardware

Sound Quality 10/10

For an internal amp the unit sounds excellent with no noise or interference whatsoever. I reckon it sounds as good if not better than my previous set-up, which had a fairly expensive Alpine Amp.

Display 8/10

Brilliant programmable display for both colour and layout spoiled by a plastic fascia that is way to reflective making it hard to see in sunlight. I am going to try to find some anti-reflective film to see if that helps.

Front panel controls 6/10

Some of the buttons are a bit small and fiddly and 3 are not illuminated. I also would have preferred a rotary volume control to +/- buttons. I am fortunate that the buttons are illuminated in virtually the exact same colour as “VW dashboard blue” but this will not suit everyone and the icing on the cake would have been to have the button illumination programmable like the display. There is one physical problem with the front panel in that the panel catches on the bottom part of the surround when it folds down to remove the drive.

Tuner 9/10

The Tuner picks up all the stations that I tried very well and the RDS works perfectly.

Removable DMP3-C HDD unit 10/10

The removable 2.5” disc drive unit connects to the host computer via a USB2.0 connection and a mains adapter. It requires no special software and simply appears on the system as another hard drive. Files are simply dragged & dropped across to it. The USB2.0 makes this very quick indeed. Using the mains adapter supplied, the DMP3-C can be used as a standalone MP3 player. There is a headphone socket and 5 control buttons built into the unit. As there is no display in this mode, it is a bit limited, but it works. I have heard hints that Dension might be making a separate docking unit for personal listening use of the DMP3-C. I guess all it really needs is some battery power and a display and you’ve got an iPod (ish!).


Software

File Manager 9/10

The files appear on screen exactly as they do on the PC, and are navigated using the 4 direction buttons on the face plate. When a file or directory is highlighted it can be selected by hitting either Play or Add. Play replaces any files, playlists or Myradio files currently playing, whereas Add puts them at the end of the existing list. It is also possible to select logo, config and display settings files by navigating to the relevant directory and hitting Play to activate them.

Myradio profiles / Playlists selected directly from the preset buttons 10/10

Myradio is a playlist-like system that lets you add individual tracks or directories to a Myradio file. You can even weight each element to determine how often it is selected by the Random mode. The flaw with this system is that each Myradio file is limited to 100 entries. A good feature associated with this, is that the first 6 files alphabetically in the Myradio directory (be they Myradio files or standard playlists) can be selected directly by hitting the appropriate preset button. In the original firmware the random was very poor so I did not bother with Myradio files, but it is much improved in the new firmware so I will give them another try. Having said that I am more than happy to be able to easily select 6 playlists at the touch of a single button.

Album Play 10/10

This is another great idea. What this does is whatever mode you are currently in, hitting the albumplay button inserts all files in the directory of the current track into the playing list. I have my music set up as !Music/Artist/Track. With that set-up, I can be playing a random selection of tracks and if I hear an artist that I want to hear more off, I hit album and it plays all tracks by that artist and then reverts to the original program. This is a great feature and now works flawlessly.

Random 10/10

On the original firmware, Random used to fall in love with certain tracks and play them over an over again. Apparently, Dension have put a lot of work into this area and is shows because Random is much much better. I have not yet noticed it playing a track that I have heard recently. Random also now works within playlists.


Display customisation 8/10

This is brilliant, both from a colour/contrast/back light setting on the unit to the Display editor which lets you choose exactly what information you want display, at what size and where. I especially like the night and day profiles. In my Golf the normal display is a green LCD colour which is illuminated crystal blue at night. I have been able to find settings that match the green during the day and the blue at night so that the unit matches perfectly in both situations. There are two reasons this doesn’t get 10/10. The first is that the night and day settings have to be selected manually rather than the unit doing this automatically when the car’s lights are switched on or off. (I have now made a bit of circuitry that overcomes this by sending a signal to the remote connector to switch day/night mode when the car lights are switched off/on – but this is still a fault with the unit). The second is that I’d like to be able to customise the Tuner display in the same way as the player.

Sony Stalk 9/10

With the new firmware the Sony Stalk works perfectly. My only complaint in this area is that I really would like to be able to customise the Stalk commands (hell if it’s software controlled let us customise it!). For example, in tuner mode the up/down command changes frequency up/down whereas I would prefer it to go up/down within the presets. Once I’ve tuned in my stations, I rarely want to change them, and certainly not as I’m driving along, whereas I often want to flick between presets.

Face Plate software and player control 9/10

This is generally pretty good, and the display customisation is, as I said before, brilliant. The new firmware now ignores AUX from the source loop if nothing is connected to it. The only minor gripe I have is that I would like to be able to display the name of the current playlist and the number of tracks within it.


Conclusion

The software is not as sophisticated as the Empeg’s, but it is easy to use on a day to day basis. My girlfriend is by no means stupid (in fact she is very intelligent if she is reading this!) but she can use the Dension far more easily than she could the Empeg.

Sound quality is surprisingly good for the price of the unit. File transfer is quick and easy and requires no extra software. Display customisation is excellent. The Sony remote works much better than it ever did on my Empeg. The Tuner works very well and has an RDS that works. All in a (nearly) DIN sized unit. I think it is the best alternative to the Empeg that I have seen, and I’ll whisper this – I actually prefer it to the Empeg.

I actually prefer it to the Empeg

Blasphemer! No, no... I mean WITCH!

Seriously though, thanks for the review. I think that we all realize that there are other products that can compete with the Empeg, and it helps to have 'one of our own' review a product like this. It sounds like they did a good job updating the firmware.

I do like the feature you mentioned about the Album play. That is something that I wish we could make available for the Empeg someday.

Can you list the functionality differences between this unit and the empeg that you notice the most?

For example, is there anything the empeg did that you miss, or is there something that this thing does that the empeg couldn't do?

You mentioned album play, but I'm not clear how that works. Let's say you're shuffling and you hear track 5 of a nine-track album. When you hit "album play", does it...

a) change the playlist to JUST that album? (Entire playlist= tracks 123456789)

b) insert all the tracks of the album AFTER the current song? (RRRR 5 12346789 RRRR)

c) add the tracks in order or random? (51872439 or 123456789)

d) add the tracks in order both before and after the current song so that you now are in the middle of the ordered album, yet still are within a larger shuffled playlist? (RRRR 1234 5 6789 RRRR)

Right... He's in Coventry. So who's bringing the flaming torches?

Interesting review actually. I'm happy with the empeg so I won't be switching quite yet

Got any pictures ? It would be great to see.

Also does it do insert / append ?

Is the removeable 2.5" HDD unit a standard notebook 2.5" HDD in the plastic case/housing?
Is it possible to upgrade this drive by simply replacing it with a larger capacity drive?

Jai

Having had the opportunity to replace my empeg to "something else" I took a look at the Denison - looked at a handful of websites - but was finally turned off by the tone on their noticeboards. I felt there was a virtual revolution ocurring there and it lacked any of the friendliness and professionalism this board offers. I think a lot of their users are ranting at various broken promises from the company and plenty of people upset at lack of functionality they thought the player had.

In the end I've managed to locate a second hand empeg - but they can't last forever! I'm glad there is something out there to *compare* even if it doesn't bear the empeg name.

I'll try to answer most of the questions in one post if I can.

Nic - The bad vibes on the Dension board were largely caused by me ! I was getting really fed up with waiting for the new firmware which was eventually released about 6 weeks after it was "days" away. They certainly have taken some flak over the delays, which they deserved. I believe that they released the product too early, but I guess they wanted to start getting some cash coming in. They also do a Neo type standalone harddisk product which can interface with the DH20* CD/Tuner headunit and it appears that there have been problems with that too. I don't know if those have been solved.

JaBZ- AFAIK The drive is a standard 2.5" notebook drive. I don't see why it couldn't be upgraded - it's just a FAT32 drive.

msaeger - I will take some pictures but will I be lynched if I post them here ?!

tman - I used to live in Coventry, I have grown a beard and am living in Goa now!


Tony- none of the above !

Albumplay would more accurately by called directory play and how it works depends on how you have your files arranged. If you are playing random tracks in any mode (playlist,myradio or manually chosen tracks/directory) and hit albumplay, it replaces the current track with all tracks (in alphabetical filename order) that are in the same directory as the current track, and immediately starts playing the first of these. After all of those tracks are played is resumes playing the track after the one playing when albumplay was hit.

I have my files arranged Music\Artist\Trackname.mp3 so in my case albumplay causes the current track to be replaced by all tracks by that artist in alphabetical order of track name.

If you had files arranged Music\Artist\Album\trackno_trackname.mp3 hitting albumplay would replace the current track with all tracks from that album in track number order and then revert to the next track in the original random list.

As to features that I miss from the Empeg, I have to be honest, I don't think I really scratched the surface of what the Empeg could do, especially in terms of searches etc. This was mainly because I wasn't happy using the main remote while driving. I set up playlists for me and my GF containing our respective favourite tracks and another for those that we both liked. Generally we selected them for whoever was in the car and just let them play in shuffled mode. For me the Dension can now do that just as well, with the added bonus of changing between them with a single button press. I think for hard-core Empeg users there would probably be lots of features missing (for example, you can only search for a specific track by navigating to it in the file structure - so ZZtop tracks would take a while to get to if you wanted to individually select them) but for the way I want to use it, it's fine.

One feature that the Dension has that the Empeg doesn't is the customisable display for both content and colour. There is a screen editor program that lets you select what you want to display, what text size, and where on the screen you want it. You can also select normal or inverse display for the individual parts.The customisable colour really is a killer feature for me as I really like have the unit match the dash lighting. With the Dension as well as several factory colour choices you can define one "User" colour and actually adjust the individual RGB settings to get any colour you like. As I said I even have mine set so that it is LCD green (actually light yellow from the standard colours)in day mode and VW blue (my user colour to get an exact match) at night. Matching the dash lighting may not be the most important thing in an audio system to most people, but, after several attempts to match VW blue on the Empeg, it makes me smile to finally achieve it! It also means that when you change cars you can simply program in a new colour.

it's just a FAT32 drive.

Oh dear. I do hope that they didn't also include any derivative of scandisk - that really would be the coffin nail.

Album play is something I'd really like to see someday on the empeg. Since the player knows nothing about "playlists" there should probably be some other field in the database for defining/marking which songs belong to the same album. Having this tagged with a unique identifier would be best to avoid conflicts with albums of the same name. I have multiple albums called "X" for instance and a couple called "Wonderland" - this identifier could also solve the problem of getting incorrect tracks when doing an insert/match for same-source titles.

Of course I'd also like to see the soup views that could also get around a number of more awkward procedures and some of the manual/careful playlist management.

Bruno

In the end I've managed to locate a second hand empeg - but they can't last forever! I'm glad there is something out there to *compare* even if it doesn't bear the empeg name.

I have to agree with this. I dread the day my empeg (and backup) die, but I know it is a possibility. And if it does happen, at least the market is finally showing signs of catching up to where empeg was years ago.

I just personally wish Rio would try to get back into the car market more then their efforts with OEM radios. While I did factor my empeg install into what car I bought, I am not sure if I would base the entire reason for buying a car around a stereo.

I worry that within a matter of years it will become practically impossible to replace the stock head unit in mainstream cars.

In reply to:

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I worry that within a matter of years it will become practically impossible to replace the stock head unit in mainstream cars.

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Then we just have to stick to non-mainstream cars

Then we just have to stick to non-mainstream cars

I plan to, just can't decide between:

http://www.ultimasports.co.uk/gtr/index.html

and

http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/cars/tvr_tuscan.asp

I'm off to a kit car show on Saturday to help me decide...

In reply to:

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I plan to, just can't decide between:
Ultima Sports GTR and TVR Tuscan

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Yeah, tough, isn't it...
Personally I think I would go for the GTR, maybe just because it cames from the same town as my beloved Triumph motorbike
But for absurd cars, I just ordered my Moggie.
You have to love a car where exterior door handles are an optional extra

I'm leaning towards the GTR, with a 425 bhp Chevy V8 from http://www.amerspeed.com/ultima.htm

My car maintenace experience so far amounts to changing the front brake disks and pads and a radiator, so building my own car should be interesting...

Oddly GTR ownership probably works out cheaper than the TVR. Insurance costs are lower and you don't have the £25,000 depreciation over three years that the Tuscan attracts.

A while ago I sat down and worked out how much running a Tuscan for 9,000 miles a year costs over five years. I seem to remember it was over £10,000 a year (without anything major going wrong). After doing those sums I was even tempted by this for a while:

http://www.p1international.com/

The GTR would be my choice... Don't like the front of the tuscan.

cheers, Thomas

That isn't a very good photo of the Tuscan that I linked to. I didn't link to their website ( http://www.tvr.co.uk/ ) which has better photos because it is a nasty Flash thing.


Edit:

Looks like they have a nasty HTML version to match their nasty Flash site now...

Still like the GTR more, it's a very unique car, looks like just coming home from le Mans...
Not meaning, the Tuscan is a bad car!

cheers, Thomas

Yes that site has *much* better pictures... and I would probably lean more towards it than the GTR. Although both are beautiful vehicles, it would depend on what look you were going for; the Tuscan seems to be a bit more elegant.

How much are these things anyway? I wish we could get them here...but then again I would need a back seat for the kid.

A TVR Tuscan can be as cheap as £40,000 but most people add options like larger wheels, full leather and aircon. That means that almost all Tuscans cost £45,000 or more.

You can build an Ultima GTR for under £30,000 but again it seems most people spend more like £45,000.

After three years the Tuscan will only be worth £25,000 whereas the Ultima it appears is worth more (if you can find someone to build it). If I built an Ultima though I would expect to run it for 8-10 years.

GTR all the way.

I worry that within a matter of years it will become practically impossible to replace the stock head unit in mainstream cars.

What gives me comfort in this instance is the following bits of information...

1. Mainstream cars will start having empeg-type stuff built in, some of it even being designed and coded by the Cambridge team. Case in point: Camelot, etc.

2. CD changers are still popular, so the little CD-changer-becomes-aux-input boxes will still be available for the foreseeable future. And at that point, you can plug a Karma in.

The latter is what I'm currently doing in my wife's car. I bought one of those little CD-changer-becomes-aux-input converter boxes and there is now a tiny 1/8" jack in her dash on the inside of her knicknack pocket. Works perfectly, Karma plugs right in and sounds fine.

Tony,

Where did you get that converter? I am currently looking for something similar for my wife's car.

Thanks,

Where did you get that converter? I am currently looking for something similar for my wife's car.

The thread on the topic is located here, links and all.

Those are slick. Just what I was looking for. Thanks Tony.

hmmm, I didn't put 2 and 2 together before, but I could totally do this in my wife's car! Now we'll have to get a Karma the moment we have the $$$.

I've added a couple of pictures of the Dension installed in my Golf IV. They are in the Dension album at the following link.
photo album

but I could totally do this in my wife's car!

Man. sometimes I just *dig* American English!

Is the tuner FM only or is it AM/FM?

Thanks!