This probably one of the greatest achievement for music. Looks great. Sounds great. The displays are incredible. We love the tracers that bounce around the screen.

Worth every penny & the wait.

USB works great, moved 10 CD's over in about 20 mins.

Windows 98 Software needs some work, bugs here and there, but for the most part works well.

My only drawback is so many wires behind the bracket. I never fully got it into my Jeep Grand Cherokee, because it wouldn't fit all the way in. Gonna have to fix that tomorrow.

Any questions on my install. send me a msg
cgeorge@techage.net


Chris George, Developer

Yeah, the emplode app is not really 100%. I don't know whether it's the empeg or emplode, but the hierarchy of playlists I created has not been honoured by the unit, and it has mulched all my playlist tracks into one.

Still sounds superb.

Excellent - thanks, Mike, a concise answer.

You lucky lucky b******s!!
:-)

9543rd!! :-(

-Rob

Lots of wires behind this thing.. But with another mounting bracket I got it mounted successfully in my Jeep Grand Cherokee.


Chris George, Developer

So tell me, did you then just completly take out your previous stereo system? Did you get a new amplifier? Where did you place it? How hard is it to install? Did it come with an instruction manual or something?

Well.. I have a Nissan, had a cheapy CD player in it. no amps, took that out. Just put a Phoenix Gold 4300 some Infinity Components & a 12" JL Audio sub. Along with all important Empeg bracket.

Then I had my Jeep, I sold my Minidisc player/changer, Already had an Infinity 255a amp/clarion components/infinity 12" sub in it. So it wasn't too difficult to install on this car.

The empeg player came with a book, which is straight and to the point. Nothing to technical in it.

I am having some background noise problems in both cars, I need to talk to empeg about.

Chris

Chris George, Developer

Noise problems are usually due to a couple of things:

a) Remember to isolate the gold phonos at the empeg end (if they touch the chassis, this can induce noise as they are floating grounds).
b) Remember to use the supplied grounding leads to ground the audio at the amplifier end, to the amplifier's ground terminal (this gives the empeg a reference to drive against).
c) Remember to fit the in-line choke on the empeg's power supply.

Obviously, we're available to help with any questions - just mail support@empeg.com. We've not come across any insurmountable noise problems in any of the installs so far - but the empeg unit is different from normal head units as it has floating ground outputs to help reduce the digital noise from the CPU in the unit.

Hugo

Hello.. I installed the rca grounds that came with it. Might have helped. Still hear a hum in the background when in Park though. What does that inline choke do, I thought it was a fuse??


Chris George, Developer

All amplified installations are prone to noise these days. The fact that you're running a low level RCA signal cable through a vehicle where, in all probability, the manufacturers paid virtually no attention to RF shielding except around important electronic equipment unfortunately makes interference inevitable, unless you're very aware of some important points.

Generally, but with the Empeg in particular, the following is all important:-

1) RCA cables need to be run away from all original factory wiring in the vehicle - preferably at least 12 inches, but in places where it's unavoidable to cross orignal cabling, make sure that you run RCAs straight over the original cabling at an angle as near to 90 degrees as possible. If you run RCAs parallel to any original cables, inductive pickup can occur, resulting in the amplifier 'seeing' any noise in the factory cables and amplifying it.

2) Grounds all need to be at one common point. If the Empeg's cage comes into contact with metal around it's dashboard mount, then it'll see an earth there - so make sure that the amps all earth to that same point. If the Empeg bracket isn't touching metal, then you can get away with earthing everything to another point elsewhere in the vehicle - but do make sure that the amp(s) can't see earth through their own chassis, by mounting them on a non conducting material (ie. MDF, etc)

3) Make sure all power cabling is sufficiently sized - we see endless installations with woefully inadequate cabling. Earth an amp using a cable that's too small, and it'll try and earth through it's RCA shield - when that happens, there's a risk of both damaging the source unit, as it's RCA output stage probably isn't designed with high current demands in mind, and you'll probably induce noise. As a rule, for any unit, establish it's peak current demand, then use a cable with 1.5 - 2 times that current rating.

4) Specific to the Empeg unit, make sure that the inline choke is fitted well away from all the other cabling, especially the RCA cables. If it's mounted in close proximity with another cable, the two form what basically amounts to a transformer, and any noise in the power line gets induced into the signal to the amps.

Hope all of that's of some help. If anyone has any specfic noise related questions, feel free
to contact me directly and I'll be happy to try and help :-)

Dominic

Cambridge Car Audio
http://www.cambscaraudio.co.uk