I would think this would be only be good as a secondary unit to a good CD/Tuner head unit/preamp. From what I remember of the empeg, it wasn't the greatest in terms of output quality - this may have been fixed though.

The hours they quote are 128 kps mp3s, which aren't the greatest sound either. If you have good speakers and amps (hopefully you do if you're dropping $2200 on a head unit) then 192 should be an absolute minimum, and 256/320 would be preferred.

my 2 cents.

 

If you want MP3 I recommend the Neo 35, only $379 (buy your own HD).

http://ssiamerica.com/products/neo35/

Main Unit:




Wired Remote:


Wesmaster

 

I'm not dropping anything, I just think it's cool.

-S2-

 

I met Hugo and others at the MP3 Summit when I still was
with MP3.com. I played with their Mk1 at the office for
a while. Great little box. The coolest thing is that it
runs Unix so you can do with it whatever you want.

I have been discussing on their board on getting the
Stooks dash controls to work with this. For me it will
be either this or the new Alpine 7878 MP3 player. This
one I can most likely teach how to play Ogg Vorbis files.

 

The following thread is all about Alpine's KCE-865B dash control adapter. It is a European part but it works perfectly with the Alpine IVA-C800 and a couple of their Din and a half heads for GM/Chrysler.

Alpine USA denies it, but several of us are hoping that the CDA-7878 might have the 3.5 mm jack that the IVA-C800 has so that the KCE-865B would work with it. As soon as we see one we will know.

I'd like to get either that one or the CDA-7876 or the CDA-7977, their new tuner head.


http://www.s2000online.com/forums/showthre...77&pagenumber=3

 

Yeah, I really rather not go away from the OEM head unit,
until I can find a non IR way of getting the dash controls
to work. So I am hoping for the 3.5mm jack as well.

I read some of the thread about that, I really hope we find
something there that will work with most new Alpine units.
I have a 1999 Alpine CDA-7845 Head Unit with the MRV-707,
to a woofer with a changer, which probably won't work and
I will probably leave in my old car anyways, because we
want some tunes there as well.

The EMPEG usually talks to dash controls either via serial or IR.

 

It is one of the best things you can add to your car! your favourite tracks at your fingertips, always. No CDs sliding around waiting to get scratched or stolen. it has better sound quality and processing than most other head units out there. Features are upgradeable. it has the best display. it has a standard footprint. the hard drives are rugged laptop drives and are shock mounted. it has ethernet built in and can easily support a wireless link built into the car..... scroll down the page, you'll see it

It could be integrated with the existing car controls quite easily. Sander has already asked this in the empeg BBS. There is an issue about playing CD's for sound-offs and it is so far unsuitable for this purpose but in terms of tuning the system, its 5 band fully parametric EQ per corner is the most comprehensive built into any single head unit.

my $0.001

 

My company is working on a side project MP3 player that will use wi-fi to connect to your home computer (or network) to transfer files. Just curious if any of you guys think that would be a useful feature for an MP3 player.

Wesmaster

 

WestSide raises a good point...what is the highest bitrate these systems can reliably play at? Not just this one, but all of the well-known current systems...if its only 128 kbps, I'm waiting until my design is finished.



Wesmaster: I looked into adding Bluetooth to my MP3 design about a year ago when design kits were first coming to market, but they wanted $20k just for reference boards. Now that full chip solutions exist, I'm sure this price is much more reasonable. I wanted to park my car in the garage and download songs from a computer at the other end of the house. I think it's useful, but YMMV...

 

The Neo can play up to 328 (is that the right number?), I mpeg at 156 and it sounds as good as a CD (even the car stereo shop can't tell the difference).

We're going with the cheaper and more available 80211.b, known as wi-fi. We bought a PCI card and Hub for less than $400. We installed the card and the hub on a network in less than 30 minutes. We'll be running on Linux for our player. We're half way through our first prototype. I'll post more once we have something to look at.

Wesmaster