The Empeg in-dash MP3 player is the first of what will be the ONLY way of listening to music in the car within 5-7 years. It is a hard-drive based MP3 head-unit with an FM radio, but no amplifier. It runs Linux and has a very snazzy display with many different visual accompaniments.

I'd wanted one of these ever since I first heard about them. Empeg only made 300 of the first generation units (the Mark 1) and they are no longer available from Empeg, but sometimes show up on Ebay. The Mark 2 units will be new/improved and are supposed to be available in quantity in June, 2000.

The Mark1 is available in 4G, 6G, 10G, 20G, and 36G sizes with prices ranging from $1100 to $2000. This is a lot to pay for a car stereo. The big advantage is the with sufficient hard-disk space you can store your entire music collection in you car and listen to anything you want, in any order, at any time without ever again loading the CD changer.

To load the Mark1 with music, you need a Windows PC with either a USB port or a serial port (much slower) to download the music although there is a rudimentary Linux version. They give you a software package called "emplode" that collects the list of MP3s you want downloaded and lets you create playlists (and mark them as randomized) before sync-ing occurs. Sync-ing happens at less than 1MB/second so it can take well over two hours to download 6G worth of music. You only need to do this once, though. After that, adding/deleting music or playlists is simple. The empeg website has regular updates of both emplode and the flashrom-based Linux software the player needs. To install the software, you MUST use the serial port. Updates are common and have generally shown increasing quality/features, although emplode is still pretty minimalist compared to, say, MusicMatch. You need your own MP3-creation software as emplode only deals with downloading.

The Mark1 comes with a tray that is installed in the car. It requires an external amplifier and has 4V outputs used by good quality amps these days. Once the tray is installed ($100 at Precision Car Stereo in MV), the Mark1 slides into it. The Mark1 has a built-in FM radio (but no AM) and the quality is known to be mediocre. In my case, the quality is terrible but I haven't chased down the problem (probably with the antenna connection) since I don't have any need to listen to FM now that my MP3s are on board.

The front panel contains only 4 buttons which control volume, menu, track foward/back, and pause. To do this, they overload the buttons so that push-click gets a different action than push-hold. The unit also comes with a credit-card-sized infrared remote control (made by Kenwood) that allows you to change the visuals, select playlists, scan tracks, skip tracks, and adjust volume with single button presses.

The display is a relatively bright LED grid that is capable of showing fancy animations, track information, and Linux bootscreen info :-). You can order the player with amber, green, blue, or red over-plates to match the color of your car's interior. While seemingly really bright at night, during the day with the convertible top down, it is not possible to really read information from the display unless the whole car is in the shade.

Sound quality has been excellent. All my MP3s were ripped at ~160kbs VBR and when combined with the OEM amp/speakers in my SLK, it is not distinguisable from CD (IMHO). I have experienced no problems with skipping or stalling due to the hard-drive. It has a memory buffer big enough to keep the hard-drive spun down 80-90% of the time.

This device is the best thing I've ever had in my car, but its also prototype-version1-alpha of a whole new market space and I'm sure there will be huge improvements in all areas in the next few years.



Recommended: Yes