In reply to:

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You could connect the analog out of the CDROM drive to the aux in on the empeg and then you'd just need something to send the correct play/stop commands to the CDROM drive.

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Actually, you shouldn't even have to worry too much about the play/stop/pause command thing too much. All (if not, then 99.9%) of CD-ROMs out today support MMC command-sets, at least for the basic commands. (Play, Stop, Pause, Next, Prev..) While I haven't looked, I'm sure there's a tiny command-line utility (maybe even linkable functions) that will send these commands to the drive.

The hardest part would be writing the interface module, to watch for incoming commands from the remote/front panel, translate them into commands to the CD Player if necessary, otherwise letting them thru to the player itself. (Volumne, etc..)

Me.