My ultimate goal is to be able to directly transfer between the Central and the Empeg, thus removing my PC from the loop completely.

I would order a Rio Central right now if I could do that but I would be just as happy if I could connect both units to my network and just hit sync in emplode or jemplode.

My car player has all of my MP3 collection on it, including tracks I ripped back in the early days of my MP3 experience. I had often wanted to re-rip the older parts of my collection with better settings, but never finished it because of the hassle factor.

That's the same situation I have. Plus I never put any of my pink floyd stuff on there due to the gaps between songs (I know the central wouldn't solve that problem)

Another problem I have now since I got the HP digital music center is I have some cd's on there that aren't on the empeg and some that are on the empeg that aren't on the HP and some that aren't on either (and the riot has almost nothing on it because REAL SUCKS). It would be great to just pop the cd into something when I get a new one then be able to sync everything else with it.