I'd just like to see the people who thought their empeg was "poor" write their opinions here. It would be very educational to know what past complaints people had and whether or not the Mark 2 will address these problems.

Well, I though mine was "excellent", but there were some issues with it. I'm guessing that the "poor" people had more trouble with those issues than I did. I, too, would like to see comments from people who rated their Empeg "poor". What were your issues?

The great thing is that all of those issues (at least the ones I know about) were either a) fixed in the Mk2 design, or b) software-only and have been or will be fixed before the Mk2 ships. Check out my review thread here. I'm pretty sure I spell out just about every issue that most folks have with the unit.

The biggest issue for almost everyone was electronic noise in the outputs due to the floating ground system. That was the first thing fixed on the Mark 2. The second biggest issue was that the radio tuner wasn't very good. That was the second thing fixed on the Mark 2. See a pattern here?...

In fact, out of the 350+ units shipped to customers, only one has ever been returned (to my knowledge... Rob, any updates?). That one was due to an installer who couldn't work out the floating ground issues. And as I said, they fixed that...

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Yeah, I read your review. It certainly answered most of the questions I had regarding the unit. It was extremely useful to hear from an owner his honest review.

Well overall i didn't think it was poor, but my main complaint is the speaker pop on power down.

> my main complaint is the speaker pop on power down

This is fixed on Mark 2 (thanks to the permanant power feed we can now shut down in a more orderly fashion).

It can also be partially fixed on Mark 1 by fitting a resistor across the line outputs, as documented elsewhere on this BBS.

Rob

Only one player has ever been returned due to dissatisfaction (one other was returned because it was purchased by mistake - the client meant to order a Mk.2).

I find it interesting that 13 people have rated the product as "Poor" on the BBS yet haven't contacted me directly to make a complaint. If I spent $1000+ on something and I wasn't satisfied with it, I would complain loudly - and I would encourage our clients to express their views, because in most cases the problems are easily solved.

To put this in context, 91% of voters on the BBS have rated the product as Good, Very Good or Excellent which is certainly consistant with the feedback we receive in the customer services department.

When we've shipped a thousand or so Mark 2 players I may send out a feedback questionnaire. This will be more meaningful than the BBS survey as we can verify that the respondants are actually empeg owners, and filter duplicate submissions.

Rob

"When we've shipped a thousand or so Mark 2 players ...."


Speaking of which .... when? ;-) I filled in the 'I'm interested' form but haven't had any sort of feedback that I'm on the new customer list.

In anticipation ..... J.

We had a meeting with the manufacturers yesterday, but it'll take a few days to analyse the results and work out when we're going to get some players. There are still a couple of components that haven't been sourced, but of course we're working on those.

Rob

It can also be partially fixed on Mark 1 by fitting a resistor across the line outputs

These resistors will indeed soften the pop significantly (at least on my system). To totally avoid the thump, you'll have to ask bigjohn for a schematic that keeps empeg powered until the amp has been fully switched off in much the same way as Mark-2 will do it.

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

I find it interesting that 13 people have rated the product as "Poor" on the BBS yet haven't contacted me directly to make a complaint.

Don't worry, Rob, it was probably just that one guy re-voting 13 times.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

> Don't worry, Rob, it was probably just that one guy re-voting 13 times

The thought did occur :-)

what past complaints people had and whether or not the Mark 2 will address these problems

I'd read about the cables extending out of the back of he Empeg's car mount, but I'd never exepected it to be so bad. If you happen to own a car with a dash that's not open from the bottom, you'll have a very hard time pushing them all back into the dash in such a manner that Emma sits flush.

Also corrected in Mark2, which uses DIN connect??

Not that I think that my empeg is poor . . . .

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

I'd read about the cables extending out of the back of he Empeg's car mount, but I'd never exepected it to be so bad.

You're right about that. The Empeg is deeper than most aftermarket stereos to begin with, and then you have all that extra cabling in the back to contend with.

My solution was to actually perform surgery on the docking sleeve. Since I did not use the Aux input or the serial connector, I carefully de-soldered those items from the connector and saved them in the Empeg box (along with some documentation on the pinouts). This gave me the extra room I needed. I don't recommend it to everyone, though, since you can easily ruin the unit if you don't know what you're doing. The antenna wire is especially fragile, and can break if you just look at it sideways. Of course, antenna wires are always fragile, at least they have been on every other car stereo I've seen.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

The Mk2 still has wires at the back - the DIN connection is *at the end* of the wires, connecting all the power/headlight dim/cellphone mute connections in one. Also, the filter is part of the harness now.

However, we've moved the wires to one side of the rear, they are thinner and easier to bend, and there's no metal hood over them, which makes fitting easier. We've added side lips to the sleeve and increased the number of push-outs to hold the unit in place too.

Hugo

Although the severe line noise problem and speaker pop are still problems, my main complaint these days is the poor user interface.

They've admitted they aren't UI people - what command-line UNIX person is? - so why not solicit help from the community to hopefully correct it?

Someone posted what I considered to be a vast improvement on the UI a while back. Vertical menus, for example, would be much, much better.

Thankfully these are all software issues and can be dealt with easier than hardware problems, all of which seem to have been corrected in the Mark 2 unit.

So what I'm getting is that for all the people who were dissapointed with anything about their empeg, everybody thinks the Mark II will most likely correct past problems.

I suppose I should have known better. If someone thought their unit was poor, why would they be reading the bulletin board?

--then again, one of those people had to be here to say their unit was poor in the first place... I don't get it.

We had vertical menus before. Believe me, they were worse - and the early users agreed. There just isn't the real estate vertically to make them work well - if we had a 64-pixel high screen like some in-house stuff here has, then vertical menus are fine though...

Hugo

I guess this thread has given someone a few ideas, as the empeg poll now has 489 votes - and we've only sold about 350 players.

The results are now completely meaningless, and I can see no point in leaving the poll active. I would love for an accurate poll to be made available, whereby the serial number is entered and verified, however only empeg could run such a scheme and this would be entirely inappropriate.

Any ideas anyone?

Rob

What about the registry on the developer's page?

It would be feasible to create a poll against the unofficial empeg registry, such that only one response per serial number is permitted (multiple submissions would overwrite previous ones.)

Both the serial number and original registration number must be entered, and they must match the same found in the registry to be accepted. (The registry does not display registration numbers on searches, to make this somewhat reasonable.)

An overall empeg rating could then be attached to each registry entry and displayed in search results. More specific data (like feature suggestions, issues, etc.) could also be collected and returned in aggregate form.

If anything like this sounds useful, by all means let me know and I can help set something up.

-v

That sounds good.

One thing about the registry though (and I know it's no fault of the administrator). I was interested in finding out if any Virginians owned an empeg so I could talk to them and maybe see it in action. I looked up Virginia and low and behold, there was someone right near me. But the didn't put any contact info! Not even a name! Now I know they don't have to and I respect their right to privacy, but what's the point of registering at all? What the heck do I care if there is X serial number in Virginia?

Just a bit annoyed. Oh well, can't complain all that much, though.

Anyway, I think that registry/poll idea would be great.

I'm not sure this is ideal - clients who are not happy with their empeg are unlikely to register at the unofficial site. Many satisfied clients still won't want to make their details public.

It would probably be enough for the poll to request a serial number and a registration number. The system would check that the two match (I can make this information available without compromising any personal information) and also prevent duplicate voting. This isn't ideal for clients who bought their empeg second hand, unless they know the registration number of the original client.

Maybe I'll just run a controlled survey by email and post the results - you'll just have to trust me not to cheat!

Rob

I trust you Rob :)