I came across a story on ZDNet about these folks, but it doesn't look like their unit has shipped yet. Thoughts?

www.phatnoise.com

Derek

#15613

Here is my official reaction:

"eh."

I actually think this will sell pretty well if it's marketed right. It does what it says - it allows you to play MP3's on your existing head unit. It's no Empeg, but then again nothing is. The "late summer 2000" shipping date is curious, looking at my calendar shows summer ended a couple days ago. Hmm...

It's nothing special. The interface to it is your head unit's interface. Limited to 99 playlists... It looks llike the Chevy of car MP3 players, with the Aiwa and Kenwood units being the Yugos, and the Empeg, of course, being in the Ferrari/Jaguar/Rolls Royce category. It plays MP3's with no frills. I personally like the frills. :)

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MkII 080000554

We developed a similar product over a year ago - there's a photo of a prototype board on our web site. It works pretty well within the limitations of the head unit - but those limitations are severe in comparison with the UI of the car player. But then, it's cheap, so it'll sell.

Rob

They are very much in the infancy stages and have only prototypes ready no product to ship. They are still trying to get hardware compatibility lists generated on what headunits it will work with. No display except what limits the existing headunit can display and it has to have a CD changer output. It is a different and interesting approach to getting mp3's to the car.
According to their website it is being tested by the creators girlfriend, relatives, and friends with not much input from them but it doesn't work right sometimes and is slow!

What's really going to bake your noodle later on; is would've happen if I hadn't said anything?

One thing to remember about this product is its potential comatibility. It is probably very difficult to be compatitble with that many head units out there. I think Alpine alone has three different bus structures.

The product alone is a good idea that will sell better to the average consumer than the empeg. Installation is just giving it power and plugging it in to the head unit. It can also be placed anywhere in the car.

Although most CD busses are limited in #discs(playlists) and #tracks(songs) size, I think a simple external selection could easily expand this. By this I mean, set it for "A" and choose disc 1, song 1. Then switch to "B" and choose disc 1, song 1. It should be two different songs.

Once the bugs are worked out there should be no reason why it would be "slow" as mentioned.

I think they mentioned a price of about $600. If this is true I can see it being a good seller even though I still think the empeg has more value/cost.

Alex Lear

Once the bugs are worked out there should be no reason why it would be "slow" as mentioned.

The slow part is what the website said, not me. According to the creators relatives who were a testing it, the software was slow.
The compatibilty issue is exactly why I wouldn't consider PhatBox. (Kenwood & CD changers nightmare appearing again).
At least with the MK2 I can plug it into any audio input on a head unit (or amp) and not be constrained by the original head units display whatever it may be.
I strongly suspect the Phat one will have problems with the various displays on head units mainly b/c they weren't designed for this.

What's really going to bake your noodle later on; is would've happen if I hadn't said anything?

A friend of mine at work got the DigMedia product this past week (www.digmedia.cc). Seeing that and the PhatNoise thing in the same week (as well as the incredible publicity blitz for the Nomad from Creative) made me marvel over how much demand there is for these kinds of products and how utterly slow the major consumer electronics manufacturers are being on this front.

Kenwood and AIWA have their CDR units out, but this seems like a pretty poor solution to me. Would you really go out to your car every time you bought a new CD to fill up any remaining room on existing CDs, or would you just burn a new one? From my perspective, I'd end up having almost as many CDRs in my car as I would if these were simply standard CD players.

Any word or even hints from the Sony/Kenwood/Alpine/whoever crowd about hard drive-based units? If one of these companies offered to purchase empeg, would they bite?

Derek

#15613

Something they haven't worked out is how make the Phat change and display tracks up to 99 when your head unit only has 6 cd track buttons (or more). What do you use for the other 9x tracks to advance to the next track or 10 tracks or come back from 99 to 1.
Clearly they have a lot of work to do yet.
The $600 price tag I suspect is going to be too low and when they actually get a product to ship you'll find that price going up.

What's really going to bake your noodle later on; is would've happen if I hadn't said anything?

I'm sure they have a decent way to move around tracks although I don't know exactly how. The head unit just sends out the commands and the phat box (or whatever) interprets them however it needs to be user friendly.

I also don't think the compatability issue is an issue. Its just a matter of emulating the CD changer. Certainly couldn't be that hard and there is no reason that a final product would not function transparently. And I'll say it again, there should be no reason it should be slow. In fact it should be faster at changing than a CD changer:)

Alex Lear

I think they will have to use base 6 arithmetic for these head units...

My friend has a VW Passat with an 8 disc changer. His head unit (factory) only controls 6 discs, so he has to go to disc 6, then do {next disc} to get to 7, etc.

I know many players don't even have a {next disc} feature.

-Trevor

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Mk 2, Green 12GB 080000349

Stuff like this will definitely be the downfall of the Phat Noise setup. Empeg made a wise decision to go with custom everything. No dependencies on crappy head unit interfaces.


-Tony
MkII 080000554

And I'll say it again, there should be no reason it should be slow.

I'll say it again, these aren't my words , these are the words of the testers! It's on their website.

#15786-red

I didn't say those were your words. Why does it even matter who said it? My comments are not directed at you. Simply to defend the phatnoise product. (assuming its worth defending)

I don't want a flame war, I don't even care


Alex Lear

It does matter, when you're stating something that isn't true giving the wrong impression. It is directed at me I made the statement.

reg#15786-red

Calm down gentlemen!

As far as I'm aware they don't have the intelligent caching that we have, so when you skip you could have to wait for the disk to spin up. Then again, I have no idea if they even spin the disk down! They hadn't even considered shock protection until Hugo suggested it to them.

I also seem to recall some problems we had with autochanger buses, in which the head unit was very sensitive to timing - I don't remember the details, maybe Hugo does. Then again, maybe we don't want to hand out a solution on a silver platter

Rob

No problem. Waiting is the hardest part.


reg#15786-red