Ok... Ive had My EmPeg for about a month now and I must say... This thing is a masterpiece of gadgetry. There is simply nothing else in the world like it. I have around 10,000 MP3's (all self encoded) and I can't think of a more compact, streamlined and professional way to carry all of them with me. (in or out of the vehicle)

I plan to connect this thing to 1200 watts of juice and DVD and network it with a traveling PC for GPS.
I also plan to have a custom Ipaq cradle in the vehicle...
The Ipaq runs Pocket PC or winCE 3.0 and it would really be awesome if the Ipaq could act as the EmPeg remote using the IR.
Anyone used any PDA's for this??? or winCE??
Anyone used their EmPeg for competition yet??
Is it normal to be this adicited this soon?? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm still getting used to all of this coolness.


12Gb MKII 080000516 Blue

Edited by flashman on 1/10/00 03:25 AM.

Anyone used any PDA's for this??? or winCE??

There has been talk about it on the bbs, but I don't know if anybody has done it yet.

Anyone used their EmPeg for competition yet??

Yes. But there is a problem there. IASCA competition rules require that competitors use not just the official IASCA CD, but the judge's own personal copy of the IASCA CD. This is to prevent people from cheating by re-mastering the IASCA tracks to favor their own particular installation. This is not an unreasonable requirement on IASCA's part.

I was able to bluff my way through the Alaska State Championships last month with my empeg, but only because there was an out-of-town chief judge who realized that he didn't have to take the exact letter of the rules completely literally in such a backwoods environment as Alaska. The local judges have let me know that I'm not going to get by with that again.

Incidentally, I blew the State Championships. I put away everybody in my class big time in sound quality, but when I swapped my amps around for the SPL portion of the contest, I inadvertanly high-passed my subwoofer and low-passed my small speakers. I ended up giving away 25 points in SPL, finished second in class. Sigh...

By the time I have to compete again, I hope to have a resolution to the file-modification dilemma. I think the best solution will require a little co-operation between empeg and IASCA. Here is what I propose. The IASCA tracks must be loaded on the empeg in .WAV format (which will be supported in the soon-to-be-released 1.1 version of the empeg software). Hugo or Mike or someone at empeg will have to add a little snippet to the empeg software that can show on the empeg's display a checksum for each IASCA track. If these checksums matched the official IASCA checksums, then that would be proof that the track had not been altered in any way.

Please -- someone who knows a lot more about .wav files and checksums and the like than I do -- is this a feasible idea?

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

It is quite normal to be addicted this soon! When you've got a gadget this cool, how can you help but be excited!


ps-by the way, why do you capitalize it like EmPeg?

DiGNAN

Please -- someone who knows a lot more about .wav files and checksums and the like than I do -- is this a feasible idea?

It's feasible, but I'm not sure you could get IASCA to go along with it.

The problem is that checksums aren't secure. You know the old saying "locks only keep honest people out"? Checksums are even less secure than locks. Checksums are only useful for verifying file integrity, and only marginally useful at that. They assume that all the software wants to do is make sure the file is okay, and that the software performing the checking at both ends is trusted.

As soon as distrust enters into the equation, you need something more than a checksum. IASCA would have no way of verifying whether or not you modified the software to display a false checksum.

___________
Tony Fabris

OOh! You could have IASCA create .WAV files and then digitally sign them. You'd just have to modify the empeg with software that would validate those signatures against known and trusted master certificates and then display the validity of the digitally-signed track.

Yea, it'd be more trouble than it's worth. OTOH, it might be a good tool to help once they figure a way to engineer mp3 viruses.

Yea, it'd be more trouble than it's worth.

Perhaps not, at least not from empeg's end. empeg sells to a very high-end, premium oriented niche market -- the very definition of an IASCA competitor. Getting empegs to compete successfully in IASCA would be a valuable sales tool.

From IASCA's end... who knows? Perhaps guys@empeg could offer them some assistance? IASCA is NOT a computer oriented organization. They deal with CDs and amplifiers and speakers, and one of their big concerns (as related to me by an IASCA vice president) is the entry into the market of DVD surround sound technology. Checksums, digital signatures, hard drives and MP3 files are a completely unknown technology to them, and I have the feeling they tend to be somewhat ostrich-like: stick their head in the sand and hope the problem will go away.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Hmmm...
I guess I have always pronounced it E-M Peg.
So I guess I just went with EmPeg. Yes I know it doesn't make any sense.. If it's wrong, I will change.
Plus I just have this terrible habit of Capitalizing words I wish to stress Emphasis on.

I'm sure this has been asked before... What does "Empeg" mean anyhow?

12Gb MKII 080000516 Blue

I've wondered about these discussions. You could rig up a CD-changer so that the judge thought he was playing his test CD, when really he was playing your remastered CD. How is that different from the empeg situation?

The only way the judge can know for sure is if he supplies, IN REAL TIME, an analogue or digital stream of data. Real time is the key I presume, because EQ is allowed, but remastering isn't. So really, all competitors should provide a line in or digital in, and the judge then hooks in his trusted equipment.

Am I missing something?

Richard.

I guess I have always pronounced it E-M Peg.

"My name is Hugo Fiennes and I pronounce Empeg as Empeg"



Borislav

P.S.the original

"My name is Hugo Fiennes and I pronounce Empeg as Empeg"

That should an MP3 that comes on the empeg, as a test sound of sorts.


________
Donato
MkII/Blue/40GB/080000565

I'm sure this has been asked before... What does "Empeg" mean anyhow?

First of all, it's pronounced as all one word with two syllables. Not e-m-peg, but em-peg.

It is a pun on the name of the file format. The MP3 format is actually the shortened form of the name "MPEG Layer 3 Audio".

MPEG stands for "motion picture experts group", and is usually pronounced "empeg" by everyone who says it out loud. The folks in Cambridge just got clever and decided to trademark the spelling of the common pronunciation. Pretty slick, if you ask me. And it allows other domino-effect puns like "emplode" (pun on empeg-load and "implode" at the same time).

They should label the AC adapter brick "empower". Anyone writing GPS navigation software could name it "empath" (and I want a cut of the royalties, whoever uses that one).

Okay, I'll stop now.

No wait, the remote could be called "emote".

Okay, now I'm done. Pun amongst yourselves...

___________
Tony Fabris

So really, all competitors should provide a line in or digital in, and the judge then hooks in his trusted equipment.

Problem is, different CD players will play the music differently. It all depends on what the design engineers had in mind when they spec'd out the DAC. This is why I am not happy with the idea of playing IASCA tracks through my portable CD player into the Aux In of the empeg. The sound is totally different -- the CD player is much warmer, mellower, less defined. It doesn't sound bad, mind you, but it kind of defeats all the time and work I spend tuning the empeg, and there would be no way I could tune in advance for a judge's CD player.

Is the idea of a checksum or digital signature so unworkable? Even the simplest possible checksum -- just count the total bytes in the file -- would be pretty hard to duplicate if the file were edited in any way. If the empeg could just display the file specs (size, creation date, modification date, etc.) that would be some indication that the file had not been altered. Yes, it would probably be possible to still manage to cheat (like rjlov's suggestion of spoofing the CD changer would be possible now) but it would keep the honest people honest; only the technically astute could cheat and chances are they would get caught anyway, because those judges are pretty sharp as a general rule -- they have heard that CD literally thousands of times in hundreds of different systems, they know exactly what it is supposed to sound like, and changes to the original would likely catch their attention. But then... how would they prove it?

C'mon people, think! There has to be some way of creating a tamper-proof file copy.

tanstaafl.




"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

C'mon people, think! There has to be some way of creating a tamper-proof file copy.

The judge could telnet in with laptop, upload a signature checker and run it on the wav files.

Actually if it came to that, they could just get at laptop with USB and upload the "offical" wav files.

Just to add to this, I'm sure there's a program called 'md5sum' or similar that calculates a 128 bit MD5 checksum on its argument. This could be integrated fairly easily - as long as the judge trusts you not to just output a pre-calculated string (e.g. 'blitwrite ac3f:12d1:094b:c008:9a37:3827:5601:de6b') and actually checks the file in question...

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

The problem here is that not every rip of a cd will produce exactly the same .wav file. If the CD is scratched, it will still produce a .wav file, but it will differ from a non-scratched CD.

Also, from what I gather, some CD-ROM drives rip differently. Usually not audible differences, but still digitally different.

I still think the best argument I saw on this topic was to use a file in a non-tamperable format (I think WMA was mentioned.) If this was distributed by IASCA, then a checksum would be fine, as it would be on an already digital version of the music.

-Trevor

-----
Mk 2, Green 12GB 080000349

Not sure about CE software, but I've got a program called OmniRemote that does pretty well on my Handspring Visor. You create how you want the remote to look on the display (number of buttons, button size and placement, labels, etc.) and then use your existing remote 'teach' the software the proper IR codes.

There are certain issues inherent to using a PDA as a remote (like not being able to use it with one hand), but all in all, I think it's pretty cool. It's mainly just a fallback in case I forget to grab the remote out of the car when I take the player inside.


Bill B.
Mk.2 SN 080000183 - 18 GB / Green

I still think the best argument I saw on this topic was to use a file in a non-tamperable format (I think WMA was mentioned.)

What is it that makes WMA non-tamperable? I don't know anything about that format. Does this mean that an end user cannot create his own files in WMA format?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

As rjlov knows it is possible to modify the waveform as it comes out of the player without the player source code by modifying the kernel. So, even if IASCA trusted empeg to write the checksum code (which they may not do, there's a conflict of interests there - empeg has a lot to gain out of its players winning lots of competitions) and the audio data coming out of the WAV file into the audio device is correct it can still be modified in kernel. All that would be needed is a bit of code to recognise that it is playing an IASCA test track then a map of modifications that should be done to the digital data before it is passed out to the DSP.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

I believe that they can be digitally signed, which makes tampering almost impossible.

Obviously, we'd have to add code to the player to verify the signature. I don't know anything about that.


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Hang on.. is there something in the IASCA rules that says you're NOT allowed to digitally post-process the signal? If so digital equalisers, cross overs, and other sound processors would not be allowed.

Rob

Maybe it would be worth discussion this at length with IASCA officials when you visit?

Perhaps they could officially observe the download of an official RIP image to a contestant's empeg before judging?

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

is there something in the IASCA rules that says you're NOT allowed to digitally post-process the signal?

That's the heart of the matter, Rob. All IASCA wants is a level playing field as far as the original music source. What your equipment does with it after that is what the whole idea of competition is all about.

If my stereo can process the identical source better than your stereo, then I have the better stereo and I win.

All we have to do is prove that the file within the empeg is identical to the file on the original CD. I think that precludes playing anything but .wav files. So how do you compare a .wav file in the empeg to a .wav file on the original CD and verify that they are identical?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Perhaps they could officially observe the download of an official RIP image to a contestant's empeg before judging?

I'm afraid that would be too time consuming, and would require that the judge or the competitor to have a portable computer with emplode, a CD player, and a USB port on it and would require a source of A/C power to run the empeg while it was synchronizing. And then how would you convince a judge who has never seen an empeg before that the IASCA tracks you picked out of the hierarchical menu structure were really the ones you had just loaded in? I know I could do some quick sleight-of-remote when the judge's attention was elsewhere ("Oh, wow, judge, look at the rack on that babe...") and pull up my alternative list of highly edited and modified IASCA tracks. I mean, if you want to cheat, it's very difficult to prevent it, and the empeg just makes it more so.

The judges can only spend about 20 minutes with each vehicle as it is, and still these contests frequently run late into the night. If you doubled the amount of time required for judging... but I guess it wouldn't be double for all the vehicles, only the ones with empegs. Logistically it would be difficult, and the judges would not appreciate the extra workload nor would they like doing things differently from what they are doing now.]

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Agreed on all those points, Doug, but something occured to me today.

The IASCA is going to have to eventually come up with a way of dealing with digital music players. Eventually such players will be as common as CD players. There's going to be a "critical mass" point when they'll have to recognize them as a valid piece of competition hardware.

So, despite my initial skepticism, I now agree that coming up with some sort of standardized, reasonably secure handling method of source audio for competition is important. Why not start with the Empeg paving the way of the future?

___________
Tony Fabris

I'm inclined to say; let anything go until it becomes a problem, then deal with it. But maybe I'm a product of a society that does just that. But with the rarety of the empeg I think most people would just say if it sounds good then it is good and more power to the man who figures out how to improve his scores... after all if everyone is "cheating" then does anyone really have the upper hand?

Tom

Reg #2845: Mark 1 #00173, Mark 2 #119

What's the difference between re-mastering the CD at home and having your in-car unit using its DSP?

The key word here is "in-car".

Understand that the underlying purpose of IASCA is to promote the sale of car audio equipment. To that end, they are heavily subsidized by the car audio industry. To accomplish this aim, they hold competitions so that I can prove that my "Acme 2000 Thunderblaster" is better than your "SoundCruncher 4250", with the hope that you will immediately trash your SoundCruncher and go vist the Acme store.

For these contests to be meaningful (Hmmm... in the larger scheme of things, just how meaningful could a car stereo competition ever be, anyway. Wish I hadn't thought of that.) it has to be a contest of in-car music-playing equipment starting with a level playing field, i.e., everybody playing the same CD or its equivalent. More than that, the Acme company gets bragging rights and will promote their superiority in their advertising. (Of course, being blessed with a superior intellect, I would never fall for such blatant commercialism, which is why all my speakers are MB-Quart who have won every significant national competition over the last five years.)

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Of course, being blessed with a superior intellect

Doug, I think you made a typo in that post. That last word there should have been spelled "E-G-O".

___________
Tony Fabris

I've thought about this again for a little bit and it seems to me that iasca officials are touting a level playing field for what reason? Come on, admit it, iasca exists to create a pissing contest for 1) who has the most money, 2) who can create the most violent shaking. As a foot note there are those who roll in with a car audio system to die for in terms of reproduction. So are the judges really afraid your copy of the music is somehow remastered to compensate for sound staging or whatever? Sure it's possible, but really what they're thinking of is whether for the SPL contest you didn't remaster it register more SPL. hhmmm??

It seems to me that the SPL competitors are at liberty to construct things that can endanger the lives of people, going beyond sanity in cases to construct car audio that does not sound like car audio, and reduce a car into something that can not be used as a car even, in order to win. Surely, if the goals of IASCA had quality of sound as a priority, then they should open up the playing field to allow *anything* to be done, including remastering, post-processing of any kind. The point here is if the SPL people are allowed to play a track and it is not even recognizably so... then why not allow source music that sounds exactly like it should be?

In simplified terms: The SPL contest is about who can get the biggest amplitude on a sine wave. The quality contest is about who can get the most perfect sine wave. Now consider, if you are forced to use a CD containing a sine wave that is mastered in a way that it plays with distortion or loss of quality on YOUR system..... why NOT allow the owner to use a slightly different waveform that sounds like a perfect sine wave, perhaps even better than the original?

So replace sine wave with cd track, and it's the same concept. So maybe it would unlevel the playing field, but it would encourage people to go to "any length" to win and create systems that you would literally lose yourself because you completely believe you ARE There. It seems to me requiring a known source cripples the quality contest quite a bit.

Calvin "late night iasca musings"

SPL is only one aspect of IASCA competition. There are also sound quality competitions - in fact these are much more scrutinised than the SPL, which is judged by a multimeter

Rob