Well I finally got my unit - and it certainly lives up to all
the hype - hopefully a long review and piccies when time permits.

This is the first USB device I have used but I wasn't impressed
by the download speeds. It certainly didn't look to me to be
12Mbs. I was wondering if this was a Windows 98/Bios tuning
issue.

How long should it/is it taking people to download tracks?
It would be nice in emplode has a indication of how quick
things are moving and a time estimated/time left counter.

Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to try to drag'drop'sync
3 gig of MP3's in the first go ;-)

ps. Well done to all the people at empeg - have an extra beer
at lunch time you deserve it!

Regards

Paul

It wasn't too bad, but not as quick as I had expected (Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad, about 5 mins a cd I think..)
My main problem was that I left it going whilst I fitted the cage in the car, and once the upload had finished, it started playing..
That'll teach me to turn the volume on the amp down when I leave the door open.. =)

Is that the first empeg induced noise complaint.. =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

12Mbit is USB's maximum theoretical limit - unfortunately, we don't get very close. One reason is the 32 byte packets (the USB controller doesn't have FIFOs deeper than that) and that Win98 is rumoured to have a "feature" that limits the number of 32 byte packets to 8 per USB frame - we get over 200kb/sec.

I've been playing with larger packet sizes using tricks, this might up this rate a bit. It's still 20x what you get over serial, though...

Time estimated/elapsed counters are planned for a future release.

Hugo

> and once the upload had finished, it started playing..
> That'll teach me to turn the volume on the amp down when I leave the door
> open.. =)

Since I'm trying to download over serial, I set up big batches and leave them running overnight. The first night I did this, my wife, the kids and I (plus several of the neighbours) were awoken at 4:30 AM by the theme tune from "Thunderbirds" at significant volume. The situation was not helped by a hot night where we had decided to leave all the windows open....

{8^)

Ooops...
Glad I'm not the only one who got caught out by that.. =)
Maybe we need an option on the download dialog to turn off autoplay when complete..

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

Why not just remove the RCA jacks when downloading, or turn the amp off. Just a thought, the empeg guys are just so busy I'd rather have the next beta release in my hands than have to wait for it for something this innocous.

Eoghain

Fair comment.. =)
I'm sure the empeg guys will spend their time in the correct places, and not implement this sort of thing until later.. =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

Well, I basically discovered thatit returns to the previous operational state after download, and since that (for me) was play, it picked up my firstplaylist and got going.

If you put it into to Power Off mode, then start your download, it remains dead when the download is finished.

I have just tryed to upload a 5MB Mp3 file to my USB CF card reader.
( http://www.sandisk.com/cons/imagemate-USB.htm ) Time elapsed 15 sec.

(List 142, S/N 00032, 4 gig blue)

Just a point. My empeg came with the volume turned almost all the way up... You might want to put a QA step into the testing/shipping process that turns it down most of the way. Some people are going to get blown speakers or disturb their neighbors when they first turn it on... :-)

=-Clarke

this is rather strange - coz my unit (4gb/blue/#00025) was set to -20.0dB when i first turned it on.....

I s'pose the majority of Empeg users will connect it to an amplifier, so shipping with the volume turned down might be useful. However, some people connect it to aux or line in inputs (as I do in the car to another headunit and at home to a hifi) where a volume of 0 is ideal. You'll never find a setting that will please everyone. :)

Cheers,

Mark.

I made the assumption that most users would plug their units into an amplifier with separate volume setting the first time. In this case 0dB is ideal. I was particularly worried that people would worry that they couldn't hear anything if I left the volume set to minimum.

If people are plugging them straight into power amplifiers then I'll try to ensure that the volume is set to minimum as shipped in future.

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