I have been looking at the EMPEG for the past 3 (or so) years and now that I finally can afford one, it's been discontinued. Does anyone know of a player that closely compares to the concept behind EMPEG? If any of you still look at the new plyers coming out, do you see anything nearly as good?

I would like to build one, but realistcally speaking, I don't have the time to figure it all out nor the expertise to make it as good. Any input you've got would be helpful.
Thanks,
Brent

Right now, no. I'd honestly patrol the sale forms here, and eBay daily until you get one. empeg has hinted about working on similar projects to then be sold to an OEM, but nothing has come of this yet that any of us here are aware of (beyond the empeg folks of course). Generally, everyones feelings on other units out now is that the UI is always limited compaired to the empeg, and the newer ones from Sony and Pioneer force you to sit in the car and rip all your music, while paying more then you probably would for an empeg now.

Good luck, do try to find one, it's well worth it.

The only unit that even comes close is the PhatNoise. I believe Kenwood has a contract to make them. They look like a unit that has pretty high quality, but it's more of a 'user' level audio component. If you want to play with your player, you're going to need to find one on E-bay.
They CAN still be found for 500-600 for a 20 GB unit. (don't forget that you need an amp ~200 for a high quality unit) and a tuner (300 for an xm satelite reciever)

No.

Not much help I know but I really think the answer is exactly that. Follow the other guys advice and hunt around ebay. Last time I looked there were about 6 or 7 on the go.

Hands down.. after 2+ years, there is nothing that compares to the EMPEG.

The craftmanship, the expandability, the modularity, the support, i could go on, but I don't want to cross the line from cheerleader to groupie.

The prices on E-bay are creeping upwards too unforunately. I imagine that at least 1000 units were snarfed by speculators.

Make your own MP3 player!?
http://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/

Doesn't come close:

MP3 decoding is done by a hardware decoder - no possibility for other formats.
Storage is in FAT32 partitions. Yuck.
Display is charactor based, not pixel-based.
Only stereo out, not 4 channel.
No DSP = no eq, balance, fader, loudness, stereo delay, automatic volume adjustment etc.
No circuitry to interface to headlight dimmer, cell mute etc.
No visuals.
No playlists!
No case!
And finally, no empeg software - which still today remains the bggest differentiator between the empeg and other solutions.


You'd be better off with a second hand Advantech PCM5862 from ebay, and hacking together your own display, interface crcuitry and software...Someone on this board did something like that once

Well, it's a hobbyists toy after all. Have to start somewhere!

I tried to roll my own:
http://www.spmicro.com/mp3sidekick/

It worked, but not like the empeg... or even the Neo for that matter. I chose a DOS solution because it could be shut down simply by cutting the power. In the end, there was a compatibility problem with certain MP3s looping the last 2 seconds continuously. This was discovered after finally getting the sound card working in DOS. I never installed it in the car. I bought a Neo35 until my number in the Empeg queue came up. The rest is history.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to knock that project - although I really think that it went down the wrong path by doing everything in hardware rather than CPU/DSP.

But the subject of discussion was as to whether anything was *comparable* to the empeg, and I don't think that this really is. Paradoxically I did actually do a quick comparision, but I'm guessing that he's after something that is at least in the same league as the empeg in terms of functionality or potential.

Well, it's a hobbyists toy after all. Have to start somewhere

How do you think empeg started?

Rob