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Rio Car (Empeg) Sounds Like History

Posted by timothy on from the didn't-play-oggs dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "An unoffical announcement on the empeg BBS (home of their finatical user base) is that SONICblue's current aftermarket car linux product, the Rio Car (formerly the empeg Car Player) has been EOL'd. While it remains the most advanced car player available, there was not enough demand to keep that group profitable. It will continue to be sold through their e-stores (Non-USA and USA) until inventory is exhausted. This was/is the ultimate in car stereo for MP3 playback. Disappointing."

5 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Not enough demand?? by SCHecklerX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember signing up to be notified when my name hit the top of the list to be able to purchase one of these.

    I never heard anything.

  2. High cost, no PCMCIA by Wee · · Score: 5, Interesting
    If it had a PCMCIA slot, I would have paid the $1000 for it. But without it, no way. I'm not spending a grand to have to lug a unit into some cradle to transfer files.

    Better would be to get an SBC that supports Linux, throw on a microdrive, add an 802.11b card, and then write a set of scripts that rsync to your home MP3 DB when you get in range of the access point (and after you exchange some cryptographic keys, of course). You can then use the apmd stuff to sleep your machine after the transfer.

    I planned on using an old Palm IIIx and a serial cable for the GUI. PalmAMP works really well (for my purposes, anyway). Of course, it doesn't beat the Empeg's really fancy display. It's very nice. But worth an extra $500? Probably not.

    Bad to see them go. Hopefully, they'll keep their software on the Net so others can play with it still.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  3. Re:too expensive for poor quality by 1984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Encoded at reasonable bit rates from a reasonable source MP3 can sound fine. I'm running a digital feed out of a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and into a Cambridge Audio DACMagic II, amped by a Marantz PM66SE KI, with Mordaunt-Short MS25i floorstanders. Not a super high-end setup, but fairly solid mid-range equipment.

    No, MP3s fed from the PC don't sound as good as the source CD. But they are close. Certainly close enough that if I'm sat at my PC doing work and just playing some music, the quality is more than adequate. It's even adequate for just sitting around listening to music.

    The notion (posted somewhere in this sub-thread) that cars are soundproofed to a degree where road, engine and wind noise aren't significant noise factors (whilst moving, obviously) is bullshit. Plus car stereos even at the high end are compromised by their environment. You have a setup where space is at a premium, you don't have luxury of completely defining the acoustic enclosure (why don't all hi-fi speakers look like car doors?) or of seating those listening in an optimal position. Yes, you can design with this in mind. But you will always be behind equally-priced systems that don't suffer the same basic constraints.

    So essentially, I think you're talking out of your arse about quality being the issue. The difference between MP3 and CD quality is minor compared to other factors.

  4. Re:too expensive for poor quality by reverius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What exactly is "good quality sound"? I've always wondered about that.

    I seriously have no clue what brands are known as "good quality sound".

    My friend insists that Bose speakers are the best speakers ever made (not the crappy little Bose WaveRadio, but their real (big) 15-year old speakers w/ whatever reciever system he's using)...

    I don't have anything to compare it to except my dad's Acoustic Research (I think that's what they're called) & his NAD amp... which sound pretty damn good. :)

    What are good speaker and stereo component brands (real stuff, not the integrated-system crap that you could get at Best Buy)?

  5. Re:sonic blue take over by altman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nah, we made money on all of them; the real money is in licencing through existing manufacturers though.

    ARM doing a core that did MP3/WMA? No, this isn't true; the ARM7TDMI core was there all along - and the solution is 100% software in the rio 600/800 and nike players (plus the rio volt, intel concert, etc etc).

    In fact, the Rio Receiver we also did at empeg uses the same CPU as the rio 600/800, but with a DRAM interface.

    The same software decoder core is used in the empeg and the rio. We never wrote any mp3 decoders, we just did the surrounding stuff - which is a lot more complex than an mp3 decoder!

    Anyway, you'll see what the empeg team has been up to all this time in a few weeks :)

    Hugo
    empeg