Not to substantiate or refute this, but as a couple of added data points:

1.) SonicBLUE laid off (n>1) people this past week, including some folks in Cambridge (Rob was not among them, as he sent me e-mail after the fact, but it is a fact that such has happened, unless he made that up)

2.) Nobody (so far) from Empeg/Rio/SB crew has spoken up at all on this topic. While silence is not necessarily "symptomatic of truth", it is a reality that they're really good (historically) at shooting down FALSE rumors, and keeping their mouths shut when a rumor has a hint of truth in it (because of very understandable confidentiality issues they face as employees of said company).

My only hope is that, if the RioCar is headed for the coulda-been pile, that the code will get released to the world so that the hackers among us can play with all the stuff that the companies will have decided isn't worth their time and money.

Of course, I really hope the rumor is completely false, of course, that goes without saying.

D