First, let me say that Beta 7 is great! But due to the wealth of features that have to be controlled, the UI will become more and more complicated. One problem I can foresee already is that the main menu will eventually grow beyond a size that can reasonably be handled. So I'd like to propose two things
1) Get rid of duplicate functionality. The Loudness feature, for example, is nicely covered by the new Equalizer function. I'd suggest you name one of the 16 Custom equalizer settings "Loudness", and preset it with appropriate values. Then, there are Volume keys on the remote and on the unit (for those who wonder: just press the right or left button long enough), so you don't need a Volume setting in the menu. The same is true for Power Off (well, you'll have to define a key sequence on the remote for that - why not 0-0-0?), so you could get rid of that as well.
2) make the menu system hierarchical. Settings and actions should be grouped in submenus, ordered by similarity and importance. For example, "Next Visual" and "Previous Visual" are - for me - not important enough to be in the main menu. There should be only rather few main menu entries (the most important, of coure, leftmost). I could think of the following structure:

Sound
    (Volume - if you want)
    Equalizer
    Balance
    Fader
Current Playlist
    Mark current song
    Shuffle on/off
    Skip song forward
    Skip song backward
    Skip inner playlist forward
Playlists
    (here hierarchy of playlists, with Play buttons)
Source (called Channel now - is there a chance to rename it, please?)
    MP3
    Radio
    Aux
Radio
    Next Station
    Previous Station
    Store Current Station
    Store 10 Strongest Stations (a *very* handy feature if you travel long distances a lot!)
    TA on/off (Traffic Announcements to interrupt MP3 or Aux)
Display
    Info on/off/timed
    Next Visual
    Previous Visual
    (maybe a list of visuals by name?)

This proposal is by no means complete or even very thorougly thought about. It's meant only as a base for discussions. You'll find also that there are some other wishes neatly hidden in it - like switching the empeg off with the remote, the TA, or "Strongest 10 Stations" - that have nothing to do with the current topic. I thought I'd mention them anyway...

Note that the structure doesn't say anything about what the sub-menues should look like. There'd probably be enough room for *vertical* menues (so they look similar to what people are used to from their PC/Max/X-Window/whatever), but cascaded *horizontal* menues may just be easier to read and navigate.

My last concern is with the four buttons on the front. Their use should be as consistent as possible. So, whenever there's a menu or a setting on the display, the left and right button should be used for navigating, the bottom button should execute the menu entry (which can also mean: open the next sub-menu), and the top button could be used to go back up one menu level (if it's not used for other things like in the Equalizer).

Dear empeg team, please don't think I'm trying to tell you how you should do your job. I know that I may sound like that sometimes, but my only intention is to provide some input to maybe think about. What you do with it is totally up to you!

Cheers
Daniel

Actually, in beta7 a lot of work has been done on the menus (well, Mike's been slaving over them :) ) - this means that hierarchical menus are now properly supported (eg: the playlist menus) and can be used for other options.

The idea is to move the sound controls to a sound menu, yes. I'd expect the next release will probably have some tidying of the menu structure before it gets too ungainly. We're also working on (user definable) audio prompts for the menus, but this might not make it into the betas for a little while.

We did have vertical menus way before beta1, but they were a lot less satisfactory than the horizontal ones (anyone who saw the empeg at the mp3 summit would have seen the vertical ones).

Please don't be afraid of suggesting things - we do want user feedback. Mark's fear of be hitting him when he suggests internal playlist skipping is just because it's something I've got to get around to but I've been too busy with pointy-hair-dilbert-boss-activities to do a lot of programming :)

Hugo

First: beta7 is great - I realy like the way the software is heading and that you take suggestions seriously. I'd like to add my bit the the UI discussions.

I like the possibility introduced in beta7 to use the number keys to quickly navigate (sub)menus. Why not expand this using other key combinations besides the asterix (to access the menu) plus numeric keys?

In the same way that *3 moves you to the equalizer (I think) and *9 to graphics, combinations of the TUNER, TAPE, CD, VOL-UP etc buttons may allow quick access to specific functions.

E.g. you could allocate playlist functions to the CD button, with:
CD <0> to go back to the top of the play-list;
CD <1> directly to sublevel-1;
CD <2> to sublevel-2; etc

Similarly, combinations of numeric / other keys:

CH-MD button for playlist access
CH-MD CH-MD (twice) to kill/activate the display of text (I like the possiblity to quickly turn of the text; so would like to keep it!)
CH-MD with <0> to shuffle all tracks at level 0
CH-MD with <1> to shuffle within the currently selected level-1
etc
CH-MD with <9> to suffle within the current lowest level playlist (within the tracks of the playlist that is currently playing)

DNPP key for graphics
DNPP plus FF to go the the next graphic
DNPP plus REW to select the previous graphic
DNPP plus <1> .. <0> to quickly select any one of 10 user preferred graphics

VOL UP for sound menus:
VOL UP immedeately followed by a numeric to select up to 10 different Equalizer presets

etc
Henno
1851/120

Too bad the four buttons are not horizontal above or below the display - that way you could actually name them by displaying their current functions. But i guess there wasn't enough room or so. Tks, Jo

Oooh, I like this. Please Hugo consider some of his suggestions - consider me another voice in the wind asking for the same functionality.

=-C

_______________________________
List 351, empeg 00045, 10gb, Amber

Actually, having the entire UI be user definable would be a terrific feature. Games already do this, allowing you to assign any key/input combination to functional macros that include all UI to the game.

In a post 1.0 release, a user could use a program similar to Emplode to define what each front panel button and each remote button does. The user could also define how the menu structure works. And if these settings were storable in a file on the host PC, users could trade and improve on other people's settings. If someone came up with a brilliantly simple interface, Empeg could officially switch all future players to that UI.