we should stick to the two issues you refer to: the ability for MP3 in general to maintain soundstage in the compressed files and the ability of the empeg to reproduce (what's left of) the soundstage in MP3.

I've been thinking about it. There's one other issue to consider, too:

One school of thought might say, "because the Empeg is mainly designed to play MP3 files, you can't separate the MP3-quality issue from the empeg-hardware-quality issue. All that matters is the end result of perceived overall quality."

I mean, I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here. I see them as two totally separate issues. But we do have to acknowledge it as a valid point of view.

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Tony Fabris