After finally having installed my Empeg in the car (after 4 years of proud ownership!) I've noticed that the actual sound quality with music coming from the HD of the Empeg is not as good as when the exact same MP3 file is played through the Empeg's Aux input from my Karma.

I've tried to cancel out all variables such as L/R time-alignment, voladj, EQ, etc. by switching everything off; I also compensated for output level to make a fair comparison. It's obvious, the Karma sounds a lot better: less congested in the midrange, more treble detailing, tighter bass.

It's weird because the Karma goes trhough an additional processing step, A-to-D conversion (I assume all processing in Empeg is done by DSP)- whereas from the HD it should all nicely stay in digital domain so if anything, it should sound worse.

I'm aware of the small hardware error that affects the first MkII units (wrong SMD resistor so reduced channel separation). Does this resistor has an effect on other aspects of SQ also?

After this, I took the Empeg inside and did a similar comparison on my (pretty-decent, if I say so myself) home system. Again, playing the same files, the Empeg sounds consistently worse than the Karma (I'm actually very impressed with the quality from the Karma; it's very close to the original CD).

Another thing that has got me worried is that is seems that the Empeg damages MP3 files... Files that were fine in the past suddenly have excruciatingly loud clicks or bursts of screeches in them; always re-occuring at the exact same spot. How this happens, I don't know, haven't discovered a pattern. Putting the same file back on the Empgeg from the PC restores things. All my music is VBR Lame encoded; extreme setting); using both ID3 V1 and V2 tags.

Has anybody else noticed similar things?

Cas.