I currently don't own a stereo system apart from the empeg (moved recently, couldn't take the old one with me). The empeg is great in the car and at the office but the silence at home is getting a bit depressing. So I'm now looking for a pair of speakers and an amp. A friend of mine recently bought a pair of Paradigm Monitor 7 floorstanding speakers. These are getting great reviews online and are in my price range ($600-$700 for the pair). I went to his place to check them out, took the empeg along and a bunch of CDs.

The speakers sounded good. A bit too bright for me, less so with the grills on. The bass was OK but nothing special. Then I connected the empeg. The empeg was much quieter than the CD player but that was easy to adjust for. The quality of the sound was much worse, though.Hard to say exactly in what way (I'm new at this audiophile thing). Muddier sound and less precise imaging is what I remember. I tried a bunch of different songs, some were less affected than others but I could tell the difference with all of them.

I'm willing to attribute much of this to the quality of my mp3s - ~160kbs VBR joint stereo. I really wish WAV support arrives soon so I can tell for sure.

As for my home stereo setup, I really don't know what to do now. I can either get these or similar speakers, and a CD player, or I can go for lower-end speakers that don't expose the limitations of the empeg that much. The second option would be quite a bit cheaper...

One question: how is the empeg supposed to be grounded in a home audio setup?

Regards,
Borislav