I agree with most of wht you say in regards to sound staging, however, I'm comparing apples to apples here..

I've had a decent system in my car ever since having gotten my new car, and to me, the sound quality was among the best. The only thing different between my setup now (well.. before I sold the empeg:) ) and my old setup is the head unit. The alpine head unit was replaced for the empeg. The empeg usually doesn't appear to be nearly as good on the upper and lower bands as the alpine was. The bass isn't as loud, and the trebble isn't as bright.

Having said that though, I think most of this can be attributed to the nature of mp3's... I've actually experimented with high-vbr mp3 files (side-by-side comparison between my alpine head unit and the empeg) - I can get the lower frequencies to be nearly indistinguishable (sp), but the trebble still sounds different - the empeg isn't as sharp, even at the highest bit rates.

I think the proper eq'ing of the empeg would fix this though, and honestly changing some of the more advanced options of the eq DO help. I'm a clutz when it comes to eq'ing though - I always fix one thing just to notice something wrong w/ a different frequency. I think that the default equalization of the alpine simply sounded better then the empeg, but that someone with more experience could make the empeg sound as good if not better then my old head unit. This is the reason that I've suggested pre-set equilizer settings in the past, I don't really trust my judgement when it comes to setting things, but I know what sounds good...

I've suggested having pre-sets before, but what about taking it to the next level.. What about having someone with alot of experience w/ sound quality test the empeg, and see how they set their eq? the Q value seems to help alot w/ the higher and lower notes, but some of us just aren't good enough to set them ourselves:)

-mark

...proud to have owned one of the first Mark I units