but I have evidence to suggest that the Xaudio MP3 decoder used in the empeg is only a limited accuracy ISO/IEC 11172-3 audio decoder.

This could be important information. Everything I've read seems to indicate that sound staging is dependent upon very subtle cues, cues that could be destroyed by something as simple as a slight jitter problem or a minor innacuracy in the decoder. My ears aren't golden enough to hear these problems, so I don't know about this for sure.

(But most importantly, if true, a problem like this could be solved with a simple software upgrade.)

What else can you tell us about this?



___________
Tony Fabris