The source will just be a repository and selection device for the play lists with the music produced by the car or the speaker system when we decide what we want to hear and then you are looking at what the Empeg team are so good at features and UI...

That is a reasonable summary of where we are now, actually. Whether you have a CD player or an empeg, the source unit actually contributes little to the betterment (or detraction) of the sound quality.

But I am not as optimistic as you about the future. Aftermarket stereo shops that see the writing on the wall are branching out into other areas as quickly as they can as car audio becomes more and more integrated with the vehicle itself, causing changes/enhancements to the stock system to become more and more difficult and expensive.

This means that in the not too distant future, we may well be confined to whatever the manufacturers of the cars deem to be appropriate -- and those manufacturers are not driven by sound quality concerns, they are driven by bean counters.

When 90% or more of the new car buyers do not care in the least whether their car stereo is flat to 15,000 Hz, or that the bass and sub-bass are truly linear with volume changes, do you think that they're going to spend and extra $100 per car to put in top quality speakers? Not when you consider that that $100 times 50,000 cars amounts to millions of dollars in lost profits.

I think that right now we are living in the golden age of car audio. Enjoy it while it lasts.

tanstaafl.