But my point is that a car is such a noisy environment anyway that having a really good sounding stereo is a waste of money because the noise of the car masks any 'Hi-Fi' pretentions such a stereo might have. It might sound great when the engine's off, but as someone who spends most of his driving time on the motorways in England I have to say that at 70mph with the windows open one stereo sounds much the same as the next. And as someone who parks his car in the street in London, having any kind of expensive stereo equipment leads inevitably to broken windows and wires hanging out.

I've no doubt that the EMPEG is a good thing and that it sounds great. I just don't think that sounding great is at all important for a car stereo. What's important for me is that (a) you can hear it over the engine/wind/road noise and (b) it doesn't require any external (and therefore stealable) amplification. Sound quality is just not an issue, especially when you're using a compresion format that throws away a lot of the detail in the music. And from that point of view, a home MP3 player is a bit pointless because your CD player will sound better. I'd love an MP3 player in the car, but purely from the point of view of convenience. I can't see any other reason for MP3s to exist.

Mark.


Mark.