I've got some files that are WMA 16khz, 16kbps, Mono. I am transcoding them into MP3 and putting them on the empeg.

I'm increasing the bitrate to 96khz to try to help cover the fact that I'm re-encoding something that's already been lossy encoded. However, I am leaving the samplerate at 16khz and the channels at Mono, in an effort to prevent inducing artifacts from sample rate conversion.

My question is, will the empeg's DSP play 16khz mono by default, or does the player software do a sample rate conversion on-the-fly? Perhaps I could actually get better quality by doing the sample rate conversion ahead of time. I've noticed the resulting files sound a bit harsh and edgy on the empeg, and I'm wondering of that's an artifact of the player doing a quick-and-dirty samplerate conversion as opposed to something nicer.

Any comments from the gang?