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but as far as quality and storage, would there honestly be any difference with a 60GB Creative MP3 player hooked into the aux input of a decent stereo receiver?
Storage: Yes, since an empeg can easily do double that storage and more.
Quality: If you're an audiophile, yes, because the empeg's output stage is a higher quality, and it would be going straight into an amplifier uncolored. But if you're not an audiophile you won't notice a difference.
Another thing about quality: The increased storage capacity of an empeg means you can encode your MP3s at a much higher bit rate, thus having the extra storage be a factor in the quality. You can even (if you want to tolerate alpha software) do OGG or FLAC for even greater quality.
If you just download a bunch of pirated MP3s to listen to (as opposed to making them from the original CDs yourself) , then this isn't a factor, because you have no control over the quality or size of downloaded music files.