I'm not into mp3s because they sound poor on my equipment. I even bought a Creative Ensoniq 1371 sound card because someone on slashdot.org said it had a great signal to noise ratio, but mp3s still sound lousy.

The reason I'm interested in the empeg is that I have a really short attention span for music. I hate listening to a CD repeat and I often don't even feel like listening to a CD all the way through. With my 3 disc and 5 disc players in the house and a single disc player in the car, this really sucks.

I would love to have playlists that cut across hundreds of CDs and play for hours without a repeat, but I'm concerned about the quality I hear from my computer.

If there's anyone in central or northern New Jersey (USA) who has a quality mp3 playing setup (it doesn't have to be an empeg, just a computer hooked up to a decent quality stereo) I'd love to hear it. I can honestly say I've never been able to produce an mp3 that sounded better than "mediocre" on my computer.