he has an *extremely* low opinion of Rockford Fosgate, both in terms of quality of sound output, and frequency of failure.

He may well be right. The Rockford Fosgate amp couldn't handle the Empeg pop and is now back with Rockford for a repair (under guarantee). To prevent this from happening again, I have 'big johns' delay switch (see elsewhere on this board) ready when it comes back.

Quality of sound of the Fosgate hasn't bothered me yet. I believe that a car is such a bad listening environment that 'sound quality' will be very difficult to achieve (if at all, but you probably disagree ). Empeg and Fosgate thus do fine for me in the car.

(At home, I use the empeg/MP3 for background music and it is great at that!. For proper listening, any decent CD played on a decent installation still beats MP3 compression -- and thus the empeg -- with a long shot)

Henno
# 00120