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.

The question you raise is more complex than it would appear at first glance, because there are many different "flavors" of MP3 recording. The quality is directly proportional to the bit rate at which you record, and those rates range from 96kbit to 320kbit, and maybe even lower/higher, I'm not that much of an authority on MP3. The amount of compression you get is in direct inverse linear relationship to the recording rate. The empeg uses a default 128kbit rate (giving about a 12:1 compression rate), but will play other rates as well. The empeg also supports playback of MP2 compressed files, which from everything I have heard, are to all measurable purposes lossless, and have a compression rate of 6:1. Twice the quality, double the storage. Hard drive space is cheap - go for the quality!

Frankly, this is a question that I have not answered to my own satisfaction yet. I will wait and read a lot of empeg reviews before I am convinced that the sound quality will be up to my preferred standards. Being #8741 on the waiting list, I have plenty of time to decide.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I just received one of the empeg units. The sound quality is excellent, and the setup is very easy. I'm in Denville, stop up to my office one day and you can check it out.

So Blake, are you enjoying your new toy?!

When you get a chance next week, come out to my car and check out my new system. I'm in north jersey too. In fact, my office is down the hall from yours. ; )

Steveh (chip)



-CHiP

Denville's about an hour away and I don't have to make a decision soon, so I'm not going to make a trip up there. I may take you up on your offer if they ever reach my number and I still haven't been convinced that mp3s can sound adequate.

Thanks

Let me just tell you, I know what good sound is.... and the empeg has "good" sound. The D/A converters produce sound "as good or better" then my $500 Gina Sound card by Echo. ( http://www.echoaudio.com/pages/gina.htm ) The mp3's don't have that tinny sound that you get from computer sound cards. It blows any sound blaster 64 gold, or whatever, out of the water. You can tell the difference with a good Hi-Fi system.

It really does a great job with the sound!


-CHiP

You wrote:

I'm not into mp3s because they sound poor on my equipment.

My experience is that PCs are often the worst place to listen to MP3's.

I listen to a lot of MP3 music ripped directly from CDs, and I do my own encodings of radio shows and tapes that I've made. The difference in quality between the system here at work, which has a crappy sound card that only takes 8bit output and feeds two tiny speakers in the front of the machine, and my system at home which is fully 16bit and directly feeds a home stereo system placed strategically around my ears, is incredible. The same track that sounds tinny, staticky (caused by the 8bit conversion) and dull really kicks at home.

Likewise, if you encode your tracks with the wrong program you can get really crappy audio. As I've said on another thread, BladeEnc sounds the same as the Fraunhofer encoder at 128KBit (as far as I can tell) but at 56Kbit it's completely obvious that BladeEnc just doesn't cut it. Encoding all your tracks as 8Kbit files is going to put you off MP3 right quick ;-D

So, go and hear someone else's system / empeg and be convinced :-)

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.