Nah, we had a thread somewhere mentioning that with most CD drives a rip is not quite the same as the output you get when you play the cd in a normal player...

And in that thread, we came to the conclusion that the rip (assuming it had no problems) was no different than the original CD. A wave file played through the Empeg's DAC should sound identical to the CD if it were somehow fed through the same DAC. And the Empeg's DAC was made for CD reproduction, so, equalization differences aside, it should sound the same as a consumer CD player.

And in version 1.1, we'll actually get the ability to play .WAV files, so that'll even be possible.

Besides, you could have remastered the wave file in the same way as you could by burning a CD... (This was the problem in the first place... =)

Right. Even if there were "officially sanctioned IASCA MP3 files", the judges would have no way of knowing if the MP3s you're playing are re-EQ'd or anything.

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Tony Fabris