A car can be an excellent listening environment IF PROPERLY CONFIGURED for the very reasons you cite as making it a poor environment.

Yeah, Henno, I gotta go with Doug on this one. It depends on the car and the stereo system, but in some cases, the car can be a better listening environment than a living room.

For me, the biggest advantage to listening in the car is the fact that I can concentrate more directly on the music when I'm driving. If I'm at home, it's hard to just sit there and listen, I always end up doing something else at the same time and not listening closely. When I'm driving, I am already occupied on a focused task (watching the road, etc.), leaving the other 75% of my brain in the perfect state to absorb the music properly.

When I consider how much time I spend on the road every day, it makes sense to spend the money on a really good car stereo system. I'm especially happy since I traded my GTI in on an Accord, and the car interior is so much quieter and makes for an even better listening environment.


is a comparison between 128 and 192 Kbps similar to a comparison between the original Rush CDs and the re-masters?

While I know that you'd have no trouble distinguishing 128 from 192 for certain material, the comparison is not quite like the original/remaster thing. The differences in bitrates are more subtle than the obvious improvements made on those remasters, and they're different kinds of differences, if you know what I mean.

Doug, have you discussed this topic with the CE at your radio station?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

I also have a question about emplode. How does the transfer of music to the empeg work? Can you do it incrementaly? I'm currently ripping my collection to jaz disks. I'm considering getting the 12gig empeg but I won't be able to have 12gig of music on my computer at one time. Will this be a problem or can I download songs in batches? Thanks.

no problem..You can transfer as many or as little songs at a time as you want..
-mark

...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

There doesn't have to be a 1:1 correspondence between your hard disk and your Empeg. So you can drag the songs from the Jaz onto Emplode, hit the "Synch" button, wait for Emplode to send those songs to the Empeg, then swap in another Jaz cartridge, and repeat the process. Emplode is like a "dumb terminal". It can only organize data on the Empeg itself, and send new songs to the Empeg. It doesn't care where the song files come from, or how many different times you send new songs to the Empeg.

Still, since you can't easily copy songs directly off of the Empeg, I recommend keeping your MP3's backed up somehow. I have an 8-gig hard disk on my computer where I store all my MP3's. If something ever happens to the Empeg's hard disks, I can simply re-send all the songs. But you don't have to do that.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Doug, have you discussed this topic with the CE at your radio station?

Yes and no. He's listened to my stereo, thinks its the best he's ever heard, but he is not an audiophile. He is very hardware oriented, and music is music to him -- an AM station playing oldies through the single speaker in the middle of the dashboard of his pickup truck keeps him just as happy as my [he says, bragging] superb car stereo playing re-mastered Rush CDs.

He would love the empeg -- but only from a technical point of view. He'd be entranced by the idea of 50 GB of storage in a standard DIN sized box. He'd salivate over the specifications ("115 dB signal to noise ratio -- that's fantastic. What kind of circuitry do you suppose they used for that? Did they couple the inverse capacitance bias modulation rectifiers directly to the tertiary output channels, or did they ...") You get the idea.

Go figure.

tanstaafl.



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

"Did they couple the inverse capacitance bias modulation rectifiers directly to the tertiary output channels, or did they ..."

So, what you're saying is, all Chief Engineers are alike, whether they run radio stations or starships?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

So, what you're saying is, all Chief Engineers are alike, whether they run radio stations or starships?

Being one, I can authoritatively answer "yes".

-- Bleys

"If you would judge, understand." -- Seneca