I currently don't own a stereo system apart from the empeg (moved recently, couldn't take the old one with me). The empeg is great in the car and at the office but the silence at home is getting a bit depressing. So I'm now looking for a pair of speakers and an amp. A friend of mine recently bought a pair of Paradigm Monitor 7 floorstanding speakers. These are getting great reviews online and are in my price range ($600-$700 for the pair). I went to his place to check them out, took the empeg along and a bunch of CDs.

The speakers sounded good. A bit too bright for me, less so with the grills on. The bass was OK but nothing special. Then I connected the empeg. The empeg was much quieter than the CD player but that was easy to adjust for. The quality of the sound was much worse, though.Hard to say exactly in what way (I'm new at this audiophile thing). Muddier sound and less precise imaging is what I remember. I tried a bunch of different songs, some were less affected than others but I could tell the difference with all of them.

I'm willing to attribute much of this to the quality of my mp3s - ~160kbs VBR joint stereo. I really wish WAV support arrives soon so I can tell for sure.

As for my home stereo setup, I really don't know what to do now. I can either get these or similar speakers, and a CD player, or I can go for lower-end speakers that don't expose the limitations of the empeg that much. The second option would be quite a bit cheaper...

One question: how is the empeg supposed to be grounded in a home audio setup?

Regards,
Borislav

The empeg doesn't need to be specially grounded in a home audio setup.

Your questions about the Empeg's sound quality:

- It probably had nothing to do with your MP3 encoder settings.

- Make sure you have the Empeg volume set at exactly 0db when you are playing through a home system. This is important.

- Play with your equalizer and loudness settings on the home system. It may have been set up so that it was good with your previous home system, but maybe it wasn't adjusted so well for those new speakers. I find that some very subtle adjustments to the Empeg's EQ can make dramatic improvements in the sound. Remember that every sound component and speaker system have a different character, and that's why God invented equalizers.

- Make sure you don't plug the empeg into a "Phono" jack on a home stereo system. This is a bit different from a line-level jack. Instead, plug it into the CD or Tape inputs.

___________
Tony Fabris

My empeg in my car and on my home stereo sound completely different. It sounds a bit wank on my home stereo with "default" EQ values. Adjust them a bit, it should come out all good..

Just curious, but what do you mean by "wank"? I've never heard it used as an adjective before...

DiGNAN

(It sounds to me like he is talking about the mp3 quality and not so much the EQ of the empeg.) Where are you getting your mp3s from? I noticed most lower quality mp3s from Napster are very poor quality, except for some of the new songs. The encoder has a lot to do with how "muddy" it can sound. I feel that if the MP3 is encoded well enough, and the speakers are good enought, it will sound close enough to a CD to justify spending $600 on some speakers.

-CHiP

Where are you getting your mp3s from? I noticed most lower quality mp3s from Napster are very poor quality, except for some of the new songs. The encoder has a lot to do with how "muddy" it can sound.

The mp3 are (almost) all encoded by me with lame at VBR setting 3 (about 160kbs) joint stereo.

I'll get my own setup soon so that I'll be able to experiment with the equalizer and other settings. I'll follow up with the results...

Borislav

I've never used Lame, but i did notice a difference in different enocders. I use AudioCatalyst 2.1 by Xing, now RealNetworks..

www.xingtech.com

-CHiP

...or a MIC input, or any other input using RIAA pre-amplification.

Probably the best input is LINE, followed by CD (which is usually optimised for high-level, flat spectrum signal sources).

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Bit like "pants", in this context, but more risque....

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Probably the best input is LINE, followed by CD (which is usually optimised for high-level, flat spectrum signal sources).

The empeg was plugged into the AUX input, so that wasn't the problem.

(This was really freaky: I read your message, hit reply and then noticed that your message has changed, as shown at the bottom of the reply screen. Went back and forth a few times, yup, there's more text in the reply screen that there's in the original message! Took me a minute to realize you probably edited it real quick. I guess I need sleep...)

Borislav

Hey Borislav,

160kbps is probably too low a resolution for the level of equipment you hooked it up to. I have a set of 400W Klipsch speakers, not super high-end, but the little THX sticker leads me to believe they can reproduce audio to sufficient spec -- anyway, the minimum I use for my own encoding (never trust some punk on Napster to get it right when he's proof-listening on a $50 set of speakers) is 192kbps. Its not archival quality, but beyond 192kbps I can hear no difference from source to justify the extra space. 160kbps only seemed better than 128kbps on simple tracks.

Also (rummaging for the review) a recent review of different MP3 codecs/tools indicated that LAME was among the worst for lower-bitrate encoding, with Fraunhofer (used in AudioActive Studio) being the best. The codec that Xing's AudioCatalyst used was reviewed well also.

The tests were run with FBR files. I have never bothered with VBR files to qualitatively comment either.

I am sure that someone posted a link to the review a while back. Maybe its moot at this point, however.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
MK2 #141, green, 12GB

I have been at the NAMM show in Anaheim, CA for the past week so I have been away from the BBS. I was there as an exhibitor and used my personal Empeg in the booth for music to make our disco lighting dance.

The Empeg definitely had a problem like you described when hooked directly up to an amp via the RCA jacks. The problem was so bad that we had to use a CD player when demoing the disco lights because there was not enough low end punch from the empeg to put on a good show.

On an up note... For the last two days of the show I decided to put a DJ mixer in-line between the CD and Empeg and the amp to make it easier to go between background music (empeg) and disco music (CD Player). Once the mixer was put in-line the Empeg started to perform as it should have been. I am not an electronics expert so I'm not sure what to attribute this to.

-Rob
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12GB MK2 Blue 090000736 (6166 in the queue)

Then I connected the empeg ( . . ) The quality of the sound was much worse,

It can't be the empeg; it doesn't do *that* much damage to recordings. In a direct comparison with a pretty-good high-end home sound system there are noticeable differences, but much more subtle than you seem to have experienced. This was using VBR MP3 on the empeg (AudioCatalyst; Normal/High setting) versus the original CD's played on a US$ 10,000+ CD-player with matching amps / speakers. Overall the empeg held up pretty nicely. There must be something wrong in your friends set-up. Empeg should do nicely, except for exceptional critical listening.

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6

Having had first hand experience of Henno's home system (Wow! ) and helped him do back-to-back comparisons between the CD player in question and the Empeg as alternative sources, I would have to agree that the empeg held it's own on sound quality against the far, far more expensive CD player.

To me, it sounds like an issue with the quality of the ripping of the demo tracks, or the type of input to the amplification (flat, tailored, RIAA compensated, etc.), or an equalisation clash between the empeg and the system - GIGO applies here.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Source impedance mismatch?

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

The problem was so bad that we had to use a CD player when demoing the disco lights because there was not enough low end punch from the empeg to put on a good show.

Remember that most consumer CD players artificially boost the bass a little bit in their default mode. The empeg's output is more flat (accurate) by default. Did you try just turning up the loudness a bit?

___________
Tony Fabris

Did you try just turning up the loudness a bit?

Yes, I played with the EQ and loudness for at least 30 minutes. When certain frequencies were turned up past 0db the output would be distorted. It was odd.

-Rob
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12GB MK2 Blue 090000736 (6166 in the queue)

Yes, it's digital EQ - you can't add more to frequency bands with the volume at 0dB and not get any clipping.

The output *is* lower level than many home CD players though.

Hugo

I use LAME myself and even though it says 'joint stereo' doesn't hurt imaging but help, don't know if I believe it. I personally don't use it to encode. Napster files are very widely inconsistent of quality. I find allot of them to be muddy sounding, mostly the files are overcranked so amping them of course only makes them worse, I fix them w/CoolEdit. CoolEdit takes the raw wav and you can tweak it and encode at YOUR favorite settings.
2p

#695 Mk2 BLUE 12Gig

Ask and I may tell you

I,m just a tad puzzled here as my Empeg gets used by my master home system, several other peoples home systems "I do parties as DJ" plus I have some very serious equipment at home and in the vehicle and I don't have any of these issues.
It MUST be the quality of your encoded MP3's. Don't download anything from the net as you can never be sure what you will get (usually crap) I encode all my own stuff at 160-192Kbps with only the Fraunhofer 32bit codec. (The only true codec as they invented MP3... ) other codecs such as Xing truncate freq's above 16Khz and some others absolutly butcher most tracks in some form or another. Remember this, if your encoder is of the 'fast' variety then it's most likely doing a crap job. Encoding a quality MP3 takes time. if your going to keep these files for life then do them correctly. if your just gonna play on your pc through some small crappy speakers then use Xing or the like. Good things come to those who wait!
My player sounds excellent in all cases!!

Don't forget your CDROM..... I have used some that do not rip digital direct correctly - usually cheap-o IDE drives.
If you use the Plextor Ultraplex SCSI drives you will not have these issues. These drives were designed with digital ripping in mind.
Barring all that, your players outputs may be wounded or your Stereo's inputs have some other odd troubles.
The purpose of my post is simply to state that the Empeg should sound very very good. If it doesn't, do not think it is the norm or should be expected. The empeg player sounds as good as any of my high end equip.

as usual...... My 2c.

12Gb MKII 080000516 Blue

OK, enough people have reported very good results in a high-end home audio setup that I can no longer blame the player itself. I'm in the process of building my own system (integrated amp is flying across the country as I type, I'll be taking it speaker shopping when it arrives) and will conduct more thorough experiments. Thanks everybody for lifting my spirits again.

Borislav