I might've taken my eBay obsession a little too far.  Lately, I've been finding all kinds of cheap stuff on eBay, most of it made and sold by the nation of China.  It's a bunch of knock-offs, but most of it is good enough quality at a low enough price to be attractive.  I got a few lenses for my camera.  Then I got a lens cap.  Before that, I got a few accessories for my cell phone.  Nothing to write home about, but it was fun finding good deals on cheap little gadgets. 

But I found the limit, the line after which cheap eBay products are no longer acceptable.  In this case it was audio equipment, and specifically an FM transmitter for using an mp3 player with a car stereo.  I bought a cheap, cigarette lighter-powered transmitter and got it last week.  I plugged it into my car's cigarette lighter and it powered up, so things were going well.  But as soon as I plugged the audio cable into my mp3 player, there was a god-awful noise loudly flowing through my car speakers.  I wiggled the plug around a little bit and eventually got the noise to stop, but the audio quality coming out of my radio was pitiful.  I briefly imagined I would just have to deal with it as yet another hindrance in the whole audio portability problem. 

I went to a store and happened to see a similar FM transmitter for a similar price, but this one was made by Philips.  I decided to give it a try, wondering if a brand name audio device would have any superiority over a cheap Chinese knock-off. 

It turns out there's more than a slight difference.  The difference in audio quality is unimaginable.  The quality of sound coming out of my car's stereo is equal to CD quality audio.  And this is with an mp3 player, with songs encoded at 128 kbit/s.  There isn't even a comparison.  The "thing" I bought off eBay isn't in the same league.  It barely even qualifies as an FM transmitter in my opinion. 

So, in conclusion, eBay isn't the best place to buy everything, especially in terms of the third definition of fidelity:  "The degree to which an electronic system accurately reproduces the sound or image of its input signal." #products