Sonicblues New Player 'Rio Karma'

[Shniks]

Hey guys,

Have any of you seen the Rio Karma? It looks gorgeous and it will retail for same price as the Philips. The Rio Karma seems feature packed. But i cant get over its design. It looks stunning. Rio has always made great products. Any of you have any news on this product? It is scheduled for a September 1 release.... Cant wait...

The URL is


http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=220&cat=53

[Shniks]

Another great feature is that it has an ethernet port. So one can hook it to their network and play files over the network. WAY cool feature...

[ECA]

PSST, look at the software for it...

Its propritary.. Look up Music manager see what it does.
Also, if you REALLY like music, look for those that will play Wav, and Wma, as well as MP3.

[Shniks]

Yeah, I did notice that the Rio Karma did not have wav compatibility. But the ethernet connection and the design are a big plus in my book. The only drawback i feel at the moment is the in-built rechargeable battery. The new nomad zen nx has a user replaceable battery, which is something I think I would want. Why aren't these people making players with replaceable batteries? I think it is so basic.

Another aspect is the price. The Rio will retail for 399 (J&R is already accepting pre-orders). I can buy the 20 gb version of th Nomad Zen Nx at www.buy.com for $212. So the price difference is HUGE. Plus the Nx has a replaceable battery.

Ah the decisions one has to make... ;-)

[SEiNMAN007]

Originally posted by Shniks
Why aren't these people making players with replaceable batteries? I think it is so basic.


Why? Because companies like Apple want you to buy another iPod in less than 2 years. It's a money-making scheme.

I'm going with the NX. It's cheaper, sounds better and has a replacable battery.

[Ioman]

Well, if the internal battery is Linthium-Ionor NiMh then you do not have to worry about a memory build up anyways, so it shouldn't matter. The only reason I would want an external battery is for long trips where I will not have access to a charger.

[questionlp]

Can't believe no-one has mentioned that the Karma supports Ogg Vorbis and FLAC audio support! Unfortunately $399 is a bit too expensive for something that is only 20GB in size and does not have recording (be it analog *or* digital) support.

[Twobztwop]

The software for Sonicblue products has always been the X-factor. I've owned a number of rio players and it seemed that the software got worse and worse with every new model they brought out.

The Rio300 came with some proprietary drag and drop interface, that wasn't so bad. The Rio500 came with rioport, it.. it was very very bad... (Luckily the 500 had 3rd party software that was great).

The Rio900 I had came with Realone, which made you look at advertisements every time you started it, not to mention file transfers were hit and miss. Even the third party software i tried had problems with this thing.

I can only imagine what the software for this thing is going to be like... How hard is it to make these things look like a removable drive in XP's file explorer?

Did you see the 1.5 gig player they have on their website. Looks Interesting, I wonder how small it is?

[Ioman]

I would be wary of this company. I know that D&M Holdings bought the Rio company, but their website is outdated, their press section is old. I am not sure you would get much support or longevity from the company. Just an FYI.

The Ogg Vorbis support is killer though.

[Shniks]

What exactly is Ogg Vorbis... Even Cnet said that true audiophiles will love this player for the Vorbis and the Flac... But do these features justify the price?

[questionlp]

Ogg Vorbis is an lossy audio format that is similar to MP3, but it has several key advantages, including:

- It is not bound by any patents
- Generally has better quality compared to an MP3 at the same bitrate (this also translates to getting the same quality with an Ogg Vorbis audio file at a lower bitrate than MP3)
- More flexible variable bitrates (uses steps of 1Kbps versus 16Kbps)

To summarize, it is an open source and patent-free audio format that is more efficient than MP3 at both low and high bitrates.

FLAC is a lossless audio format that trades quality for file size. Instead of the usual 5-10:1 compression done with MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, you would generally get around 1.75-2:1 with FLAC, but you do not lose a single bit when you extract the file. FLAC (and it's non-open source friend, Shorten) are meant for true audio archiving and is also commonly used in concert tape trading communities. I used FLAC to make a compressed lossless copy of a CD that was copy-protected (it was an import) so that I won't have to deal with the lengthly rip or digital recording process of backing up the CD again.

I use both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis for portable audio and FLAC for archiving (and MiniDisc too).

Even for a not-even-close-to-an-audiophile that I am, $400 is a bit too much for the other lack of features :(

[Unregistered]

I would not be too concerned about the software.

Check out www.riocar.org - before these guys made the Karma, they made the worlds first car mp3 player known as the Empeg Mark I, and to follow, the Mark II. Rio bought Empeg and it came to be known as the Riocar.

Anyway, even though the Riocar is EOL, these guys have been dedicated to releasing better and better software for this device. I own 2 Empegs, one of them I upgraded to 40gig. Never had any problem with the software. You need good, stable software to be able to organize that much music.

FLAC support is a plus - and should be a major selling point for anyone that wants better sound than an mp3 can provide.

The Karma looks to be the first viable iPod killer.

[dang]

w00h00.. 16 shades of gray!

Ogg is a open source codec maintained by Xiph.org (http://www.xiph.org/). From the Ogg page (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/) itself:

Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.

Very popular among the open source crowd and linux peeps.

[ebone]

flac is a lossless codec.

it will take your 600 MB album and cut it in half, leaving a
300 MB album.

cool thing is it's lossless, and so is an exact digital copy.
it sounds exactly the same as a CD.

this is far better than wav support, of course, as i'm sure
you now realize.

Ogg is another lossless codec like mp3 or wma.
some people say it is better than mp3.

this player looks really nice.
though after reading over some of the comments on this
page i am a little more skeptical.

[questionlp]

Ogg Vorbis is lossy, not lossless (per the project's FAQ [http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#lossy]). Same with MP3 and WMA, though Microsoft is touting a "mathematically lossless" version of WMA, but I don't know if their claim is true or not since not a lot information is available on the WMA Lossless format/codec.

[neuroking]

Damn you Shniks! That's my Live Journal Icon! hahaha! No, really it is. I started thinking I was posting more than I did.

The thing I don't like about teh Karma is the fact that it still has a hard drive. Moving parts = bad. I mean, 20-30GB I can understand, but CFs and other flash media will be at 1.5 GB before long, and I think the longevity of the player would be better than an HD based one.

Why doesn't someone make a flash based player 3-4 times the size of teh iRiver FM195t, with 2 GB? Hello, iRiver... you listening?

brandon

[Gatesov]

Anyway, even though the Riocar is EOL, these guys have been dedicated to releasing better and better software for this device. I own 2 Empegs, one of them I upgraded to 40gig. Never had any problem with the software. You need good, stable software to be able to organize that much music

If you want a real good car mp3 player check out these guys:

www.phatnoise.com

They have by far the best car mp3 player on the market and their software can't be beat. I also highly recommend their music manager software which is bundled I believe with the NOMAD also.

[franvago]

Hey, i found a fan site dedicated to the new rio karma www.riokarma.com

[Shniks]

BTW has anyone checked out Toshiba's new HDD MP3 player? The link is http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/32469.html

Looks interesting... what say?

[Shniks]

There is a nice 5 minute video review of the Rio Karma and the Rio Nitrus on cnet. The link is

http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html?tag=ont-mp3

here scroll in the box under 'review, rumours' until you find the review.

I am really amazed seeing the size of the Nitrus particularly as well as the karma. They really seem to be worthy competitors to the Ipod....

[AgentM]

do also check out my "fansite" if youre looking for lots more info/pictures of karma (or any of the other players):

http://www.riovolution.com

also some rio engineers/tech support guys in the forums answering questions.

regards, M

[Cloud]

Is no one even worried about the company going under?

[halcyon]

Rio was bought by DM Holdings, owners of Denon and Marantz.

They are BIG and nobody should be worried about the future of Rio for now.

regards,
Halcyon