Slashdot Mirror

Pros:

- Very light and small. I have found that anything I have to carry affects my stride (arm motion) in a significant way (seems trivial, but it's not).

- Very good Linux support here. USB transfer works seamlessly and is reasonably fast.

- 64MB is good for an hour of music. With a 64MB card you're out to 128MB -- two hours without repeats is quite good unless you're out for a very long run.

- All-solid-state means it never, ever skips. Not sure if you can say the same about HD-based players, even the ones with a big read-ahead memory.

- No DRM crap to put up with (not that I encountered, anyway).

Cons:

- Battery compartment is slightly over-sized so the unit sometimes power cycles if the lid comes loose.

- Not weather- or sweat-proof. I used to run with mine encased in a zip-loc bag with slits cut into it for the clip and headphones, and it still freaked out a few times when it got a bit damp.

- Build quality is not very good. Battery compartment door hinge partially broke when I dropped it. Buttons and case have a thin cosmetic silver coating which wore away quickly with use.

- Firmware is susceptible to getting corrupted, either due to a glitch in the firmware itself or to outside factors (moisture shorts, etc.). You can get firmware updates and a repair utility here, but the repair utility doesn't always work -- in my case, the glitch requires me to send the thing back to SonicBlue for repair. I've encountered a number of anecdotal descriptions of similar problems elsewhere on the web.

Bottom line:

The ease with which the firmware glitched to kill my player would lead me not to buy another one, unless I could find it on Ebay for under $50. I'm thinking about either a Rio 800/900 (Linux drivers available here) or an iPod, but I have doubts about the latter because I run pretty hard and I am not convinced that the playback will still be skip-free after the 20-minute HD read-ahead buffer is emptied, nor that the HD can handle years of continuous jostling.

I have a Nike psa[play and I love it. The software could be better, but I think it's all based ont he same stuff the the Rio uses, and I saw some linux drivers out there somewhere. Anyway, the psa[play is nice because it's *meant* for running and stuff. Take a look at it.

I don't know what you use to play your music, but I don't think I could survive without playlists.

I have an empeg MP3 car player which holds 60GB worth of music. If I didn't organize this into playlists, it would be impossible for me to find the music I wanted to listen to. So, I create playlists based on artist, album, genre, etc. Then, depending on what mood I'm in, I can select the proper playlist. A particular song on the drive might exist in multiple playlists.

This becomes even more useful with my Rio Receiver, which allows me to play music off my HD in a similar fashion as the empeg. Again, I can select the different playlists (artist, album, genre, etc) and go, without having to build a custom playlist every time I want to listen to a bunch of songs.

Rio Volt (a portable CD/CDR/MP3 player) already supports Windows Media format.

Finally, it's safe to put all your eggs in one basket.
OVA.

• Ovum: (Ogg Vorbis Unit of Media) An Ogg Vorbis audio file. "I have an ovum of the EFF speech that I can send you."
• Ova: (Ogg Vorbis Audio) Any number of Ogg Vorbis audio files, or a quantity of Ogg Vorbis audio. "Do you have any classical ova with you?"
• Oval: Of or relating to the Ogg Vorbis format. "Does your oval player have a spectrum analyzer?"
• Ovulation: The process of converting audio to Ogg Vorbis format. "Just a few more minutes of ovulation, and I'll be MP3-free!"
• Ovangelism: The process of converting audiophiles to Ogg Vorbis format. "I let him borrow my oval Walkman and a couple gigs of jazz ova, and he traded in his Rio the next day. Big ovangelism win!"

The closest competitor to the SliMP3 is the Audiotron.

I'm amazed how few people know of the Rio Receiver. It's a great little box, can be found on eBay fairly cheaply, and there's even a couple of Linux servers out for it (check out JReceiver for a hideously-complicated but wicked-cool mpeg server back-end. It's designed to interface to multiple types of systems, and could probably even have an interface built for the SliMP3.)

$250+ for an MP3 player that doesn't have it's own storage

I'm further amazed by how many people on slashdot apparently don't have networks. If I've got 30G (or more, maybe, haven't looked at the total lately) of MP3s, I don't want to have to deal with replicating that collection on different MP3 players scattered all over the house. Put it all on one box, and let smart devices do the playing. That's what SliMP3, AudioTron, and Rio are all about. Store once, play anywhere.

Now if we could only get this to be a VideoLAN client, too... :)

up to 128 ? hmm maybe it downsamples but I've played 192 mp3s just fine. You might need to upgrade your firmware from the rio site. They seem to have improved a few of the features, and made a lot of things more customizable..
In fact I'm sure your up to 128k sample rate is wrong
read it straight from rio's site.
click here to read for yourself
you'll notice under bitrate it says 32-320 Kbps

Remember that the first portable MP3 player, the Diamond Rio PMP300, (first announced in September 1998) was entangled in nasty lawsuits, as covered in this slashdot article from 1998.

I daresay these nasty lawsuits contributed to Diamond's demise. None of the consumer electronics companies want to spend the cash battling the recording industry in court, so every one of them toe the line. I'm sure the recording industry has pounded the crap out of several small companies who've tried it -- and when Ogg Vorbis is finalized I'm sure the recording industry will try to pound the crap out of anyone making hardware Vorbis players as "Piracy Devices"

The closest thing I've seen is the Apple Ipod which lets you either store music for listening to, or store files for moving to another PC, but not to listen to the files marked for moving to another PC as far as I know ...

When I first heard of the Phatnoise, I couldn't wait for it to come out. But I did. I waited, and waited, and waited. I have a very popular Pioneer headunit, but they still don't support it, and probably won't for a while. Also, I realized that due to CD Changer limitations, I would only be able to create 99 playlists. That seems like a lot, but I have more than 99 CDs. Furthermore, my headunit doesn't do the best text scrolling, so I wouldn't be able to have the full ID3 tag info.

With the RioCar, however, I can see Artist, Album, song title...even year. Plus the menu interface COMPLETELY blows away the Phatnoise box. And now that the RioCar has been discontinued, the price for the 10GB dropped to $699. That's cheaper than the Phatnoise. Oh, and don't think that since it's discontinued that you shouldn't buy it. There's a huge underground community that is continuing software development.

Anyways, you should definitely check it out before deciding on the Phatbox.

And just to help make up your mind, I highly recommend checking out the demo movie here.

Well since the review and it's mirror are /.ed a quick google search turned up the company's brief product overview here

Definitely the Rio Car. It's by far the best car MP3 player you can get. And since it was recently discontinued, they dropped the price dramatically on the player. You can now get a 10GB version for only $699. Compare that to the $1499 for a 6GB when it first came out. What's great about the product is that even though it's discontinued, the software is open source, so people are continuing to update and hack the software.

Best of all, (and unlike the Rio Volt SP250), it has a quite usable UI that lets you search your disks for MP3's by Artist, Title, Genre and so on. (On the other hand, the Rio has an FM tuner, and plays WMA files too). The UI is what sold me on this unit, it really is the make-or-break.

$128 at buy.com

They have a cradle inside that holds 2x 2.5 inch laptop drives. Several owners have units that have been upgraded to 96gb (2x 48gb drives)

Someone (IBM I think) just released a 60gb laptop drive, so it's only a short time until someone has a 120gb eMpeg player.

Additionally, a digital radio tuner is available, so the eMpeg can be a complete replacment for the head unit in you car. Oh, and it's removable and has additional outputs so you can take it inside and connect it directly to your home stereo.

And it should be noted that the eMpeg firmware/OS (Linux powered as if you didn't know) is constantly being upgraded and new features added. How many other car stereos can say that? (or that they have built in Ethernet)

Production has ceased, but the units are still available (until stock runs out). And the prices were just cut: I think the 10gb Rio Car is now $799

for more info: check out http://www.riohome.com/CarAudio.htm

-Mp

I recently purchased a Rio SP250 player from SonicBlue. It supports CDs and CDRs and CDRWs and WinAmp playlists. Now, for $170 for the player, plus $60 for 200 CDs, I'm at 120+ gig of storage for $230 bucks, plus it's portable...and I can always increase my collection. The Rio also supports WMA (eek) and has an FM tuner. With the line out, I can hook it up to any stereo system. SL

With all these components for home audio systems you still can't beat the RioReceiver (http://www.riohome.com/products/receiver.htm)IMHO .

You can use your computer as your mp3 server without having to worry about the size of your hard drives. You already have a CD burner on your computer as well. If you have a SO and they are in another room they could be listening to the mp3s on the computer while you are playing the latest FPS. This is accessed via the phone line and you can still receive phone call.

So this setup also has internet connectivity (computer) and compatible with Ethernet and PNA adapters. The only thing it doesn't have is the TV display. The price is only a mere $199.95 as well.

It currently supports MP3 and WMA (ugh!) let's lobby so that it supports OGG. It should be quite easy for them since there are no patents involved and there's free code for them to use

So let's all go to their site [riohome.com] and post a message asking for that.

i have a 650 megabyte cd mp3 player. It has roughly 15 hours of battery life from 2 AA batteries. if I want 5-6 gigs I bring 10 cds with me. changing the contents of the player is as easy as switching cds, no need to bother hooking it up to a machine every time I need to change something. here

The Rio Receiver seems to do the same thing. They have more information on their site and I suspect you can hook this up to a component home theatre system as well.

Is the RIO Volt. It is about $140 US, plays regular audio CD's and any MP3's I have downloaded incuding VBR ecoded files, has had no problems with CD-R or CD-RW, gets about 13 hours of play from 2 AA batteries, and best of all, is firmware upgradeable.
And RIO is releasing firmmware in response to requests from users, like a more variable volume and a user defined equalizer setting. So for realtivly cheap, I can have 650M of music with me, and more if I take a couple cd's with me.

One actually did try to get to that site but it was /.'ed for one pretty quickly. One instead went to the product homepage and found nothing other than it played mp3 files.

One would think that if the manufacturer was going to add features that they would put it on the product page in case one wanted to actually consider buying the product.

System Requirements

Rio Receiver

Windows 98, Windows 98SE, 2000, Millennium

Audiotron

Windows 98 / Millennium / NT 4.0 WorkStation / Windows 2000 Professional

SliMP3

Linux, Windows or MacOS.

Follow this link to Rio's web page and e-mail them requesting support for Ogg Vorbis. Personally this is the only thing holding me back from buying a compressed-audio cd player. The first one that comes out supporting .ogg will have me reripping all of my CDs into the supreme .ogg format and purchasing their player, regardless of cost.

http://www.riohome.com/default.asp?menu=support&su bmenu=cs&item=cs_email-form&detail=other
That is a link to e-mail Rio requesting that they release an upgrade to their Roivolt to playback .ogg files. Below is the text that I sent to them. With portable support for .ogg, I think it has a great chance of overtaking mp3.


Rio,
I'm interested in buying a cd-mp3 player. I think this would be a GREAT way to backup all my cds, as well as make them easier(and funner!) to listen to. I could fit my 100cds on around 10 cds. That's awesome.
There is only one thing holding me back. MP3 is an aged format, and also requires that related software pay royalties to Frauenhoffer for the mp3 patents. Same with "mp3pro" or whatever their next mp3 is.
Ogg Vorbis is a free codec which isn't blocked by any patents whatsoever. It also sounds better than mp3, AND takes up less space. I will be ripping all of my cds into .ogg format as soon as their encoder reaches 1.0 (which will be soon). I noticed that the Roivolt has upgradable codecs. If an upgrade is released for the Roivolt to play Ogg Vorbis, the Roivolt will win the hearts of audiophiles and geeks all over.
Thanks! :)

Another trend I think you'll see is home media servers. Essentially network-attached storage on which TiVo's, MP3 players and all the other new and wonderful toys of the near future are going to deposit their trash.

For people who only steal MP3's yes. But for people like me (empeg owners and other people who rip their own CD's for the purpose of listening to them with something other than a CD player) it won't matter at all.

Don't you think that as long as there are no products like Creative Jukebox or the Rio players that play Ogg-Vorbis files, this format is going to have a really tough time gaining wide-spread use? Why would I want to store my music in two formats: Ogg-Vorbis at home because its cool, and MP3 because it's the only way to listen to it on the road? (Sure the manufacturers all promise support of future audio-formats, but will these include Ogg-Vorbis?)
--

Buy an empeg (or Rio Car, as they're called these days). Look here. 60 GB of MP3's (or WAV's or WMA's with the next update) in your car or at home. I own one and it's the best value for money I've bought in a long time.

Exactly. And I recall making this comment which still stands with this article, and any others promising that I can run Linux on my watch, PDA, car stereo, toaster, etc. I'm not knocking the wholesome goodness that is Linux, I just don't feel the need to run it on every electronic device I own.

If they could just bump up the capacity to about 64MB ;)

If you want 64Mb of portable, USB-connecting storage, just buy a Rio 500 and download Riorio.. and you can listen to music too!

Seriously.. I was kind of keen to get an MP3 walkman, but the factor that pushed me from being "kind of keen", to actually spending the cash, was the ability to do a bit of leeching via the fast net connection at work, and conveniently take the files home..

I was just looking around Diamond's site and found this page describing some new Rio product they are working on. It sounds like it will do much of what you are looking for. However, it seems that it works over phone lines, which has always seemed a little odd to me... Either way, it might be worth looking into.

RioReciever