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Hardware Review: Rio Central
I'll be frank- I was excited to see this box. A 40 gig drive makes this thing on the right side of the space curve since it means I can store a large enough portion of my CDs to make it useful. Of course as anyone who has designed or even used a large scale MP3 player knows, with great gobs of disk space comes the burden of attempting to create a UI to do manage great gobs of music.
What's the first thing you do with a 40 gig MP3 player? You plug it in and start ripping CDs. The unit is physically nice looking- it seems a bit big, but most of that is the large screen (which is unfortunately kind of dim). It has USB ports on the front and back. Optical audio connection is available but I tested it with standard RCAs plugged into the stereo in my office since I was familiar with the audio quality of this system having been listening to both CDs and MP3s for a long time here.
The box has a copy of a big chunk of CDDB on it, so it doesn't really need net access to rip a lot of CDs. However it does have a modem port, and an HPNA network connection for people using phone lines in their house as a sort of poor mans ethernet. I'm seeing a lot of consumer electronics with HPNA connections and it looks like a good compromise. Unfortunately the unit doesn't have a built in ethernet adapter, and it only supports a handful of USB ethernet adapters, so I had to order one in order to get this thing on my office network (to review the Rio Reciever which is a seperate device: review forthcoming).
Allright with all of that out of the way, it was time to rip a CD. The drive tray is white which is a minor nitpick, but it really is a sore thumb on the smooth looking black case. But hey, thats just my anal retentive side. Ripping CDs is trivially easy: stick it in and confirm the title. I ripped several discs without trouble (Gorillaz, Daft Punk, Ben Folds), but one had a problem (Blink 182's Dude Ranch). It just hung and there wasn't much I could do about it except eject.
Playback and navigation is a mixed bag. Doing common operations is pretty easy but constructing elaborate playlists is obviously going to be more work. Several nifty random options exist, like playing your most played tracks, or your least played tracks instead of going purely random. Very cool. I will say that this has the best UI of any stereo component MP3 player I've seen, but you need to get up close to do complicated stuff just to read the screen.
The audiotron allows a web interface. The ZapStation lets you use the TV to control playlists. Both devices have shortcomings, but at least there are ways to control your playlist without pulling your ass out of the recliner. The Rio's Remote and screen just don't cut it from more than 6-8 feet away.
The gee whiz stuff that is worth mentioning- having a hard drive in your stereo adds that plesant whirring sound. I'm sure that bugs people besides me. You probably won't notice it at a reasonable distance, but its there. The audio fidelity on the whole is as good as can be expected. We all know what MP3 encoding does to your tunes if you have a reasonable speakers. There are also silly little visualization things on the screen if you are into that. Its fun, but obviously its not the reason someone would buy this thing ;) But I know people who buy an EQ just to have the fancy lights in their stereo, so obviously some people dig it.
For those of you who are interested in getting under the hood, throwing in larger hard drives should be relatively easy. And with 100 gig drives at $200, you could really make this thing sing. If you plug a USB keyboard in, you can ease navigation in the UI... or hit ctrl-alt-delete, and suddenly the Rio Central's screen gives you an honest to god Linux Shell Prompt. There are a few games too, but thats just a nifty bonus, you won't be spending any quality time on them.
Getting audio onto the box through methods other than ripping CDs (or letting it read MP3s off a CDR) is tougher. The box has FTP, so getting MP3s onto the hard drive is easy... a little command line program to import a directory of MP3s would be swell. There's also an open source java application under development called jempeg which should eventually support the Central since it is based on the Empeg car player. That will Greatly ease the annoying process of getting your gigs of existing tracks onto the box.
There are a few other features that I didnt' really test. You can burn CDs or feed a few different MP3 portables. The UI to do this is pretty simple but I didn't have any CDRs or a portable MP3 player to test it out with.
Summary: Ethernet should be built in. Buying a $40 adapter for a $1500 unit is just silly considering the target audience for this thing. At $500-$750 the Rio Central would be a much easier recommendation. Maybe $500, and you add your own hard drive. But I know full well that such a thing currently isn't economically possible for a vendor. I still feel like the home MP3 player is over priced and can't imagine it catching on until it gets a bit closer to the price of big CD changer. But in terms of usability, this is the best one I've tested yet, and the standard 40G hard drive is probably enough for most people.
Coming Soon: the review of the Rio Reciever- this little baby connects over your network to the Rio Central and brings audio to any room you have an ethernet connection. This is what makes the Rio Central stand out. But you'll have to wait a few days to read about it here ;)
I don't particularly like Sonic Blue as a company -- they seem to have gobbled up and ruined a lot of good product lines, but I've used the Empeg before (which they bought), and own two Rio Receivers. (Which seem to be based on the Empeg technology, from the looks of the software running on them).
I love the Rio Receivers. I have two of them -- one in the living room, and one in my bedroom, streaming music from a Linux server running JReceiver. I can access all my MP3's, as well as listen to streaming music sources over the net on my stereo with a minimum of hassle.
Although a lot of the college students on here (or unemployed ex dot com people) have time to build one off solutions, for $1500, these are a good buy for those of us who unfortunately don't have time available to custom build solutions. For $99, the Rio Receivers were a no-brainer, I just wish I had bought a couple more.
Here are the features of the box:
* Digitally records and stores your entire music collection in a single location.
* Powerful 40 GB hard drive can store more than 650 CDs or 6,500 individual songs.
* Write standard audio CDs or MP3 data CDs using the integrated CD-RW drive.
* Move your MP3 music collection off of the PC and into the living room (use either a network connection or USB to transfer MP3's from your PC to your Rio Central).
* Create an unlimited number of customized playlists based on personal style, taste, or mood. Or, let the Rio Audio Center determine what you want to hear based on your listening habits.
* Large display, intuitive interface and advanced search features make it easy to find the music you want instantly.
* Frees your home of bulky CD collections and saves you from the hassle of searching through stacks of CDs to find a favorite song or album.
* Shares music with Rio portables via convenient USB ports in front and back of unit.
* Encodes at a bitrate of up to 320 kbps for high-performance digital sound quality. Provides an optional, lower bitrate encoding option for downloading to portables.
* Quickly record digital audio files from your personal CD collection. Just load a disc and Rio does the rest.
* CDs are automatically cataloged as they are recorded. Artist, album, song title, and other relevant information is instantly assigned to each file to make future searches quick & easy. Built-in 56 kbps modem will dial out to retrieve information from the Internet if necessary.
* Built in 10 mbps home PNA connection for streaming music to one or more Rio Receivers.
* Supports common audio formats like MP3 and WMA, and can be upgraded to emerging digital standards so your home audio system is always up-to-date.
* Engineered to the highest quality standards with stereo RCA and optical outputs.
now, here is what the comments will be:
1) I can do the same thing for $xxx with xxx hardware and linux
2) this is cool, but no one will buy it
3) how long will it be till it runs linux...
4) etc. use your imagination.
I for one, think it is a very nice looking box. People buying this probably are not too concerned with money, and it would be a VERY nice looking addition to my home stereo. I myself can not afford it, but it looks like they put a lot of effort into making it look nice and fit in with the rest of your stereo equipment.
true, you can do the same thing with a computer, but sometimes that just doesn't matter.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
>Give me reasons why it should be bought!
Because some people don't want a big ugly beige box sitting next to their stereo rack?
Because some people have $1500 but not the skills to assemble, configure, and install their own components, OS, and software?
Because some people want a single person to call when the box up and dies, instead of having to diagnose whether to call Asus, Creative Labs, Micron, PC Power & Cooling, or Nvidia?
I dunno. Why should a lawyer buy one of these to put into his office when he can simply take a slew of billable hours out of his time to save $700 building a Frankenclone box that doesn't match his decor?
I just can't come up with anything.
-l
>Good thing it was reviewed on Slashdot then.
I'd suggest reading at -1 for a while and then coming back here to tell me that you honestly think more than 75% of Slashdot's readerbase has the skills to tie their own shoes or feed themselves, much less build a computer.
-l
Does it play .mid files? You know how many months of .mid files fit inside 40GB?
.mid, .mod, .xm, and .s3m files, 2400 BPS upstream both ways...
Kids today, it's MP3 this, MP3 that. Back in my day, we downloaded
And we liked it!
And you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
*DOH* I've asked the web guys to fix this ASAP.
The source also ships with the product on CD, and our stuff is passed back into the ARM Linux chain from time to time so most of it is in the standard distribution by now.
-- Freddie Starr ate my empeg
What's the first thing you do with a 40 gig MP3 player?
:)
In Canada, you pay $840 extra.
WhatEVA
The software that, apparently, prevents you from doing most operations more than 6-8 feet away. You want me to spend $1500 on that?
Why add it to an $800 box? For $500 you can buy a cheap computer that does nothing but serve files (hell, you can probably find an IPX for $50, throw some more at it for disk space), and an Audiotron.
No optical out, though - is an optical out worth $1000 and a worse interface to you?
No great mini-monitor either - you'll have to make do with a web interface that provides more functionality at a greater distance (sorry).
Clean enough audio out? Heh. Clean enough so that you can hear the difference between 128k and 192k mp3s, I wager.
That's wishful thinking. If care went into it, it would have ethernet, not HPNA. It would have a web interface, not a tiny little LCD. This is exactly what I would expect from SonicBlue, who seems to specialize in failing to add value for the money. That's why I have an iPod instead of a Rio... just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's worth it.
--Matthew