Slashdot Mirror
Rio Announces Networked Ogg Vorbis Player
Alexander writes "Rio has announced several players, among them the Karma 20GB Ogg Vorbis music player, which also sports Ethernet as the preferred connection method. Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptance?" There's more information on the new Rio line-up via an article at The Register.
And don't forget that according to this link, there is also going to be a 40GB for around $499!
Unique signatures are rare.
The software that runs on the thing is based on the software used in the Empeg linux player.. the Karma runs linux, and has a usb2 hub, not a client.. lots of hack potential.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
RioKarma 20:
20G 2.7 x 3.0 x 0.90 = 7.29 inch^3 5.5oz
ipod specs
10G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
15G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
30G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.73 = 7.18 inch^3 6.2oz
So it's pretty comprable size-wise and breaks from the pcmcia 1.8" hard drive mold (0.20" x 2.13" x 3.37") that defines the ipod.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The problem with the Karma here is it doesn't appear to have a radio tuner, unlike the Neuros. The Neuros also:
The main thing the Neuros doesn't have that I would like is a line-out, but oh well. It does nearly everything else I'd want.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
insightful?
:-)
Um, neither usb or firewire are rated for the distances of ethernet [cat5]. I think *that* is the point. E.g. your computer in one room and the home stereo + tv + stuff in another.
Plus you can get 30ft of cat5 for about as much as 6ft of usb retail [sick!].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You bet - Karma builds from the same codebase as the car player (although it runs eCos not Linux due to code size and lack of an MMU).
3.0 already plays Ogg, and will get released when we're done with our seven (count em) new products. It's been a bit hectic around here lately!
Rob
(formerly of empeg, now Rio)
-- Freddie Starr ate my empeg
Then encode to FLAC, which this new player also supports. FLAC is CD quality (completely lossless) at half the space and is a completely open format.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings?
It plays gapless anyway, unless your encoder has inserted masses of blank frames (which you can trim with various utilities).
The cross fader is for radio style mixes, which works particularly well if you're on random playback from your entire music collection. The last few seconds of the current track will cross fade into the first few seconds of the next track - I leave this switched on most of the time now. You would turn it off for continuous mixes though.
Rob
-- Freddie Starr ate my empeg
Use an Ethernet-to-wireless bridge (e.g. WET11) on the Ethernet port. No hacking required.
Peter
We tested Karma with Vorbis bitrates up to 256Kbits/s VBR. Anyone using Vorbis at higher bitrates than that should IMO be using Flac.
Peter
You plug it in. If there's a DHCP server, it DHCPs, otherwise it autonets (UPnP-styley). Then it announces itself over SSDP multicast. If you're using Windows XP Home (or anything else that talks SSDP -- it's a completely open standard) an icon pops up in Network Neighbourhood. If you're using other sorts of Windows, an icon pops up in our own transfer software. Otherwise, you just point a web browser at it: there's a web server in it which will serve you a completely cross-platform Java applet to do your transfers.
I don't know whether we'll be actively helping the open-source community to implement the Ethernet protocol this time, but it certainly wouldn't be rocket science to reverse-engineer it.
Peter
Yup. It works out about the same CPU usage as MP3 for normal (64-128) bitrates, but seems to scale with bitrate a lot more than MP3 does; by the time you get to 256Kbits/s, Vorbis is really hard work.
Peter
No, it's BSD-licensed.
It would be interesting to see what kind of optimizations they used such as special DSP instructions.
Actually we use the Tremor (integerised) Vorbis library almost completely stock -- it already came with optimisations for ARM. The only thing we've really had to take a hitting thing to is its memory allocation.
Peter
Here's a specification comparison with an equivalently priced (both at $399) iPod... info from dapreview, an excellent respository of specs of hdd audio players which reported on the Karma aka "Pearl" months ago.
iPod
Capacity: 15GB
Weight: 5.6 ounces
Formats: MP3 AAC AIFF WAV
Interfaces: Firewire 400
Battery Life: "Over 8 hours"
Extras: Games, Contacts, Calendar, Alarm, Sleep Timer, Clock, "20 equalizer settings"
LCD: 160x128 backlit
Karma
Capacity: 20GB
Weight: 5.5 ounces
Formats: MP3 WMA OGG FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec making WAV not needed)
Interfaces: USB 2 and Ethernet
Battery Life: 15 hours
Extras: Dynamic playlists, Dual RCA Line-Outs, 5 band equalizer
LCD: 160x128 backlit
Seems like if you want purely a music player that is conveniently-sized, supports OGG and has 25% more capacity than the iPod for the same price, the Karma is the way to go. The iPod's perks are tempting though, if you want more than just a music player.