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Rio Karma 20GB Reviewed
asv108 writes "The Rio Karma has been out on the market for over a month now with very little mainstream press. Slashdot covered the product announcement back in August for one of the first mainstream devices that supports OGG and FLAC playback. I've posted a little review of the 20 GB Rio Karma, which, besides OGG/FLAC/MP3/WMA playback, has a great little dock that syncs the player via ethernet. One little known gem is that this player comes with java-based software that allows users to download the software directly from the player via any browser and sync the Karma with Linux, Mac OS X, and any other OS that Java runs on."
A cheaper place to find this item is www.newegg.com. Last I checked it was 295 w/ free shipping. They are a fairly reputable dealer.
Though it dosn't support .ogg, Rio made a similar 20 gig player a year or two ago that is really cheap now. You can get one on ebay for around $120.
I bought one a week ago, and I was afraid that was the case. However, I couldn't be more wrong. Holding it in my hand (Im right-handed) feels, well, right. The wheel is reasily accessible to my thumb.
Here is the AAC Licensing FAQ. Lots of answers there.
The Karma can be purchased for $290 on amazon.com, with another $20 off with a rebate. That's $270 versus $400.
I bought one last week, and my roomate has the recent 20GB iPod. While I think his iPod is slightly nicer (in design), I don't think it's $130 nicer. But, to each his own.
You can't go wrong with them. Plays Mp3's oggs's. Works with linux. Supports the community what more do you need. http://www.neurosaudio.com/
Before someone say's that this player is too big, its Dimensions are 5 1/2" x 3 3/4" x 1 1/4" (the iPod's dimensions are 4.2" x 2.43" x 0.78"). There isn't that much of a difference.
It's weight is 8.8oz while the ipod is 5.6 oz.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't FLAC fall inside the Ogg container? I know that most people think of Vorbis as just "Ogg," but it's just one of the parts of Ogg, another of which, if this page says what I think it does, is FLAC.
Regardless, it doesn't hurt to be accurate. It's great that it plays Ogg Vorbis and Ogg FLAC files, and has lots of other cool features; however, I'll not give up my iPod till you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Look at the site and click on the system requirements and you'll see RIO states it needs Windows.
The least they could do is say GNU/Linux can be used but there will be no telephone tech support.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This Rio Karma, on the other hand, is small. Its longets dimension is only 3" and it weighs 5.5 oz.
___
Cognitive Overflow
more than yo
Have had mine for three days now. Loving it.
Only problem is you have to use USB to upgrade the firmware and it's proprietary driver is Windows only. Once you've upgraded the firmware though, the java client works great. Be sure to dl the latest version though. The developer himself has a site, check out www.riovolution.com's forums for details.
I have mine hooked to my stereo in my living room with a wireless bridge connecting to my network. Files sync faster than USB2 over 100mb ethernet, slower over my 11b link.
Plays ogg like a charm. The UI is slick and the quickest and most responsive I've seen on an mp3 player (including ipod).
Well worth the ~$300 I paid. Pick one up today!
And yell at them to make the firmware upgradable under Linux.
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
You're wrong. AAC is the generic term for the codec of MPEG-4 audio. Apple's iTunes is AAC encoded with drm. An MPEG-4 file is a QuickTime file... did you know that? MPEG-4 video, AAC audio, with the wrapper being QuickTime... of course, things like DivX are MPEG-4 video in AVI.
The truth about Michael
FLAC is a lossless compression algorithm, Ogg is not. Other than that, they're identical. Well, except for the fact that Ogg offers streaming and 'bitrate peeling' functionality, where a server can prune out data and preserve (some semblance of) the original tune.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You know, they've put Linux on the iPod. :)
Now, moving on from usability issues and looks, it has some other features that I just couldn't pass up. First, it has an internal mic that can make voice recordings. Secondly, it also has line in and line out ports, that work as optical OR analog. For recording via the input, you can choose to record via an external mic, line in, or optical in. The external mic is a hell of alot hotter than line in, by the way. For all this recording, you can record to wav (optical does 48khz while the rest do 44), or to mp3 that is encoded on the fly, at bitrates ranging from 40kpbs to 320. This sold it for me, as I am an avid show taper (with a pair of clip on mic's and a sony DAT), and this will be fun to play with - I plan to do a double recording sometime to do a comparison of quality between the DAT and iHP-120, but I've already done a test recording at a show and it didnt sound bad at all. My only gripe would have to be that there doesn't appear to be a way to control the level of the line-in, but you CAN adjust the level of the external mic, just not while you are recording. Also, it doesnt show levels so you won't know if it's redlining until you actually listen to it. I'm hoping they might fix this in a firmware update but I'm not very hopeful, although from what my test showed, it might not even be needed.
Anyways, just wanted to chime in, I too think the karma is rather ugly, and the slightly bigger size of the iHP-120 is not a deterrant at all. I guess the only one would be the price - it's around $355 or so, a bit more than the karma but with the extra features, I think it's worth it. It does play OGG's, by the way, and transferring files is painless with USB as the unit shows up as another hard drive connected to your system - you can easily use it as a portable hard drive if you want. There's more reviews around the net if you look, for more indepth information.
I set up a mirror since the last time /. linked to my site it died within 10mins due to my host provider putting a ridiculous amount of sites on one ancient sparc machine.
Bluetooth does not have the bandwidth to run stereo headphones... But, If you willing to listen to you music in phone quality mono you're good.
I hope I can answer some of these questions. I'm quite happy with my Karma. It may not be as stylish as the iPod (and has a couple moving parts), but it sounds great, cost $130 less, and is good value for my money (though some people have had problems).
Does it work over Samba/FTP/SSH, or is it all via Windows software or some crappy Java applet?
You can use native windows software, or a java applet. The applet isn't crappy, but it isn't as feature-rich as the win32 native app. The win32 app is similar to itunes (though not as nice), and now allows the sending of play lists.
Does it run ethernet at 100BaseT?
Yes
Does it appear as a USB hard drive with a FAT32 filesystem or similar?
Unfortunately, no. It uses a different (perhaps proprietary) format. It does not show up as an external hard drive (anymore), and you must use some sort of software to transfer files. At one point, there were 3rd party drivers that let Windows recognize it as a removable drive, but with their recent software (not firmware) update, they broke the driver support on purpose, due to problems on some drives.
Are there any hacking efforts to put these features in?
Like I said, there was a 3rd party driver to allow windows recognition, but they don't work anymore. There IS talk of rio developing their own driver, but I've yet to read any confirmation.
AAC has nothing to do with DRM. You are saying just because it supports DRM, it should not be used? Like it or not, within next few years you won't be able to pickup a player which DOESN'T support DRM.
And no, your "current players" won't be able to interface with newer stuff, exactly because of DRM. So badmouthing AAC, (which is by the way a fine audio codec, which scales well from low bitrate to high bitrate professional broadcasting) just because of DRM is pretty stupid.
And MPEG4 is not a "codec", its a collection of intellectual property which covers advanced audio and video compression/encoding techniques.
You CAN use it as an external mass storage device, but not in the normal context.
Using either the java applet, or a very lite file transfer app for windows (called taxi), you can transfer files of any types to it. With taxi, you can drag-and-drop files into taxi and it immediately transfers to the device.
It's not as efficient or as nice as having it recognized as a USB device, but it works for me. There WERE 3rd party drivers for it, but rio broke them with their most recent version of their connection software.
The problem is the Karma uses an odd partition-format (perhaps proprietary, I don't recall).
This, in my opinion, is the Karma's one major flaw, but I don't mind it that much. I primarily use windows pc's, so using taxi is not a pain for me. But I can understand how many would be turned off by this.
The device works left-handed. The display even can be re-oriented to better suit lefies.
Can somebody explain why this such a difficult concept?
Ogg. Ogg. Ogg. Not so hard.
Incidentally, I'll bet it doesn't play every kind of Ogg. I'll bet it plays only Ogg/Vorbis and (probably) Ogg/FLAC, but probably not Ogg/Speex, yet. In principle it could play Ogg/Theora, but the display's probably not up to the job -- Theora is a video compression format.
Yup, you can create and edit playlist while music is playing.
they didn't play too well, too fast, but you could almost make out the song. Don't know about intermediate rates, all my stuff is 160.
I have a friend who has played back ogg files at 400+ kbps on his karma. Not sure what he encoded them with, but he said the playback was great.
I tried the ogg files from here:
http://users.pandora.be/sjeng/floggy.html
Don't know about the charsets either.
I suggest you check out the forums on riovolution.com. I know there have been several threads about the gapless issue - apparently that's something slated to be added in an upcomming firmware releast. I have the crossfader turned on, just a preferrence. You can probably find out about the charsets here too. Several of the Rio developers hang out on the forums regularly.
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
I've got one of these two -- had it a week now and have nothing but good things to say.
Does the Karma support dynamic playlist building? That is, can you program a playlist on the device while it is playing music?
Oh yes. It's quite powerful in that regard. The Rio DJ is goddamned fabulous.
Does the Karma support gapless playback? I've heard about the crossfade feature, but I'm much more interested in gapless transitions between tracks.
This works for mp3s that were encoded -nogap only at the moment. Some of the Rio developers hang out and post at the Riovolution forums and they've said the forthcoming 1.2.x firmware (due out any day now) should make gapless a reality for ogg (which was supposed to, but had a bug) and even non-nogap mp3s (the Karma will now drop silent frames starting and trailing mp3s).
Does it display non-western charsets in the song titles? Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. Even accented ISO-8859-1 European characters would be a good start.
I believe the latest PC client software (Rio Music Manager) was just updated to support this. I think the next firmware will provide it on the Karma.
Also note, that while firmware upgrades are USB & Windows only, I believe the java RMML (Rio Music Manager Lite) developer has said that eventually it should be possible to udpate firmware via ethernet and his java client.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
I have one -- and boy I wish I held on to my money.
The firmware is very, very buggy. Go to riovolution.com and check out the karma board. People are having problems galore. In fact, having a unit that works reliably is incredible luck. The firmware problems are:
1. Karma spontaneously reboots during various tasks, usually song upload via the network. Anything you've uploaded in that session goes poof. I've had to do one album at a time, though the java client has a "upload this directory" feature. Going back and hunting which uploaded and which didn't kinda sucks.
2. When it doesn't reboot, it also likes to randomly hang during song upload. Only hardware reset convinces it to go out of that state. Any song you've been uploaded when it hung gets lost, but the client doesn't know this, so you end up missing random songs from your collection.
3. Sometimes, during song playback, it will randomly stop and go back to the beginning of the track.
4. Higher-bitrate MP3s sometimes started skipping and pausing for me, like it was having trouble filling up the playback buffer. Then it would freeze, requiring an on/off or a reset.
5. No gapless playback for non-mp3 tracks. Sucks to be you if you like oakenfold and ripped all your stuff to oggs. You'll have nice 2-second pauses between each track.
6. Flac will quickly drain your battery, as Karma doesn't have a very large flash buffer, and it ends up constantly spinning up and spinning down the hard drive.
I've had all of these problems, and I'm not alone, as the message boards show. And, to top it off, 3 weeks into usage, after I've finally sort of gotten used to all of its quirks, it completely died -- from the sound of it, the hdd went South. Rio's support is horrible: I've had a ticket open for over a week and a half, and though the customer service drone took down my serial number, order number, etc, I've not heard from anyone since, and I've sent repeated emails. I'll be calling tomorrow, and boy, am I going to be unhappy.
So, there you have it. If I were you, I'd wait at least half a year before I would buy a Rio Karma, otherwise invest in a nice toupee -- you'll be tearing out your hair in handfuls.
Yes, I'm a little bitter, as I've been really waiting on an ogg-compatible, linux-friendly player for a loooong time now, and ended up paying $400 for a lemon instead (there is a reason prices on it dropped so dramatically after it's been first released).
Sigh.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Oh, Like this? http://www.hheld.com/
And you can't even complain about the price. (It's only $99US!)
I saw one last week - interesting - but how useful, I dunno.
Although you may have had a bad experience or you may just be trolling, I've not had any of the experiences you've had so far after 2 weeks of heavy use. The management software (a java version is available to run on any platform) is crappy
The windows software seems to be refreshing to me because it doesn't take a swiss army approach, instead it focuses on sync and organization. The nice thing about rio management software is the ability to have multiple sources without any bs. The java version works but it is certainly not full featured by any means and is not designed to be, remember they don't even advertise non-windows capabilities.
Nothing esepcially useful about ethernet connectivity The whole point of the Ethernet sync is to be able to have your player hooked up to the dock in your home theater area and being able to sync it from a computer located somewhere else.
like a web server, ftp server, or smb.
I can transfer music or non-music files to my Karma from anywhere, why the fuck would I need ftp or smb?
The physical controls on the device suck. I've found them to rival the ipod, I've owned both generations of Apple's player, they may not be to your liking but they certainly don't "suck."
It's also a little heavy. Ipod rules this comparison.
The rio karma actually weighs less.
So, I just got an ipod instead. Same price and features
The 20GB karma cost $100 less than the 20GB ipod and has support for OGG, FLAC, WMA, along with ethernet sync, and better accessories.
Only songs from the iTunes Music Store are encoded with DRM.
So, to summarize:
AAC does not mean DRM.
iTunes AAC encodings do not mean DRM.
Songs purchased from the iTMS, which come in the AAC format, include DRM, but permit copying for fair use, so long as you don't have it loaded on more than a few computers at the same time.
Any questions, class?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Does the Rio let you copy non music files to the hard drive? I was looking on the site and I couldn't find any mention. It sounded like the music manager only supported music files. Isn't that the same problem with the iPod?
I think I would probably go with the neuros or the iriver if I had to choose one right now since they both let you copy any type of file and I like the idea of it doubling as a portable hard drive.
I have a Neuros 20GB. Plays Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMV, MP3, syncs with Java on anything that can see a USB hard drive and cost me under $200. It has an FM tuner, broadcasts your songs on FM with its built in transmitter, has a built in microphone to record MP3s, has line in for recording that way, too. And if you hear a song on the radio and you want to know the title, hit a button, record a sample and the sync software will tell you the artist and the song title. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's a hell of a deal.
And I'm quite happy with it. Where to start?
:) While some of the UI is not immediately obvious, it becomes real intuitive real fast.
UI: It's grand. I dunno, some people claim they can't use it one handed, but that doesn't make sense to me. On the iPod, the distance your thumb has to stretch to reach all the buttons is much greater than for the Karma (which is barely at all), and it sits very well in my right hand (which is quite small). The wheel is a very nice way to navigate long lists, as you can just flick it at the appropriate speed to go any distance at all (the cursor "accelerates"). Weight? Err... the iPod 20 is 5.6 oz, while the Karma 20 is 5.5 oz... It certainly feels fine, and is much smaller than it looks in most pictures. Check riovolution.com for a good set of pics.
The menu system looks very pretty.
Sound: Many people say it's good. I really wouldn't know better, but the numbers (SNR, power, all that jazz) suggest it. Not quite powerful enough for my Senn 580s, but certainly has the bass (assuming you mess with the 5-band para eq appropriately). A number of improvements have been made -- the Karma supports --nogap mp3s, and now supports playing vorbis gaplessly (something the iRiver doesn't), as well as gapless FLAC and, well, as much as WMA supports it, any way.
Features: I don't think this has been touted enough: the Karma's "on-the-go" playlist support ROCKS. You can append an item (song/album/artist/etc.) to and insert an item into the currently playing list of tracks. You can remove tracks (or albums, etc.) from the list. You can reorder the list (a track at a time, any way). You can save the list as a playlist (and name it) for permanent storage. The RioDJ feature is not quite to the level of "smartlists" in iPod, but the devs have said that all that's missing is the UI -- the backend code is all there.
Configurability: It's not a PC or anything, but compared to other DAPs I've seen it's quite configurable. I believe IGN has a menu breakout?
Service: Well, the unofficial service is great. The developers visit a number of boards (empeg, rioworld, riovolution) and actually listen to ideas and take suggestions (they added one of mine!) when they're not troubleshooting, etc. This is all, of course, unofficial, but it's still really cool.
Cons: Until, well, the firmware just released yesterday, there were problems with crashing for a number of people. The plastic case isn't "sealed" like the iPod. When building up a playlist on the player, you have to go back through the menu each time after you add an item (be it a track or an entire album, artist, genre, etc.). No real case or remote. Well, pretty much *insert feature request here*.
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
Doh! Guess you missed out, firmware 1.25 was just released which fixed all those initial bugs, and gave us lots of cool toys (like the beat matched flashing dock!). Oh well, you can keep your heavier, bigger, more expensive (if you can ell me where I can get a 20gb ipod for $250 I'll be very impressed!), mac-centric ipod.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I was hoping those things would be fixed. It was nice, but the flaws I experienced were too much to bear. When I got mine, new Rio devices were showing up in stores, but only a handful of stores in the nation were actually stocking the karma. I had to order it to be shipped. I found out why they weren't in stores yet.
.2 oz lighter. I was thinking it had a larger overall size, which it does by over a cubic inch. And the thickness account for much of that, and I think makes for a weaker design while holding it in your hand. I kept wanting to use two hands with the karma and it still never felt right.
They were also priced differently at the time, and I'm glad to see that this has changed. I was confused when I said the karma was heavier. It's actually
As long as we're doing a comparison, I should point out that the karma also has a longer battery life. rated at 15 hours compared to 8.
And I think it's incorrect to call an ipod mac-centric. With the right software, you can use it on mac,linux, and pc interchangably. I use mine with win XP most of the time.
As for the lack of decent built-in server software, I still think it sucks to have to use some proprietary softare to access the device's contents. At least with an ipod hooked up to a computer you can share its files in any method the computer allows, and even share streams over itunes for novices.
I shoulda done a little more research before posting, and thanks for clearing it up.
(a) iRiver iHP-120 and Rio Karma both support Ogg
(b) Rio Karma supports ethernet LAN charger with RCA plugs for home theatre
(c) Samsung YP-910 has FM encoder and antenna for FM broadcast
(d) iRiver iHP-120 allows realtime recording from and of its inputs
(e) Almost all new players match iPod footprint
Most players typically have:
MP3/WAV playback
2" backlit monochrome LCD display
In-line remote
USB 2.0 support
Built-in Li-Ion rechargable battery
(Prices are estimates from pricegrabber.com)
iPod ($388)
IEEE 1394a (USB 2.0 extra)
AAC/AIFF
Dimensions: 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.62" (5.6 oz)
Dell Digital Jukebox 20 ($325)
Front mounted 3-way scroll-barrel
WMA (7,8,9 DRM)
Built-in Voice Recorder Mic (WAV IMA ADPCM 8kHz Mono)
Dimensions: 4.1" x 2.7" x 0.86" (7.61 oz)
iRiver iHP-120 ($358)
FM Tuner and digital input & output
Backlit inline remote w/ 4-line LCD
Realtime MP3 recording from voice, FM, optical or analog inputs
Supports Ogg/ASF/WMA
Dimensions: 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.7" (5.3 oz)
Samsung YP-910GS ($315)
FM encoder (tx) and antenna (broadcasts to FM freq)
Built-in FM tuner
Dimensions: 4.19" x 2.54" x 0.78" (6.0 oz)
Rio Karma ($277)
Ogg/FLAC support
Base-station supports ethernet LAN with RCA jacks
Greyscale LCD with visualizations
Dimensions: 2.7" x 3.0" x 0.9" (5.5 oz)
Archos Gmini 120 ($306)
Supports CompactFlash
Upgradable Voice Recorder/FM/PhotoWallet modules ($$)
Dimensions: 4.45" x 3.07" x 1.02" (8.61 oz)
Nomad Jukebox Zen ($220)
Dimensions: 4.43" x 2.99" x 0.95" (9.5 oz)
Nomad Jukebox Zen NX ($250)
Dimensions: 4.4" x 3.0" x 0.86" (7.9 oz)
Philips HDD100 15GB MP3 Player ($269)
Dimensions: 4.19" x 2.54" x 0.78" (5.92 oz)
RCA Lyra 20 GB Jukebox MP3 ($240)
CompactFlash
mp3PRO/WMA
Dimensions: 5.2" x 3.14" x 1.0"
Archos Jukebox Multimedia ($229)
MPEG4
Dimensions: 4.45" x 3.11" x 1.18 in (10.23 oz)
RCA Lyra 40GB Jukebox RD2840 ($260)
mp3PRO/WMA
Dimensions: 4.5" x 3.2" x 0.9" (9.6 oz)
RCA Lyra Audio/Video Jukebox RD2780 20GB ($389)
3.5" color LCD QVGA 320 X 240
MPEG1/MPEG4 video
mp3PRO/WMA
Dimensions: 5.37" x 3.13" x 0.95"
Archos AV320 MP3/Video Player ($450)
Dimensions: 2.3" x 2.1" x 1.2"
I got a Neuros from the Neuros online store and I am very happy with my purchase. They are running a sale right now and you can get a Neuros in a bundle that includes 2 backpacks: 128 Flash and 20 Gb HD (read the website if you don't know about the Neuros backpack concept) and some accesories for less than 250$ shipped. I don't wanna marketing for them, I just think it's a great deal! Down side: it uses USB 1.1 so transfers can take a long time especially when you sync the 20 Gb HD for the first time (~10 hours). This device supports OGG, WAV, WMA and MP3. There're 2 sync managers and one of them is open-source and on SF.net. Digital Illusions, the manufacturer, is planning to release the device firmware source and the sync software source so that the community will be able to modify the way the player is programmed and add supports for more formats. There're also talks about getting a programming language (or scripting language) for the device so that people could write some basic applications and games for it. Anyway, check out the website! The forum is also very active.
It's due to ship in the UK and some parts of Europe before Christmas this year. Keep an eye on amazon.co.uk.
:)
They weren't available instantly because of localisation and packaging issues. The software is developed here in Cambridge, UK