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."

Comments

I guess it's cool

[Dancin_Santa]

But can't they make it less ugly?

I know everyone is trying to make these as small and unobtrusive as possible, but this little guy is a little too small and too oddly-shaped (a square???) to be comfortably used.

What would be nice would be a set of bluetooth headphones so that a wire from my pocket to my ear wasn't necessary.

Re:why no AAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents and royalties.

Re:why no AAC?

[HebrewToYou]

Umm, because they've no real incentive to support AAC. They *ought* to support MPEG 4, which is the codec, and not AAC specifically, which is DRM encoding. Market forces are not pushing for the adoption of Apple's standards, so Apple must rely on sales of its own product to push said standards. The interesting thing about this is that even this new Rio isn't that much of a contender versus the iPod. The prices are nearly identical and the form factor almost in favor of the iPod. NTM the ridiculous "hype" behind the iPod, including these recent commens on iPod "jacking" -- sharing ones iPod with a passerby. I own an iPod, and like Jack of AtAT says: someone comes up trying to stick their headphones in my jack and I'll mase their ass.

How come theres no posts on the iRiver iHP-120

[Spikeman56]

cmon folks the iRiver iHP-120 is one of the best players out there and is constantly invloved in the best HD-DAP debate against the iPod and the Karma. search the internet, check out head-fi.org, check for reviews on the internet and you'll find that the iHP-120 is no little player... all iRiver needs is more publicity... shame shame

headphone quality

[David Jao]

Why support FLAC? Granted, I love a free, lossless codec. It's great for listening on your computer ... but you listen to your portable MP3 player with headphones. You're probably not going to notice the difference between lossless and lossy compression.

Believe me there are headphones where you can tell the difference. The $300 Etymotic ER-4P headphones are more than portable enough for a portable player and produce better sound than all but maybe a half dozen (no exaggeration) full size headphone models. In fact for regular stereo audio (i.e. not surround sound), a good pair of headphones is almost guaranteed to sound better than the same amount of money spent on speakers, because speakers have to contend with reflection noise off your walls.

So I'd say you have it backwards -- computer listening doesn't really benefit much from lossless audio, but headphone listening sure can.

Even if you don't feel like spending $300 on headphones, there are still many lesser headphones for which FLAC is worthwhile. Don't judge headphone quality based on the cheap headphones included with the player.

Re:headphone quality

[mindstrm]

I listen on some nice $800 Grado headphones.. and I can tell you,

On the best of gear, professionals can't tell which track is original, between high bitrate mp3 and uncompressed.

You might, side by side, be able to hear slight differences, and tha'ts if you are on really good gear, and have really good ears (I have really good gear, and fairly good ears, and I sure can't tell)

I'd be willing to bet, for instance, you couldn't tell the difference yourslef. I know I can't.

Second... he wasn't judging headphone quality. Very, very few people out of the portable market use Etys, for a variety of obvious reasons (price, comfort, isolation). Yes, I know they can be comfortable. Yes, they are worth it if you like pure sound. Yes, sometimes you want lots of isolation.

BTW, your ER-4P is not that accurate, it actually enhances bass response for portable listening.. it's ety's jump into the portable market.

Ask anyone who knows me, I love headphones... it's what I predominantly use, all day, every day... but you are forgetting something.

Many of the tracks people listen to were made to listen to on speakers, not headphones. They are not binaural recordings, desgined for 100% stereo isolation you get with headphones (Unless you use amps with crossfeed, that's another story).

Studios often use speakers, not headphones, for mastering. It's more true to what the end user hears.. so before you go claiming your headphones give more perfect sound... think again.

So don't go saying headphones are the absolute bomb in listening.. they are certainly not. They do not necessarily provide the listening experience that was intended.

That said.. my grados are more revealing than any speakers I've ever had, or seen anywhere near the same price range. When I listen to even my mp3s on speakers here and there, I can hear defninite things that are missing, compared to when I use my grados.

When I go from my desk to my iPod with it's apple headphones.. I can certainly hear how constrained it is. It's night and day.

What I'm saying is twofold.
- There is still a case for speakers.
- 360kbps mp3 and friends are not as low quality as you think. Take a track you like, make a good quality 360kbps mp3, and 256, and the raw track. Turn the mp3s back into wavs.

Then get a friend to mix them up and burn you an audio CD, in no particular order, so you have no way of knowing which track is which (let your friend keep track). Heck, do this with a few songs.

Then sit down with your gear, and listen. Write down which you think is which. In fact, get your friend to also double up on some. I bet, statistically, you can't tell.

Further.. the portable gear you are listening on is no where near good enough quality for you to hear the differences we are talking about anyway... especially in the noisy environment we are used to listening in.

Battery life

[NetCAM]

So, what happens when the batterys in these things crap out? As far as I've seen you cant buy replacement batteries for any of the large (10gig+) portable players like the iPod or even the Dell clone. Thats one of the main concerns I have when they want me to drop $200-300+ for a decent portable mp3 player. When I buy one of these players I want to know that if the battery craps out I can swap it out with a new one instead of having to buy another $200-300 player or swap in a fresh battery if I'm on the road instead of having to find a place to recharge it.

Re:tres cool

[drinkypoo]

More to the point, the firmware updater ought to be a java app like the sync tool. No reason to add linux support, when you can add platform-agnostic support.

Re:OGG not

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is no acronym that's spelled "OGG", then "OGG", "Ogg", "ogg", and "oGg" all mean the same thing, and you have actually managed to sound even more pedantic than Richard Stallman on his daily "GNU/Linux" rant.

I mean, I can almost understand people getting bent out of shape about the difference between MAC and Mac, because they mean different things, but you are just being silly.

Re:Non music files?

[Doktor Memory]

You've probably heard this before, but guys? When you sit down to design the Karma v2, or for that matter any other product of this sort?

Please don't ever do that again.

The USB mass storage protocol exists for a reason. Use it.

If the architectural wheel-reengineering madness (with attendant support nightmares) of designing your own file transfer regime doesn't give you pause, the fact that this gives your competitors (who include little companies like Apple and Dell fer chrissakes) a feature bullet-point which you don't have damn well should.

Re:my god.

[Jon-o]

Here's what keeps me from buying it:

THe biggest thing is the transfers: it needs a special program. While this wouldn't be SO bad at home, it means it's not nearly as useful if I want to transfer something from someone else's machine. They probably wouldn't want me installing the software.

As well, I believe that the USB only works in the windows client. The java version is restricted to just using the ethernet, which is rather more annoying to use for this sort of thing.

What I'd like to see is a machine like this one that works as a USB mass storage, and can therefore be an easily used portable hard drive. (I know some can do this, but they have other issues...). Just transfer the oggs/mp3s/FLACs(not much mention of those around!) or anything else, and then you could play them. Database info is generally available in properly tagged files, and they could be organized by directory fairly easily, making it perfectly usable, and much simpler. Playlists could be uploaded in the same way.

The main reason I would want a little machine like this would be for quick and easy recording - I've heard that this records well, and records to OGG and WAV nicely (don't know if it records to FLAC, but it'd be very nice). I don't know if it's got any editing features though - nothing complicated would be expected, of course, but just splitting/combining/deleting tracks like a minidisc recorder does would be plenty. I'm not sure how it does this - the reviews I've seen haven't gone into any detail about it. But it's essential.

The main issue is the transfers though. I don't want to have to use a special program, and I ESPECIALLY don't want to need a graphical one. Until a player that has that along with everything the Karma has, I'll be stuck with my minidisc, and its complete lack of digital out. *sigh*