Slashdot Mirror
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."
is there some reason that players are not supporting the New MPEG audio format?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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.
What will we complain about now?
It plays ogg.
It sync via ethernet.
We're going to have to find a new gold standard, and fast!
====
Crudely Drawn Games
It's nice to see that some mainstream players are finally starting to add OGG support to their products. It's about time for a change.
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.
Isn't there some law against using the words Java and runs in the same sentence?
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.
How can I use this Rio Karma device to get a +1 bonus for my slashdot posts?
My review of the Karma : Excellent.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
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.
won't buy one until it supports...
um... I mean until it syncs via...
until it runs... YEAH! Still doesn't run linux. Therefore I won't buy one.
Phew. For a minute there I thought I was going to have to buy it.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
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.
It's obviously 'designed' for right-handed people. Interestingly, the iPod doesn't appear to favour one hand over the other.
:) Granted, that's the larger majority of the population...
Just a thought. -- and I'm not even left-handed.
Unfortunately the embedded market is run by proprietary monopolizing OSs.
The RIO unfortunatly comes with proprietary firmware. I strongly reccomend the birth of GNU/Karma.
(You thought we couldn't find anything to complain about!!)
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.
I've already ripped 30GB of MP3s off my CD collection; best estimate is that the whole collection will take ~50GB. Good thing I'm putting it on a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 60GB, instead of one of those wimpy Rios! (The Archos looks like it might be a good alternative to the Rio too, once they add a larger drive.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
is the Li Ion internal battery replaceable?
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
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.
Does the Karma support dynamic playlist building? That is, can you program a playlist on the device while it is playing music?
Does the Karma support gapless playback? I've heard about the crossfade feature, but I'm much more interested in gapless transitions between tracks.
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.
Finally, does it play vorbis files at all bitrates? libvorbis 1.0 can encode 48kbps up to about 320 kbps. I was quite disappointed that my neuros was unable to play anything below 64kbps. Some of Garf's demo files contain entire songs encoded in vorbis at as low as 4kbps. I have not heard of anyone who has tried to play these back on a portable.
Note that I am very close to getting a Karma anyway, even if the answers are all no... but if you could tell me that some of them are yes, then that would really seal the deal.
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.
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.
Since it has a joystick and a decently sized display, who wants to take a stab at porting MAME to it?
I want to play Space Invaders while I rock out to 70's supergroup Foreigner.
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.
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.
Compatibility with OpenVMS and OS/2. Now that Linux is mainstream, we must needs move to more obscure operating systems. Join me, free your mind!
We will not rest until every operating system has drivers for every USB device in existence!
Ron Paul 2012
After spending weeks deciding in the back of my mind, these are the features that sold me on the Karma:
Small size (although I decided the thickness made a huge difference)
Ogg support. This was a big factor in my decision.
Cool dock with ethernet
Nice display, 'analog' level dials were cool
And I found the following to be critical flaws:
Bugs! Too many inconveniences made it feel like it was rushed to market without sufficient QA. Songs would start over around 90 seconds into a track, or skip to another track altogether.
The management software (a java version is available to run on any platform) is crappy. No progress meters, lame compared to itunes or musicmatch or even windows explorer. This is the only way to transfer music or files.
Ethernet doesn't run at full duplex. WTF!?
Nothing esepcially useful about ethernet connectivity like a web server, ftp server, or smb. You might as well just hook it up over usb2 to avoid shitty transfer rates.
The physical controls on the device suck. It's awkward to use with one hand, especially if you wish to look at the screen and not your thumb/fingers. Some buttons are redundant, and it's not especiially clear at first how the scroll wheel will fuck up whatever you're listing to. It has separate volume buttons, but they're not exactly convenient.
It's physical presence is very... present. It's thicker in real life than I wanted to believe. It's also a little heavy. Ipod rules this comparison.
So, I just got an ipod instead. Same price and features, less annoyances, better support/accessories, iTunes isn't too bad. I like the 1394 better than usb2 for recharging it with the data cable. I'm sure there are a few other reasons to go with an ipod. I just figure it's no comparison with the karma, except that current lack of ogg support is kind of weak. I wish apple would pull their head out of their asses on this issue.
Short version. The Karma is crap unless it can get some major annoyances resolved.
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.
Bluetooth can get up to 1Mibps.
Yup, that's true. But... at the application level pulling out all the a stops (5 slice packets and no error bits) and with a quality radio signal you'll get 723 kbps (that's bits). Uncompressed CD quality stereo is 16 bits * 44100 samples per second * 2 channels or 1400 kbps. You can not transmit uncompressed cd-quality audio over Bluetooth.
If you want to transmit compressed audio you can, however since compression schemes are vulnerable to noise you have to turn on the Error Detection bits and that drops your throughput to around 500 kbps. Less if you're not willing to take all of the BT bandwidth.
Assuming you're happy with transcoded/compressed audio from your $300 player lets look at the ramification:
* you have compressed audio
* you have added transcoding HW or SW to the player
* you have added decoding hardware to the headphones
* you have added 2 bluetooth radios (player and headphones)
* you can not replace your headphones with 3rd party headphones
* you have battery management issues with your headphones.
* you have interference issues with microwaves, 802.11b and 802.11g APs and other BT devices
* the extra hardware will cost $20 to manufacture, so your player now costs an extra $60 to $80
I repeat my original statement, Bluetooth is not an appropriate technology for stereo headphones.
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.
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 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.
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.
(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.
- Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
It has been Google's #1 hit for the query legal music downloads for three months, and has had 14872 hits so far this month.It has a Creative Commons license. You are encouraged to copy it.
A Romanian translation will be posted soon, kindly provided by Ciprian Mihet. I am actively seeking translations to other languages.
Here's the introduction:
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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
Actually, it uses a later generation CPU than the iPod (though both have dual ARM7TDMI cores), with many enhancements.
:)
The iPod also runs multi-CPU... it just has less features