Rio Karma User Review

FuzzyBad-Mofo writes "On 8/24/2004, I took the plunge and bought a Rio Karma digital music player. My needs were simple: Decent storage capacity, Linux friendly, and Ogg Vorbis compatible. The Karma has a generous 20 GB capacity, decent battery life, is OS-agnostic, and plays a wide variety of file formats, including Ogg." Read on for the rest of FuzzyBad-Mofo's review.

Despite living in an urban area, I had a little trouble tracking down a retailer with the Karma in stock. Best Buy was sold out, but Circuit City had them (for full price, boo hiss). I was impressed with the solid feel of the device, and promptly started setting it up. Since I currently only have Linux machines at home, the included software was useless. Fortunately, the Karma also includes Ethernet connectivity through the docking cradle. In minutes the cradle was connected to my Linksys router and a static IP assigned using the Karma's joystick interface (not fun).

Once this was done, I connected via web browser to the Karma's IP address and was greeted with a nice splash page, and a couple of links to download the Java-based transfer software and to visit Rio's Karma page. I initially had trouble with the transfer software, but eventually found the developer's site on the internet; he has improved the software greatly from the version that ships with the Karma.

The docking cradle also has stereo line-level RCA ports, which is nice for integration with a home stereo. I ended up buying a 20' CAT-5 cable to give my Karma a permanent home next to the stereo. It's pretty wonderful to select 4 hours of random music for the evening, and not have to worry about changing CDs. Later, I also bought an RF adapter for use in the car, which works by broadcasting on an FM frequency you simply tune into.

The Karma is not bad to walk around with either. It is a little bulky, and I would prefer a narrower body, but it fits ok in a loose-fitting pants or jacket pocket. As with any hard-drive based player, jogging/running/biking with it is probably not a good idea.

Lockups: the Karma has taken a lot of flak for locking up, and I can't say that it's not justified. The player has locked once when I was loading music on it, in which case I simply reset with a bent paper clip and it was good to go. However, several days ago I was walking with it, attempted to change songs midstride, and it locked hard. Since I was on my way to work with no paperclip in sight (and the unit won't turn off when it locks up), the hard drive spun and seeked for 40 minutes until I got in the office. At that point, the unit was warm to the touch and had drained half the battery. After reset, the unit would not power up properly. Going into rescue mode showed that it was having trouble reading the disk. (crap!) After reading some message boards where others have experienced similar problems, I decided that I had little to lose and smacked it flat down on the desk. The Karma made a little grinding noise and booted up! It has worked perfectly since then, but I'm somewhat concerned about my purchase. Rio only offers a three-month warranty by default, so I would recommend going with an extended warranty if you decide to purchase a Karma.

Scary lockups aside, this has been a great little player. I believe it is Rio's first HDD-based player, and I'm looking forward to seeing future revisions of the Karma.

Thanks to FuzzyBad-MoFo for the review!

Comments

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[aceh0]

the red nipple is not bad for navigation but it is no iPod scroll wheel and it is not as intuitive. most of my friends who've used my ipod figured out how to use the thing within seconds (even the non-techy ones) while questions were always inadvertently asked about the karma. build quality / fragility is also something to be aware of. my ipod has survived a motorcycle crash and multiple trips down to the pavement from about waist height but the LCD on my friend's karma broke while it was in his pocket. he didnt fall, the pocket wasnt especially tight, nothing hit him. guess there was a bit of pressure on the screen and now it's hosed. he seemed to like it a lot while it was working though

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[TachyonAT]

so do most of iRivers players

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[radish]

The plus sides:

* Battery life (16 hours with mp3, 12 with Vorbis)
* Gapless playback. This is HUGE for a lot of people. The Karma is the ONLY HD based player which does gapless playback properly. It's the main reason I have one (and would never buy an iPod).
* Sound quality. Measurably better than iPod, also has fully adjustable 5 band parametric EQ.
* RioDJ. This feature allows you to choose specific types of tracks (e.g. stuff I haven't played recently) and a duration, and it will build a playlist on the fly.
* Firmware. Very flexible operation, tons of options (geek friendly!), excellent support from devs on the boards.
* Ethernet on the dock. Allows use with any platform which supports ethernet & java. So Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD etc.
* Formats. Vorbis, FLAC, mp3, wma etc.

There's more, but that's what stands out to me. I bought this thing nearly a year ago (as an aside - why a review now for a player which is pretty much at EOL?) and it's served me very well with no problems at all. The sound quality is great, the interface is easy to use and the gapless playback means I can finally listen to mix & live albums without the fsking pauses.

Bought a second karma

[mimio]

I bought mine almost six months ago. Have not had a lockup in 4 months.
Battery life is excellent, 12 hours playing music opposed to some players that have battery duration of 12 hours starting from the moment you remove it from the charger.
The shape is great because it allows you to use it with one hand.
Plays several formats including Ogg Vorbis.
Rio DJ allows me to select predifined playlists based on:

* Entertain Me!: Generates playlist from most frequently played music. Mix can last 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 8 hours.
* Play All: Play everything and automatically sort by album, artist, genre, or year.
* Top Tunes: Play the most frequently played tracks. You can choose from the top 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, or 250 songs.
* New Music: Play the most recently imported tracks. Choose from music imported in the last 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, or 1 year.
* Memory Lane: Play tracks that haven't been played in a while. Choose from music not played in the last 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, or 1 year.
* Sounds Of...: Play tracks from the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, or newer than 2000
* Forgotten Gems: Play old favorites that haven't been played in the last 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, or 1 year.
* Déjà Vu: Play tracks that have been played in the last 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, or 1 year.
* Random Mix: Generate a random list lasting 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 8 hours.

There is very detailed review at:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/458/458401p1.html

Two months ago I bought a second Karma for my wife. I can say the karma is the best gadget I have bought in a long time.

My Kharma

[L3on]

I have owned a rio kharma for about a year now (got one when they first came out). I had to have it RMAed about 2 months after I got it because the HD failed, other than that I love it. OGG format on it is the best and the built-in playlist features can't be beat. Also, the docking cradle which sits on my desk glows to the beat of the music. The other thing that is great about the Kharma is it has both USB and Ethernet connectivity through its docking cradle so friends on your network can drop songs directly onto it.

Things I don't like about the Kharma is the software utility, it takes forever to add music to the browser.

Another happy owner

[Richard_J_N]

I've got one too - and I have to say, I'm mainly very happy with it. I bought mine for the sound quality - it's vastly better than the iPod.
(The iPod has "issues" with Classical music with a large dynamic range at high bitrates which make the sound utterly excruciating - yes, this is a bug in the design, and no, Apple don't give a Monkey's).

All I'd like to see added is a way to remote-control it via ethernet (i.e. to actually make it start playing!)

Another nice feature - it's easy to disassemble. I took the back off mine so as to write my name inside it (in case of loss/theft) - and it uses *proper* screws !

Re:Why do you need the Karma?

[yagu]

I also had a 110 (actually 110 + 1), and a 400 CD changer both of which had the random function. But, I didn't find it totally satisfactory. Most notably the noise when changing disks, and also the delay between songs.

I also have the Karma now (it was a gift), and I LOVE it! What maybe isn't clear in the original article is the user doesn't just turnn on the Karma in random mode and let it play for four hours. The Karma has a DJ "wizard", and you can ask it to generate playlists for you based on criteria. Some examples, but not limited to:

• length of playing time you want your playlist to cover
• exclusion (don't put any songs I've listened to on the playlist from the last xx days)
• genre of music selected for your playlist
• linear, repeat, shuffle (random) playing of items from playlist
• "popularity" of songs (put songs into playlist from the top xx listened-to songs)
• year music is from
• "oldies" (add songs to playlist which I haven't listened to in the last xx days or weeks)

My CD changers served me well, but I welcome the change and improvement... (for example, it is really nice to be able to slip the Karma out of its dock, and go out and do yard work with the same selection of songs as what I had indoors. Additionally, even recording mp3's at 192K, I have a 2/3 full Karma with almost 200 CD's

Also, instead of a 30 lb. (fully loaded) changer taking up lots of space in my cabinet, the Karma is itsy-bitsy, and can be put anywhere.

Not saying your changer isn't plenty good, but if you ever get the opportunity (fits your budget, a good friend gives you one :-), blah, blah, blah), go for it... you won't be disappointed.

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[drinkypoo]

Impressing one's party guests takes considerably more work than that. Back in the day one of my housemates (I didn't live there then actually, I moved in later) paid one of my friends to make him a little serial-controlled infrared remote, this was before the days of widespread PDAs and that same friend later went on to make the best and most popular infrared remote software for the palmpilot, OmniRemote. Anyway the remote controlled a 100 disc pioneer CD jukebox that was patched into the stereo system, and this housemate and I developed a filemaker pro application that would talk to the remote and program the jukebox 32 tracks or so at a time. Now THAT impressed people. These days you can accomplish the same thing much more easily by just MP3ing everything and playing the mp3s from a web interface.

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[CreatureComfort]

How well do you find the iPod works while you're on the motorcycle?

I bought a CD/MP3 player with the longest skip protection I could find for listening to through my intercom receiver, but the vibrations of the bike at 50+ mph was too much for it. That was with it in my tank bag, as it was too large to fit comfortably in a jacket pocket. It just wouldn't play at freeway speeds.

I replaced it with a SanDisk Cruzer 256 Mb USB key, with the Cruzer MP3 player. (Cost about $110 total, but I get a combination 256 MB true-keychain USB drive and flash based MP3 player that is instantly upgradable.) So far this has worked fine, both in the tank bag or it easily fits into a jaket pocket, but 256 Mb is still a bit limited for what I would like to carry around with me. Actually I should probably submit an actual review of it...