The Rio Karma will quite happily sit in its dock while the dock is connected to a wireless access point, or so I've heard . . . supports all the formats you could wish for and more, and the battery life is superb.
As for wireless sharing . . . would be lovely, wouldn't it? Sadly I very much doubt it'll ever happen:(
Meh, iTunes leaves me *very* cold. I buy cds and rip them myself, and I mainly listen to complete albums so all this song rating stuff passes me by. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose . ..
Personally, I found the Karma's menus very rich and full-featured, without being confusing. It really is a marvel of interface design, IMHO:)
Shape-wise, I find it comfier to hold than an iPod. I always found when using the iPod that my thumb was doing too much work, if that makes sense - when doing a serious amount of navigation, it'd ache after a while (damn my lazy, flabby thumbs!) With the Karma, I mostly navigate using the wheel in the top right, which is comfortably in my normal thumb position. You sometimes have to skip over to the "riostick" or menu button, but not enough to cause thumb fatigue . . . if I had to navigate using just the stick, it'd probably drive me mad, to be fair;)
Re: hacking, your biggest problem is going to be a drive to stick in the thing! Hitachi only make the 20Gig model at the moment, hence no larger capacity players . . . my (limited) understanding is that it wouldn't be too difficult to do physically, once the drives exist, but whether or not the firmware would like it is a different matter . . .;)
Kinda true. Lame mp3s encoded with --gapless hold enough information to let a gapless enabled player know when a track *should* end, even if that's halfway through a frame. In addition, the Karma developers (realising that not everyone encodes --gapless) have put intelligence into the player that detects a drop to silence in the middle of the last frame, and cuts that silence out. This works *REALLY WELL*. I mainly listen to mix albums where it's far too obvious if gapless play isn't implemented, because the beats don't match up - and it seems flawless to my ears.
As for the ethernet - no, it isn't speedy, but that's kinda the nature of ethernet. One sync overnight and then it should just be topping up from there on in though . ..
I can VERY strongly recommend the Rio Karma to you. Point by point . ..
* Native Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC support Check
* Regular firmware updates that include customer suggestions Check, double. The community surrounding the Karma is incredible, and the developers are amazingly responsive:)
* Optional remote (preferably with its own display Not at the moment. The campaign goes on:)
* Ability to input audio via line-in and/or microphone. On-the-fly encoding not required No, and very unlikely to happen IIUC
* FM radio tuner No, ditto. But you've got 20Gb of *good* music in your pocket, why listen to the radio?;)
* Semi-decent interface with well-organised playlisting and options. So many cheap flash-based players coming out of Asia these days have terrible interfaces. Also, an iPod-style scroll wheel or similar input device is necessary for scrolling through thousands of songs An emphatic YES. The Karma's interface is amazingly intuitive and fast, particularly when it comes to navigating your collection. Artists appear under first-letter tabs, for example, which when you have 500+ different artists makes a whole lot of difference!
* Ability to sort folders/playlists by date, album, last modified, year and artist et cetera (i.e. dynamic rearranging of playlists, song lists according to ID3 tab information) Hmmm. Interesting - I suspect not, though I haven't tried. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of thing the developers at Rio are eating up at the moment . ..
* Access to other parts of tag information including year and lyrics All tag information is available. "Wicked cool" lyrics functionality in the works
* On-the-fly playlisting Check
* Gapless playback Check, for any format that supports it - including mp3.
* USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity. Additional ethernet highly desirable Check to USB2 and ethernet
* Can be mounted as external hard drive Not at present, although apparently this is in the works
* 15+ hour replaceable battery essential Check to battery life. It's currently replacable in Japan and the word is that this will spread to the US / UK soonish. However, the battery will last for about three years when used 6 hours a day as it is . ..
The Karma is SUPERB. Really. I may come across like a fanboy, but that's cos I am - it's the first DAP which works EXACTLY how I want it to. The responsiveness of the community makes it second to none IMHO . ..
Surely the point is that this *isn't* an iPod? And one of the reasons I chose a Karma was that it, also, is not an iPod. Don't want to be associated with shoddy kit like that:)
This is sad, and all too true, which is one of the (many) reasons I'm very happy with my Rio Karma:) It's a totally different form factor to the iPod, and I find it a lot more comfortable to use and carry around.
Course, the fact that it's a far superior piece of kit also helps;)
> To the hordes of people who make it this far (haha) with rio karams > do you use the ethernet and ogg stuff much?
First, I've got to back you up - that comment was about as far removed from flamebait as I've seen . ..
But to answer your question, yes, I use both. Had a hefty mp3 collection and am currently in the process of re-ripping everything to ogg - the sound quality to size ratio is SO much better than mp3. And when I get home, I drop my Karma into the dock, and then I can sync from within Windows or Linux, depending on what I'm doing at the time. Sweet!
That's bad luck - I got one and it's solid as a rock, have had no problems. Someone flushed theirs down a toilet and it survived (don't try this at home!). Besides, if it fell apart after 2 months, you've got a warranty - use it.
As for the interface - wha'? It's AMAZINGLY intuitive, and yes, I've used iPods. Of course, it's also amazingly powerful - know of any other player where you've got a 5 band equalizer where you can adjust the centre points and width of each band individually? That kind of control is going to lead to more menu options, but the basic music playing / selecting controls are as easy as easy pie with a side of easy ice cream.
Ignore it, it's lies:) The java client will allow you to transfer songs over ethernet an absolute doddle!
The only bit you *need* a windows PC for is updating the firmware - although apparently this is "being looked at". Besides, I'm sure you know someone with a Windows machine which you can sit on for 10 minutes to do the job, right?
I own a Karma, and I love it. Best DAP I've ever used!
Our chief weapon is fear! Fear and uncertainty . . . no, wait, our two weapons are uncertainty, fear and doubt . . . Our *three* weapons are uncertainty, fear and doubt, and an almost fanatical devotion to litigation . . . Our *four* . . . no . . . *Amongst* our weapons . . . Amongst our weaponry . . . are such elements as uncertainty, fear . . . I'll come in again.
Absolutely! If I'd stopped to think about it, I'd probably have worked it out. It's just always the little things that make you realise quite how globalised the world is . . . when someone half a planet away is watching identical adverts.
P
Gak . . . I knew Asda (UK supermarket) had been bought out by Walmart, but I was naive enough to think they were still using their own advertising . . . guess I was wrong:(
P
This is going to please anyone who's trying to set up a surround-sound system while sharing with their wife/partner/significant others. While we geeks think nothing of running miles of cable through the living room ("it adds character!"), all too often the special lady in our lives takes offence to this. Particularly when you use decent meaty cable rather than pathetic 1mm string.
5.1 systems were bad enough for this, but when you've got a 6.1 amp and you're also a co-ax out from your PC, the front room can quickly turn into spaghetti junction:)
Knowing my countrymen as well as I sadly do, I can't help but feel that while this is a very cool idea, it would soon be hijacked by the wrong elements.
Look, for example, at the reaction David Blaine got here for his "living in a box" stunt - heckled, taunted, and attacked by a man with golf balls. Personally I was massively entertained by this as Mr Blaine chose to put himself at the mercy of the English public - however, once a few BNP party members are out drunk and want the opportunity to abuse and insult some foreigners, they're going to make their way to the cylinder, where it'll be innocent Viennese passers-by who get the heckling.
Cool idea, but I can't help but feel it'll engender more international hostility than co-operation. Cynical, aren't I?
It's worth reading the SpamAssassin documentation, where they discourage this, and for good reason. Different people get different spam - if I were to compare my spam folder with yours, we'd probably see quite a wide difference - and we'd see a much wider difference if we compared it to, for example, my Mum's.
Bayesian filtering works by picking up what words are likely to be used in *your* typical spam. It only needs 2000 mails to work on before it kicks in IIRC - if you're lucky enough to think that's a lot of spam, you probably don't need it;)
So what happens when I've got my mp3-jacket, my PDA-jacket, my phone-jacket, and my camera-jacket, but it's a hot summer's day outside?
I wouldn't want to be limited to wearing a particular item of clothing to enjoy particular functionality. I want to be able to listen to my mp3s butt-naked if I please, thank you very much (and I don't care how unpleasant that image is:p )
So, CD's arn't lossy compression, finally I can ditch my vinal collection.
Fair point, but they're the best available for most new music. They also have the advantage that it's easy to make perfect copies, whereas vinyl is only going to be useful for long-term storage if you never play it . . .
Why look for a 50 year solution, when in 20 years the archives will be stored on more efficient media, just like mp3's
I can't argue with you that more efficient media will be used for archiving <voice style="dramatic">IN THE FUTURE</voice>, but I certainly hope they wont be archived as mp3s. I would never use mp3 as an archiving mechanism because it's LOSSY. When I buy a CD I'll mp3 it, copy it, stick the original away somewhere, and work from the copy. That way, I know I've got a perfect original copy should I ever need it!
Lossy formats are not for archiving. Apart from when you've only got your pr0n as JPGs of course . . .
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The Rio Karma will quite happily sit in its dock while the dock is connected to a wireless access point, or so I've heard . . . supports all the formats you could wish for and more, and the battery life is superb.
:(
As for wireless sharing . . . would be lovely, wouldn't it? Sadly I very much doubt it'll ever happen
P
Meh, iTunes leaves me *very* cold. I buy cds and rip them myself, and I mainly listen to complete albums so all this song rating stuff passes me by. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose . . .
P
Personally, I found the Karma's menus very rich and full-featured, without being confusing. It really is a marvel of interface design, IMHO :)
;)
;)
Shape-wise, I find it comfier to hold than an iPod. I always found when using the iPod that my thumb was doing too much work, if that makes sense - when doing a serious amount of navigation, it'd ache after a while (damn my lazy, flabby thumbs!) With the Karma, I mostly navigate using the wheel in the top right, which is comfortably in my normal thumb position. You sometimes have to skip over to the "riostick" or menu button, but not enough to cause thumb fatigue . . . if I had to navigate using just the stick, it'd probably drive me mad, to be fair
Re: hacking, your biggest problem is going to be a drive to stick in the thing! Hitachi only make the 20Gig model at the moment, hence no larger capacity players . . . my (limited) understanding is that it wouldn't be too difficult to do physically, once the drives exist, but whether or not the firmware would like it is a different matter . . .
P
> mp3 doesn't support gapless playback
.
Kinda true. Lame mp3s encoded with --gapless hold enough information to let a gapless enabled player know when a track *should* end, even if that's halfway through a frame. In addition, the Karma developers (realising that not everyone encodes --gapless) have put intelligence into the player that detects a drop to silence in the middle of the last frame, and cuts that silence out. This works *REALLY WELL*. I mainly listen to mix albums where it's far too obvious if gapless play isn't implemented, because the beats don't match up - and it seems flawless to my ears.
As for the ethernet - no, it isn't speedy, but that's kinda the nature of ethernet. One sync overnight and then it should just be topping up from there on in though . .
P
I can VERY strongly recommend the Rio Karma to you. Point by point . . .
:)
:)
;)
.
.
.
* Native Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC support
Check
* Regular firmware updates that include customer suggestions
Check, double. The community surrounding the Karma is incredible, and the developers are amazingly responsive
* Optional remote (preferably with its own display
Not at the moment. The campaign goes on
* Ability to input audio via line-in and/or microphone. On-the-fly encoding not required
No, and very unlikely to happen IIUC
* FM radio tuner
No, ditto. But you've got 20Gb of *good* music in your pocket, why listen to the radio?
* Semi-decent interface with well-organised playlisting and options. So many cheap flash-based players coming out of Asia these days have terrible interfaces. Also, an iPod-style scroll wheel or similar input device is necessary for scrolling through thousands of songs
An emphatic YES. The Karma's interface is amazingly intuitive and fast, particularly when it comes to navigating your collection. Artists appear under first-letter tabs, for example, which when you have 500+ different artists makes a whole lot of difference!
* Ability to sort folders/playlists by date, album, last modified, year and artist et cetera (i.e. dynamic rearranging of playlists, song lists according to ID3 tab information)
Hmmm. Interesting - I suspect not, though I haven't tried. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of thing the developers at Rio are eating up at the moment . .
* Access to other parts of tag information including year and lyrics
All tag information is available. "Wicked cool" lyrics functionality in the works
* On-the-fly playlisting
Check
* Gapless playback
Check, for any format that supports it - including mp3.
* USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity. Additional ethernet highly desirable
Check to USB2 and ethernet
* Can be mounted as external hard drive
Not at present, although apparently this is in the works
* 15+ hour replaceable battery essential
Check to battery life. It's currently replacable in Japan and the word is that this will spread to the US / UK soonish. However, the battery will last for about three years when used 6 hours a day as it is . .
The Karma is SUPERB. Really. I may come across like a fanboy, but that's cos I am - it's the first DAP which works EXACTLY how I want it to. The responsiveness of the community makes it second to none IMHO . .
P
Erm . . .
:)
Surely the point is that this *isn't* an iPod? And one of the reasons I chose a Karma was that it, also, is not an iPod. Don't want to be associated with shoddy kit like that
P
This is sad, and all too true, which is one of the (many) reasons I'm very happy with my Rio Karma :) It's a totally different form factor to the iPod, and I find it a lot more comfortable to use and carry around.
;)
Course, the fact that it's a far superior piece of kit also helps
P
> To the hordes of people who make it this far (haha) with rio karams
.
> do you use the ethernet and ogg stuff much?
First, I've got to back you up - that comment was about as far removed from flamebait as I've seen . .
But to answer your question, yes, I use both. Had a hefty mp3 collection and am currently in the process of re-ripping everything to ogg - the sound quality to size ratio is SO much better than mp3. And when I get home, I drop my Karma into the dock, and then I can sync from within Windows or Linux, depending on what I'm doing at the time. Sweet!
P
That's bad luck - I got one and it's solid as a rock, have had no problems. Someone flushed theirs down a toilet and it survived (don't try this at home!). Besides, if it fell apart after 2 months, you've got a warranty - use it.
As for the interface - wha'? It's AMAZINGLY intuitive, and yes, I've used iPods. Of course, it's also amazingly powerful - know of any other player where you've got a 5 band equalizer where you can adjust the centre points and width of each band individually? That kind of control is going to lead to more menu options, but the basic music playing / selecting controls are as easy as easy pie with a side of easy ice cream.
Mmmm, ice cream.
P
Ignore it, it's lies :) The java client will allow you to transfer songs over ethernet an absolute doddle!
The only bit you *need* a windows PC for is updating the firmware - although apparently this is "being looked at". Besides, I'm sure you know someone with a Windows machine which you can sit on for 10 minutes to do the job, right?
I own a Karma, and I love it. Best DAP I've ever used!
P
Wha? Have you got some kinda crazy super-iPod or something? Last time I used one, the battery life was about 7 hours tops, definitely no more.
;)
Get a Karma and enjoy the luxury of 12 - 15 hour battery life under normal use, that's a *real* portable player
P
Our chief weapon is fear! Fear and uncertainty . . . no, wait, our two weapons are uncertainty, fear and doubt . . . Our *three* weapons are uncertainty, fear and doubt, and an almost fanatical devotion to litigation . . . Our *four* . . . no . . . *Amongst* our weapons . . . Amongst our weaponry . . . are such elements as uncertainty, fear . . . I'll come in again.
Absolutely! If I'd stopped to think about it, I'd probably have worked it out. It's just always the little things that make you realise quite how globalised the world is . . . when someone half a planet away is watching identical adverts. P
Gak . . . I knew Asda (UK supermarket) had been bought out by Walmart, but I was naive enough to think they were still using their own advertising . . . guess I was wrong :(
P
This is going to please anyone who's trying to set up a surround-sound system while sharing with their wife/partner/significant others. While we geeks think nothing of running miles of cable through the living room ("it adds character!"), all too often the special lady in our lives takes offence to this. Particularly when you use decent meaty cable rather than pathetic 1mm string.
:)
;)
5.1 systems were bad enough for this, but when you've got a 6.1 amp and you're also a co-ax out from your PC, the front room can quickly turn into spaghetti junction
Can't really see it sounding as good though
> The lack of comas is annoying
Yes, but reading another tedious grammar-correction post should sort *that* little problem out
Now *that's* informative
But why bother when there's a readily available source who can't fight back or complain as readily?
Knowing my countrymen as well as I sadly do, I can't help but feel that while this is a very cool idea, it would soon be hijacked by the wrong elements.
Look, for example, at the reaction David Blaine got here for his "living in a box" stunt - heckled, taunted, and attacked by a man with golf balls. Personally I was massively entertained by this as Mr Blaine chose to put himself at the mercy of the English public - however, once a few BNP party members are out drunk and want the opportunity to abuse and insult some foreigners, they're going to make their way to the cylinder, where it'll be innocent Viennese passers-by who get the heckling.
Cool idea, but I can't help but feel it'll engender more international hostility than co-operation. Cynical, aren't I?
This is where I really miss not having a +1 (amusingly paranoid) moderation option . . .
It's worth reading the SpamAssassin documentation, where they discourage this, and for good reason. Different people get different spam - if I were to compare my spam folder with yours, we'd probably see quite a wide difference - and we'd see a much wider difference if we compared it to, for example, my Mum's.
;)
Bayesian filtering works by picking up what words are likely to be used in *your* typical spam. It only needs 2000 mails to work on before it kicks in IIRC - if you're lucky enough to think that's a lot of spam, you probably don't need it
From the story, it doesn't look like it was crash data they were worried about:
Since the 959 could not meet U.S. bumper or ride-height requirements, it was going to be imported as a "race car" rather than a street-going model.
So what happens when I've got my mp3-jacket, my PDA-jacket, my phone-jacket, and my camera-jacket, but it's a hot summer's day outside?
:p )
I wouldn't want to be limited to wearing a particular item of clothing to enjoy particular functionality. I want to be able to listen to my mp3s butt-naked if I please, thank you very much (and I don't care how unpleasant that image is
P
So, CD's arn't lossy compression, finally I can ditch my vinal collection.
Fair point, but they're the best available for most new music. They also have the advantage that it's easy to make perfect copies, whereas vinyl is only going to be useful for long-term storage if you never play it . . .
P
Why look for a 50 year solution, when in 20 years the archives will be stored on more efficient media, just like mp3's
I can't argue with you that more efficient media will be used for archiving <voice style="dramatic">IN THE FUTURE</voice>, but I certainly hope they wont be archived as mp3s. I would never use mp3 as an archiving mechanism because it's LOSSY. When I buy a CD I'll mp3 it, copy it, stick the original away somewhere, and work from the copy. That way, I know I've got a perfect original copy should I ever need it!
Lossy formats are not for archiving. Apart from when you've only got your pr0n as JPGs of course . . .
P