Rio Karma 20GB Reviewed 355
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."
Cheaper price (Score:3, Informative)
Rio Riot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I guess it's cool (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why no AAC? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:why no AAC? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
neuros have had the same features for a while (Score:2, Informative)
The Rio Riot is not too big either (Score:3, Informative)
It's weight is 8.8oz while the ipod is 5.6 oz.
Re:Rio Riot (Score:3, Informative)
Ogg *and* FLAC? (pedant alert) (Score:5, Informative)
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 [xiph.org], 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
System Requirements: Microsoft OS (Score:4, Informative)
The least they could do is say GNU/Linux can be used but there will be no telephone tech support.
Yes it is too big. (Score:4, Informative)
This Rio Karma, on the other hand, is small. Its longets dimension is only 3" and it weighs 5.5 oz.
tres cool (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:why no AAC? (Score:5, Informative)
FLAC != Ogg (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I for one... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ogg *and* FLAC? (pedant alert) (Score:4, Informative)
iRiver ihp-120 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FLAC != Ogg (Score:4, Informative)
As the original poster pointed out, Ogg is a container. It can contain Vorbis or FLAC equally well. We just call Vorbis "ogg" for the same reason we refer to Sorenson as "QuickTime" - certainly there are other things that can be stored in the container but it's a bit like a Kleenex type convention.
And, yes, Vorbis "supports" bitrate peeling, but no one has yet written the program that will peel it, in fact several of the developers have stated that the current way the Vorbis stream is (dis)organized, it's impossible to write such a program.
Re:I guess it's cool (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Few questions (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:why no AAC? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:my god. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Made for right-handed people (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OGG not (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Re:features I'm looking for (Score:4, Informative)
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 [riovolution.com] 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.
Re:features I'm looking for (Score:2, Informative)
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 [riovolution.com] 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.
Very, very buggy. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:my god. (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, Like this? http://www.hheld.com/ [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.
not true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:why no AAC? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Cheaper price (Score:3, Informative)
Non music files? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1, Informative)
I've got myself a Rio Karma... (Score:3, Informative)
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*.
Re:Had some ugly flaws (Score:3, Informative)
Re:tres cool (Score:2, Informative)
Re:iRiver ihp-120 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:iRiver ihp-120 (Score:3, Informative)
I bought an iRiver iHP-120 for my wife. We both hated the joystick, so we returned it and got an iPod (with free shipping, free personalization, and a $25 coupon). I really wanted to like the iRiver, because of the features and battery life. Besides the joystick, I was disappointed that the DB feature didn't support Ogg out of the box, effectively making it a second-class format. (Check out iRipDB [marevalo.net] for a free third-party solution.)
If you're considering the iRiver, I encourage you spend some time with a display model. If you like the user interface, it's a terrific device. Otherwise, I don't see anything better than the iPod.
Re:Had some ugly flaws (Score:3, Informative)
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.
other players (Score:4, Informative)
(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 instead (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cheaper price (Score:3, Informative)
FYI, a very useful place to go before ordering from a mail order or internet place is Reseller Ratings [resellerratings.com]. Newegg is one of the highest rated general computer components places, and it is based on thousands of reviews, so is a pretty reliable rating.
Reseller Ratings is particularly useful when considering ordering from a place listed at Pricewatch [pricewatch.com]. The vendors listed at pricewatch range from great to total sleazebags that I would not order from even if their price was half anyone else's and included shipping and a blow job from the UPS person.
Re:Very, very buggy. (Score:5, Informative)
It also fixes the gapless issues, the ethernet transfer issues, etc.
Re:Non music files? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:UK release dates? (Score:3, Informative)
They weren't available instantly because of localisation and packaging issues. The software is developed here in Cambridge, UK
Re:neuros have had the same features for a while (Score:1, Informative)
It also supports encoding in MP3, and WAV
Some people are just uninformed!
Re:neuros have had the same features for a while (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, quite a bit of development is ongoing on all fronts, firmware, hardware, etc. You've seen and will continue to see enhancements. Don't believe the rumors!
Joe Born
Founder and CTO, Digital Innovations
Re:neuros have had the same features for a while (Score:1, Informative)