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."
why no AAC? (Score:2, Interesting)
OGG (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:why no AAC? (Score:3, Interesting)
just becasue Apple DRMs AAC does not mean that AAC is DRMed. hell, you can DRM an MP3 if you like, all you need to do is encript it which is what Apple does. you can DRM an OGG or a FLAC file too.
Made for right-handed people (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a thought. -- and I'm not even left-handed.
20GB is not enough! (Score:3, Interesting)
Battery? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Rio Riot is not too big either (Score:3, Interesting)
features I'm looking for (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Joystick? MAME? (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to play Space Invaders while I rock out to 70's supergroup Foreigner.
Re:my god. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to spend money on a service plan, I want the original company backing up this thing. I realize that is somewhat difficult in the age of rebadges but the principle still holds, IMO.
Had some ugly flaws (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:iRiver ihp-120 (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey drivelikejehu...hopefully you'll see this reply...
You said you own this iRiver iHP-120 gizmo. I've got a test I'd love for you to run:
Rip two songs from a live album that are back-to-back (i.e. the second track starts while there's crowd noise) and encode them in Ogg. Alternatively, record two connecting songs from a progressive rock artist (like Dream Theater's Erotomania/Voices/Silent Man)...the point is, the two tracks should play one after the other with no gap or pop. MP3 format (or others) won't work.
Then load it on the iHP-120 and play them. Could you post the results or email them to me? I'm at ckimyt [at] yahoo [dot] com. I really want to buy a player that handles this condition correctly...i.e. plays the audio seamlessly (Ogg format supports exact sample length coding).
Thanks in advance for any help...
Call BS all you want... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Here's where to get some tunes for your new player (Score:5, Interesting)
- Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads [goingware.com]
It has been Google's #1 hit for the query legal music downloads [google.com] 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:
For all you tech hardware geeks... (Score:1, Interesting)
Uses same processor as iPod(ARM DM7) except that the Karma actually has two running as SMP which allows for the dynamic/on-the-fly updating of playlists, EQ settings etc.
Re:For all you tech hardware geeks... (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPod also runs multi-CPU... it just has less features