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!

FYI rio has really bad quality control

[spacerodent]

I bought a RIO nitrus and had it's hard drive fail within 2 weeks of purchase. I had it replaced 3 times over the next few months and none of the models lasted more than a month when all they did was ride in my back pack as I walked to class. Recently I bought one of the new Rio Forges and it also has problems. Despite being sold as a "sport" model it shuts down regularly during use and Rio refuses to admit any problem with the design despite several pages of experiences just like mine on their forums. I strongly discourage anyone from buying Rio products without an extended warrenty. Here is a good forums to read about Rio products: http://www.rioworld.org/yabbse/index.php?board=16

Rio Karma

[lintocs]

These things are crap... Everyone I know who bought one has returned it at least once because of the 1" HD "hard locking". One friend has been through 5 units so far, with the average lifespan being 7-10 days per unit.

I haven't heard similar things about the iPod (anyone?), but I suspect it's the 1" HDs that are to blame, rather than the design of the unit housing them.

Rio Good Karma

[saundo]

I own one of these beasts too.

The number one thing that I love about this device is the Rio DJ - Entertain me! function. What it does is looks at the most played tracks in a certain time period (15 minutes to everything on the Karma) and then plays a random mix of them. Awesome!

The second best thing is the crossfade feature under the Equalizer function. It basically makes a nice seamless mix of music that fades in and out of each track.

Battery life is great! I regularly get 10hrs of music out of it.

The only downsides I've discovered are that the little stick selector is flimsy, and the ethernet port is very flaky when it comes to working with switches. Neither my D-Link or Netgear 10/100 switches work with it, so I have resorted to loading the Windows software to load music.

My review of the Karma.

[Kenja]

I also got a Rio Karma within the last month. I had been looking at these things for about a year but was waiting for someone to make a case for the sang things prior to buying one. Now Vaja leather has a 75$ case (nice looking) so I took the plunge. Right when I got the thing I updated the firmware, say what you will about Rio at least they keep the updates comming. The sound quality is great and the software is very nice. It supports MP3, OGG, WMA and FLAC formats (the Windows software includes rippers for all formats) somthing that no digital audio player sporting more then a gig should be without (FLAC format with 20GB storage is great). Battery life for me is around 12hours, but I've not yet fully conditioned the battery (you need to fully charge and discharge it five times says the manual). The dock is interesting, but without a way to controll playback via the net I dont see the point since USB 2.0 is faster then 100base-t for transfering songs. Have I said that the audio quality is stunning? Well it is, the five bad EQ qorks great and with +-95db range music sounds very good for a portable system (the packed ear buds suck). This feels like the audiophiles MP3 player.

Reliability

[jackjumper]

I've had one of these for almost a year now. I use it exclusively for playing oggs and exclusively with Linux. It works really well. I've got about 1300 songs on it, almost all encoded at 360kpbs. Sounds fantastic.

I have had a couple of freezeups and various glitches but they all have been minor and have been resolved by either a reset (the paper clip) or powering it off and then on.

I really like that I can use it with Linux and that it uses ethernet connectivity. (BTW: It's not that bad setting a static IP address - takes about 2 minutes)

One question: Where's the "developer's site on the internet" for the java transfer software? Would it be so hard to include a link?

Not the First Rio HD Unit.

[stuffman64]

The Rio Riot [everythingusb.com] was the first HD unit by Rio. I own one myself, and it was a terrific audio device until a mishap with a homebrew car docking cradle fried the system board. I attempted to fix it, but when it was apart, I accidently tore the thin plastic LCD connector (which had its "grain" perpendicular to the conductors, and thus tore in a way I can't repair). I really miss it for music, but the good side is that I now have a decent battery for "projects" and a 20-GB harddrive which I am trying to mate with my Sharp Zaurus SL-C860 PDA.

Sonic Blue, however, is horrible with support. They released very few software updates, and the device only worked with MusicMatch Jukebox. But the interface was awesome, and the sound quality was quite good for a portable unit.

Sound Quality & Scary Lockups

[Malchized]

Myself and 2 friends all have the Karma, and have all experinced the scarry lockup. But amazingly, they seem to work fine in spite of this strange phenomenon (I've had mine for almost a year now).

The sound quality is great, that's the main reason I went with the Karma. I believe the signal/noise ratio is 95 (higher than iPod). Just make sure you play Oggs and Flacs to take advantage of it. This also was the only player that supported Flacs at the time I purchased.

Love it

[xyloplax]

I love my Karma. Would I trade it for an IPod? You betcha. But I am a technology whore, so discount that.

Pros:
Good sound. Nice equalizer function. Easy to use PC GUI. It fits great in my hand. The controls are very easy to use. It's cheaper than an IPod. Jog dial makes life easy. Big, easy to read screen. Long battery life.

Cons:
Can hang or crash on occasion if you put it in your pocket and you walk fast like me. Battery is non-replaceable. Faint, slight hiss in the background (regardless of format). No random per band or per album. Flaky ethernet port.

I do not regret my purchase. I can live with the cons.

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[ProfaneBaby]

I own one of these little devices, and I'm very unhappy with the harddrive performance. Not only does it suck battery life while playing, the drive performance seems to suffer after a while - I can't tell if it's fragmentation from being nearly full, or running while the battery slowly drains is causing hardware failures. The sound, though, remains decent. The multiple formats are nice. The software is actually quite good. It's not the type of player where you throw it out after you buy it because it's garbage, but you may want to think carefully before purchasing it.

iRiver H120

[AndyCampbell]

I did plenty of research into MP3 players over the summer, and arrived at a purchase of an iRiver H120 (previously IHP-120) instead of the equivalent iPod or Karma units. It has a 20GB hard drive, inline remote with full functionality, microphone for recording, fm radio reception, supports MP3 and OGG, long battery life (16 hours or so), works as a mass storage device (no iTunes or other custom software to upload music, can be used easily as a file transfer unit), and pretty decent firmware. Essentially, it's the best hardware on the market, although I'm not sure if they're being sold anymore - iRiver seems to be pimping the H300 series now instead. Comparatively, the iPod has a severe lack of functionality, and the Karma was getting a terrible reputation for hard drive failures, so my choice was pretty clear.

The firmware has a few deficiencies, like a lack of gapless playback and a true random shuffle, and the iRiver firmware developers seem to have other priorities. Rockbox has chosen the H100 series as its next toy, since the Archos boxes are no longer available, so hopefully we'll have some nice open-source firmware to play with soon enough. Rockbox has refused to touch the Rio and iPod because of the built-in DRM chips that have no published specs.

Not much confidence, but still a good player.

[LiberalApplication]

Regarding the lockups, this is a pretty well known issue, and my Karma itself has locked up a few times, but the whack-and-smack solution is just as well known and is surprisingly effective. It's mentioned here:

http://forums-riovolution.com/index.php?showtopic= 4109 [forums-riovolution.com]

Basically, you have to whack the unit hard enough that it turns itself off and restarts. Sure, it's unsettling and even embarassing if you have to sit there in a rush-hour subway train spanking a lump of plastic for ten minutes, but it works. And the strangest part of it all: each time you spank it into submission, it will be a significantly longer period of time before it crashes again. After the fourth and last spanking session, it hasn't locked up once in the past five months.

As for the upside, it has several nice features. The author of the review failed to mention one of the highlights of the Karma-dock's ethernet jack - that it can be used to communicate with any computer that can run Java apps. This turns out to be great, because while the management software can only be installed on windows machines, the Java applet that the Karma serves up via HTTP can be run on Linux and OSX machines. When I get into the office (which is a primarily Mac environment), I just drop it into its cradle, have it DHCP-obtain an IP address (an automatic procedure), fire up the applet from my Power Mac, and I'm free to manage it.

On the usability side, I've been extremely pleased with the Karma. I never quite understood why all of the manufacturers have banded behind Apple's design of placing the display above the main control cluster. It results in the center of gravity being above your hand, making the device much more likely to slip or be knocked out of your grasp. On the Karma, the controls are placed above the display, so that your thumb wraps around the Karma's upper edge and the entirety of its mass is cradled in the palm of your hand. It might look counterintuitive, but I think that's largely because all of the other players out there have the scheme reversed.

The firmware is nice, with three user-adjustable 3-band EQ settings slots that you can flip through to best suit the genre of music you're listening to at the time. The main "menu" button on its face can be customized to drop you at one of several menu levels. For example, if you tend to select music by genre, the main menu button can be set to take you right there instead of to the root level menu. The GUI is consistently themed throughout, and while not as minimal as the iPod's, is not aesthetically offensive. One feature I found very cute was the ability to set the play screen (which you'll be looking at 90% of the time) to be dominated by a pair of mostly useless but amusingly retro-styled VU meters. Unlike the iPod, the Karma *IS* capable of gapless playback, which is great if you listen to a lot of mixed compilations or live performances.

I have only two gripes personally with the unit:
1) The setting for "shuffle"/"normal" playback is buried several levels deep in the menu system.
2) The unit has a 4pin jack next to its headphone jack which is obviously intended for an in-line remote control, but no such item exists. Pooh.

HTH in your buying decisions.

Microsoft DRM Enabled

[thepod]

"...is OS-agnostic"

...not hardly. It requires Windows-based drivers to access the device as a regular hard drive for non-music files (unless someone's hacked it for Linux).

Microsoft makes this a requirement for any device that is licensed to play Microsoft DRMed music.

Besides, isn't this review like, two years too late?

Solutions

[GarfBond]

If the OP only has linux machines at home, chances are he didn't apply the necessary firmware patches.

While the unit does have a history of locking up, this was both a problem of between the Hitachi drive's firmware and the Karma's firmware. As of FW 1.25 (I believe) Rio believes they have completely solved problems from their end. Thus, if you have a fully updated Karma and the drive is still flaking out, it's probably Hitachi's fault (still Rio's fault for choosing Hitachi, but at least you know what's going on).

Firmware upgrades are regrettably only upgradeable through USB using Windows. However, once you update the firmware yourself, Rio Music Manager Lite (the java version mentioned) works perfectly fine through Ethernet, and is quite nice actually. The latest firmware available is v1.68, obtainable from the Karma support site [digitalnetworksna.com]. As a review though, this kinda sucked because it doesn't mention other niceties of the Karma. Battery life is rated at about 15 hours (12 if you use oggs exclusively). Gapless playback is possible with LAME-ripped MP3s and all Oggs. The karma is perfectly capable of using DHCP, not sure why the reviewer wanted to go through the hassle of a static assignment.

Riovolution [riovolution.com] is a great site for Rio owners, containing FAQs and a useful Forum. In fact, Rio employees post on the website from time to time, though obviously in an unofficial manner. That site was the originator of the "smack your karma" solution if you ran into the same problem as the user above did (short reason: sticky hard drive. Check the FAQs).

Personally, I love my Karma. I got it at Bestbuy with warranty in case it died, so I don't have to worry about that. I have yet to experience ANY hard drive issues (upgraded the firmware as the first thing I did), and it's been working great so far. I've been using it for about 5 months now with no problems. My personal rating of the product would be 6-7/10 because of the reliability issues with the product (new units don't seem to be bad, but it's hard to get accurate numbers). Without reliability problems I'd give it a 9/10.

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[radish]

Yes, a terrible review. This is my list of "why I bought it over an iPod", from a previous post of mine. Note, I bought my Karma nearly a year ago (it's an old product) and if/when it dies I'll buy another - it works great for me.

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.

To answer your specific points:

Sound Quality - Excellent
Battery Life - Excellent
User Interface - Very flexible. Some would say overly complex, I like it.
Build Quality - Reasonable. It's a plastic & rubber shell, the front screen scratches easily. There have been anecdotal reports of some parts being rather fragile (the scroll wheel for example) but I've not had any problems and I don't exactly baby it.

the geek's mp3 player IMNSHO

[loraksus]

Sort of off topic, but a Archos jukebox recorder can be had for a bit over a hundred bucks, 20gb, has digital in / out, mounts like a hdd under any o/s, charges off a usb cable or wall-wart and uses a standard usb cable (the mini b "camera" one). Oh yeah, it can record via a built in mic or an external.
It also has a open source firmware called rockbox.
( http://www.rockbox.org/ ) and you really can't find a battery powered portable 20 GB drive for the price.

My only bitch is that the randomize feature could use a little work. Kinda looks ugly, but to me (college student) spending $200 to get a nice white ipod is, well, better spent on food and liqour.

Can't play .ogg, but why would I want to re-encode all my music?

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[rpdillon]

Well, he comes right out and EXPLAINS why you'd buy this over an iPod - he only runs Linux. Last I checked, iPods weren't doing much of anything under Linux. Besides, iPods don't play Ogg, this does.

His fault for buying full price...I got mine for $199. He mentions it "felt solid", and, well, it does.

Don't know how you can complain about size: its no new-gen iPod, but it's comparable to the first generation size, and people didn't complain much about that. I carry it all over. Hell, its 1/4 the size of a portable CD player, and people carry those too. I'm holding mine now, and I just measured it: 2 3/4in x 2 3/4in x 7/8in - OK I don't care who you are, that simply isn't "bulky". It's no iPod-mini, but iPod-mini is more expensive and holds 1/5 the songs this does, and doesn't work under Linux.

I've had mine for 6 months and I've never had a lock up problem. I upgraded the firmware when I bought mine though, and he didn't mention that he did. I've spent a lot of time with mine too - transferred over 15gigs of stuff to it and its never showed signs of locking.

Agree the review could have been more thorough, though.

Not a firmware problem

[sydb]

No, from my understanding (I own a Karma, and I spent about three months reading pretty much every post on the Karma forums) the problem is with the hard disk; sometimes (rarely, it's never happened to me) surface tension can prevent the disk spinning up after a spin down.

Banging the Karma releases the surface tension. Rio deny this (they say they can't reproduce the problem) but if it's not a problem with the hard disk then I'd like to hear the alternatives (I don't buy your ideas that it "produces a good error" or "knocks the firmware out of it's loop", sorry!)

The Karma is by no means perfect but:

* The sound is great
* OGG, FLAC
* No DRM
* Nice DJ features
* Nice interface
* Ethernet
* Great battery life
* It's not a poncy, proprietary and expensive iPod.

If they could fix the stability issues, and add:

* USB Mass Storage support (for USB2 Linux connectivity)
* Remote control over Ethernet (sit comfy and control what songs play from my laptop or PDA)
* A record function

then

* Make it smaller
* Make it cheaper
* Fit an even bigger hard disk

it would be perfect.

Is that a better review than the story? Mod me up.

Not the first Rio HD player

[dschuetz]

I believe it is Rio's first HDD-based player

Their first HD-based MP3 player was the Rio Riot. I bought one of those a couple of years ago on eBay for about 2/3 list, and love it. However, I rarely use it any longer because of a) low battery life, b) absolutely impossible to get music onto the damned thing, and c) I now have XM.

Aside from the above-mentioned drawbacks, what I really loved about the Riot was the interface. It had the standard by song, by artist, and by genre selections. But you could also build your own playlists (we've done that on long trips, on the fly), it also can play random selections from your most-played songs, least-played songs, or even just fill X number of minutes with random music.

Unfortunately, it was only USB-1, and required a screwed-up version of iTunes or MusicMatch to get songs onto the unit. Right now I really want to remove all the music and start over, but it's just too difficult to bother with. :(

Even the iPod, from what I understand, doesn't do this quite "right". All I want is a fast interface (USB2 or FW), that shows up as a hard drive, and let me drag songs and playlists on/off as I like. let the box periodically re-index its database, rather than doing it as I transfer songs (as every other device seems to do).

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that this wasn't Rio's first HD unit. And that I still like their software better than the iPod's. Give me iPod-quality hardware with improved Rio software, and I'll go back to MP3s in a heartbeat.

Re:Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

http://rmml.dev.java.net

I have one too...

[BLKMGK]

I have one and it's not a firmware issue with the lockups near as I can tell - it's vibration! I have a riding mower, if I take my Karma on that thing for evena short mowing session it locks up. It cannot be shut off, it makes awful sounds, and you have to use the paperclip thing to shut it off. Just as the reviewer discovered - it will not boot up properly afterwards! The solution, as he discovered, is to smack it. I do this on edge in an attempt to help spin the drives as I believe the heads are somehow stuck. Sure enough this fixes it! So far I've only had to do this 2 or 3 times thankfully!

That said - the unit is terrific when it's not being bounced around or vibrated. I use it on travel in airplanes and hooked to my stereo in the garage in it's cradle. Battery life is excellent on plane rides and in my garage I've probably put a couple hundred hours worth of playing into it. I've not yet come close to filling it's drive up but have also not taken much time slecting music (I've got over 130Gig). I do NOT like the interface software to the device, it's not a simple drive letter that I can copy music over to thank you RIAA. If it were I'd have already put much more music on it I'm sure. The software isn't bad, it's just not that great and it insists on indexing my music first which with over 100Gigs takes FOREVER and has caused the software to fail a time or two. My solution is to point it at a folder with only the music I want to transfer over - this multi-step process is why I have so little (about 2gig) music on it .

I've not looked lately for software updates or firmware upgrades but their update process isn't too bad in my experience. What I'd REALLY like, but haven't found, is a WEB interface that would allow me to remotely control the device over the network. Perhaps I'm blind but it seems to me such an interface would be a really good idea considering the silly thing is IP enabled. I've just nto spent too much time loking and havespent more time listening to it I guess (lol). If anyone has found software like this or can point out a feature I've overlooked that allows this I'm all ears!

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[Senjutsu]

Well, he comes right out and EXPLAINS why you'd buy this over an iPod - he only runs Linux. Last I checked, iPods weren't doing much of anything under Linux.

When [sourceforge.net] was the [gnu.org] last time [sourceforge.net] you [structbench.com] checked [sourceforge.net]?

"It plays Oggs" doesn't exactly make up for the "It suffers from a well known and widespread flaw that forces the user to beat the crap out of it in hopes that it will correct itself and not die under the pummeling" angle.

Long time Karma Owner

[brianerst]

I've owned a Karma for about a year, and it definitely has its place in the world of HDD-based players.

Pros

Plays Ogg, FLAC, MP3 and WMA. Everything I own is in Ogg and FLAC (rip everything with EAC) and until recently, the Karma was the only HDD that supported both.

Gapless playback (important for mixes). I don't know of any other player that has it. iPod has very short gaps ( Long battery time. I routinely get 10-12 hours playing Ogg. MP3 and FLAC time are longer (less CPU intense).

Good community/developer support [riovolution.com]. The forums there have been great (recently, there's been a bit of a flame war regarding the next-gen Karma).

5-band parametric equalizer. The sound out of this thing is great, and the equalizer is very good.

Good firmware/user interface. It's very easy to edit playlists, select music, change equalizer settings, etc. There have been at least 4 firmware updates since release (one of them adding gapless support for Ogg).

Size. I like the square form factor - it's very pocketable. Wish it were a bit less thick.

Cons

Iffy build quality. Two big problems: HDD lockups and broken scroll wheels. I've had both (had to replace the unit on the scroll wheel, did the "thump on a desk" fix for the HDD lockup), but I also think the hardware issues have been somewhat overstated. I've had iPods die too - I think it's somewhat par for the course with first-generation HDD players. I expect the next-gen Karma to be a little tougher.

Scroll wheel. I don't like it. It's prone to breaking and it's a little awkward. You can mostly ignore it except for playlist editing. The nipple works fine for most day-to-day stuff.

Have to use Rio Taxi/Rio Music Manager to move music/files to and from the device. The latest version of Windows Media and WinAMP can see the Karma, but the Karma still suffers from a lack of MSC support. Historically, it's proprietary database format has made it a lot faster, but everyone is moving to MSC.

The biggest issue with the Karma right now is that Rio is rather obviously get ready to release its successor (the Chroma) but they are being incredibly secretive. The developers have dropped out of the Karma forums for the most part and no new firmware has been discussed for a while. I think most everyone expects that once the Chroma is delivered, its firmware will be backported to the Karma to add MSC support, but there is no guarantee. The developers mentioned MSC in upcoming Karma firmware, so it's pretty safe to assume it will eventually come. The Chroma will probably look much like the Carbon (good bye nipple, hello d-pad) and hopefully will have a slightly lower-profile and tougher scroll wheel like the Carbon.

I like the Karma a lot and am eagerly awaiting the Chroma. But I will compare it against the iAudio M5 and iRiver products. Right now, those come up a little short on the features I use the most, but they've been getting better each generation. If Rio doesn't come out with a next-gen soon, iRiver and iAudio will pass it by. iPod/iTunes is nice, but I don't want/need FairPlay/AAC or crappy MP3. I want my Ogg/FLAC!

Re:From the next-article-please dept.

[timster]

the iPod works great under Linux. USB is plug-and-go since it's just a Mass Storage device. To load songs on you have to use a program to manage the database but that just runs in userspace. gtkpod is pretty full-featured and GNUpod is great for shell junkies.

The thing does come formatted HFS+ but the included Windows software allows you to reformat it as FAT. Linux supports both though most people find it easier to use FAT. It's also possible to reformat it manually from Linux though that's a little bit tricky.

Note that this is 3rd-gen iPods... previous models only supported Firewire and HFS+ so they were a little harder to use under Linux (but people did it anyway).

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... actually you can import CDs that need to be 'gapless' using iTunes. It's hidden away in the interface, but it is totally possible. I have several DJ mix cds that I have imported as one track, and other CDs where I have spanned a few tracks where they were beatmixed togther/were supposed to be played back to back.

Karma review vs iPod

[lorloff]

I have a Karma. I have had it for a little more than 2 months. My first one had a bad hard drive, but my second one has been fine. I also have access to an iPod, so I will compare to that, as iPod's are very popular.

Plusses of Karma, wma, ogg, and flac support.
iPod only has mp3 and propriatary aac formats

Power on/off. Power on is slow to load the OS. iPod is instant on. Power off can be set at different intervals depending on usage. I set it at 15 minutes. Enough to run in and out of a store if in the car, or go to the can and grab a drink at work.

Battery live. Very impressive. 14 or so hours. ipod is at best 8.

Control. Good, menu button, control dial.
Bad, wheel. I haven't really found a use other than scrolling through a playlist.

Software. If you have windows, I like the Rio Music manager much better than iTunes. Better interface. Also, it does not auto synch like the iPod does.

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

Re:Reliability

[Peter H.S.]

What encoding procedure do you use? And do you know how to change the bitrate settings for whatever that encoding program is that's embedded in Konqueror?

Try type "kcontrol" in a terminal. Choose "Sound & Multimedia" -> "Audio CD's -> "Ogg Vorbis settings".
Choose 'Bitrate based' Encoding Method, if you want to set a hard minimum and maximum bitrate.

My review....

[Rageon]

My opinion of the Karma is this....buy an iPod.

I just had my third one die in the past 6 months. One broke falling off a chair on to a carpeted floor. It's flimsy. The damn scroll wheel tends to get pushed in, and it breaks.

My friend's OLD iPod has been dropped onto concrete dozens of times, and goes along on jogs all the time. Zero complaints on it.

Oh yeah, the Karma randomly locks up like crazy.

If you buy one, BUY THE EXTENDED WARRANTY

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[bzzt]

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).

wrong. the archos jukebox with the free, open source rockbox [rockbox.haxx.se] firmware has supported gapless playback for years.

apple and most car mp3 head unit manufacturers can't figure this out. it is a show stopper for me.

the archos doesn't have a problem with not turning off - the opposite, it turns off unexpectedly sometimes. similar problem, but doesn't require smacking it hard enought to interrupt power (holy shit show stopper).

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[primal39]

Having owned one of these devices since last christmas, let me offer my own two cents:

The battery life is awesome. I get an easy 12 hours of run time out of my karma between charges.

The built-in DJ funtion is unparalled. The ability to generate random playlists, or playlists based upon id3 criteria (such as decade, genre), playlists based on most listened to, least listened to, not recently listened to, etc.. all from the player itself just blows away all the competition.

The network integration is a nice feature, which the OP does mention. I also think that having lite-yet-fully-function java version of the software built into the player is a great and useful add on (simply browse to the ip and you can download the software right from the Karma). Plus, the included dock does this cool pulse thing when the karma is docked :-)

The price point on this thing is just right. I got mine on sale for $280 last christmas, while the MSRP is a little higher is still beats the price of the ipod at the same capacity (20 GB)

Audio format support: This thing supports ogg, mp3, wav, flac, and probably more that I am too lazy to go look up.

I do agree that the player is a little bulky, at least in the dimension of width. Were it a little narrower I would say that it is perfect, but it is nowhere near as unwieldy as was my first hd-based player, the Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20.

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Re:Love it

[rbenech]

> No random per band or per album.

Did you try having the shuffle on and select a band (artist)? Or album? I'm pretty sure that does what you want.

Re:Does not inspire confidence

[diamondsw]

Of course, most of the "playlists" you mentioned are accomplished by the browse function on an iPod. By and large, allowing the creation of playlists on the device itself is cumbersome at best, which is why Apple mostly avoids it.

Re:All that for only $299?

[kmudrick]

I recently traded in my Karma for an iPod (yay for the Best Buy extended warranty), so I have some experience using both the iPod and the Karma under linux. Remember, the Karma is not "officially" supported under linux either! Rio Music Manager Lite is okay for usage, and the author updates it often, but honestly, I've found gtkpod much much better (stability-wise, feature-wise) for transferring to and from the ipod.

::nodding::

[Ayanami Rei]

MP3s are not designed to be gapless. There's only two frame sizes, and you're screwed if the end of one song doesn't coincide with the end of a frame... the encoder will have guessed as to what the rest of it should be filled (probably silence).

There's basically one way to handle it. You encode the exact length of the decoded song in samples into extended ID3 tags. LAME started doing this and all the major software players and the Karma (specifically) can read these tags, and thus know exactly when to cut that last frame short and stick in the first frame of the next track.

All the other formats define the handling of this detail in the format itself.