Rating: 
Summary: The Truth About The Rio Karma
Review: I've owned a Rio Karma for about two months now, and I'm overwhelmingly happy with it. I thought I should write a review, since a lot of the reviews here on Amazon have some false information, and should be corrected.
First, I'll name the positives:
* 20 gigabytes of hard drive space.
* 15 hour battery life (that's almost twice the iPod's).
* A wide variety of audio formats: MP3, WMA, FLAC (an open source lossless format, basically a WAV file at half the size), and OGG Vorbis (an open source lossy format. Smaller file size than MP3, higher audio quality).
* Superior audio quality to most other players. In professional reviews, it's usually a battle for best sound quality with the Karma and Creative's players.
* The Sennheiser MX300 earbuds that come stock have suprisingly good sound.
* Highly customizable equalizer. 5 preset modes, along with 3 custom modes. It has a 5 band parametric equalizer, along with auto gain control (to keep songs dynamically similar).
* VERY quick button response time. You'll never find yourself waiting for a menu to load, and songs start IMMEDIATELY after you tell them to (It's a shame that most other players can't do that).
* On-the-fly playlist creating, editing, saving, and deleting. Very easy to do if you want to put a playlist together quickly.
* Rio DJ. The Karma keeps track of which songs you listen to and can create a playlists according to what you like. It can also, for instance play songs from a certain decade, or even songs that you haven't listen to for a long time.
* Bookmarking. If you listen to very long tracks, such as audiobooks, you can set a mark in it and come back later.
* Crossfade. The crossfade will allow songs to flow into each other very nicely.
* Gapless Playback. If you listen to live CDs or bands that have gapless albums (like Pink Floyd) you'll love this. This will get rid of gaps between songs. Follow this link to learn more about gapless and how well it works: http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/
* USB 2.0 and Ethernet support. The Karma can be used on any operating system that supports networking. You can put the Karma on your network and access it from any other computer connected.
* Dock. The dock for the Karma has RCA output, so you can easily hook it up to your stereo system. The dock also can pulse with the music.
* The Karma comes with all the cables you need - Ethernet, USB 2.0, RCA, AC adapter.
* Auto-synchronization of music files. You can tell the Karma to update itself with new music every time it plugs in. Also, if you have a collection that is over 20 gigabytes, you can have it automatically swap files around, keeping songs you play a lot on the player.
* Ergonomic design fits comfortably in your hand, and the controls are all very easy to access with one hand. For some, the controls have a steeper learning curve than other players, but after a few hours you realize how easy it is to use. Your hands will thank you.
* Deatiled information about each track. Along with all the usual MP3 tags, the Karma will tell you the codec, bitrate, date loaded, times played, and last time played.
* Very active user-discussion forum at http://www.riovolution.com , where a handfull of Rio engineers come by and answer some questions. If you have any questions, there are plenty of people there that would be more than happy to answer them.
* Most importantly, the Karma gets somewhat-frequent firmware updates with bug fixes and new features. New firmware (1.68) was just released two days before I'm writing this, and it fixed pretty much every problem that people have been having.Now, I have to point out that there ARE flaws that should be taken into consideration. * There have been a slightly above average number of reports of hard drive failures. The Karma uses the same Hitachi drive as the Dell Jukebox, which is also having problems. I, personally have not had any problem, and neither have a lot of other people, but there is a risk. I would highly suggest buying a third party warranty to back you up in case of any problems. The Karma comes with a 90-day warranty, and the RMA process is a pain. A third party warranty is an excellent investment.
* The screen isn't scratch-proof. Look into getting a screen protector (there is someone on riovolution that is selling them for pretty cheap, or you can pick up a PDA screen protector at most electronics stores).
* Rio's customer service is terrible, but any answer you need can be found at riovolution.
* There is no remote or official playthrough case. There's only one playthough case available, created by a riovolution member, and can be found at http://mindknob.com . I, myself bought a Nintendo Gamecube disk case that the Karma fits perfectly in and protects very nicely.
* No "USB Mass Storage". When you plug the Karma into the computer, it's not seen as an external drive. On the other hand, it comes with some software than can transfer non-music files over. There is also a third-party company that develops some software available to do this. Overall, I think the pros GREATLY outweigh the cons. The Karma is the perfect player for audiophiles or someone who is looking for an awesome music playing machine. Please look into a third party warranty when buying this, or any other expensive device. Feel free to ask questions at the user discussion forums.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great player with some MAJOR problems
Review: OK, this player is obviously very very good. I did pretty extensive research before buying this player and came to the conclusion that this was the best player for my money (and it still may be). But when I actually got my player I was shocked to see that two very basic features were completely inadequate: the queue function and the shuffle. Let's start with the queue problem, this one is HUGE. To add items to your playlist you are given choices of artist, album, or track (also genre and year but who does this anyway), when you click on one you get a very cool menu that lets you cruise through the alphabet and stop at the number/letter you want, so far so good. But once you get into the artist, or album, or track list your only options are "play all tracks" or "play track" there is NO QUEUE option. This means that if you want to make a new playlist you have to go back and forth (and back and forth.....) between your playlist and your library, this is incredibly annoying. My previous mp3 player (the original Nomad jukebox) even had this feature. Ok, the next thing wrong is the shuffle. There are two choices, shuffle "on" or "off." That sounds fine, right? Well if you have ever used any other electronic device before you will be confused by the shuffle on this player. Instead of leaving the songs in the current order on the playlist and "shuffling" through them at random, the player actually visually shuffles the songs and then plays through them one by one. This would be acceptable except if you have two albums on the playlist they are shuffled seperately. So, you can not (underline not) shuffle between two albums. The mishandling of these two extremely basic features makes Rio a good but very flawed player. I would write about some of the good things about the player but, unfortunately, that is all that everyone else is writing about. So just read some of the other reviews for the good stuff. But if you want a player with the ability to queue and shuffle, maybe you should think twice about this player.
Rating: 
Summary: fat and chunky/hard to use at first
Review: for those who want style when it comes to mp3 players, this is definitely not for you. it is very fat and chunky and the black/silver outside is not as attractive as you might think. for those who dont care about that and just want more bang for your buck this is for you. 20g player for as low as 230 is very good...my first time using this i had a very very hard time figuring out what to do but i guess u catch on after a while
Rating: 
Summary: Nice Portable Player
Review: I recently bought this player. When I received it, I immediately downloaded the latest firmware (version 1.41) and software for it (version 2.61). I have had zero problems with it playing or transferring any of my audio files. A couple of things to note: I only play vorbis files with this player, and I have personally encoded all of my vorbis files from original CDs. All of my files were encoded using the latest released vorbis encoder (1.01) with quality setting 9. Most are 44kHz, but I have several encoded at 48kHz. The player handles them all with zero problems. The sound quality of this player is excellent. I do not like ear buds, so I use different headphones with the player. You want to be careful if you do use different headphones, because your batteries will drain fast if they require lots of power to drive them. Speaking of batteries, this would be one reason I did not give it five stars. I have no way of replacing the batteries in the player. If I am going on a very long trip, it would be ideal to take several batteries with me to continue listening to music. This is not an option with this player. The second reason I did not give it five stars is the poor manufacturer's warranty given for this player. It's only three months and not even a full year.
Rating:
Summary: This is the one !!!!!
Review: After looking at several players including the Creative Zen 30gb and the iRiver iHP-120... I settled on the Rio Karma.
Why?
The Karma has better sound quality and louder volume capability.
Battery life is better than others, in the 12-15 hour range depending on your file format and sound/volume settings.
Installation was a snap on Windows XP Home, I was up and running in about 10 minutes ! No setup glitches!
My setup includes a pair of Sennheiser PXC-250 noise cancelling headphones (I fly every week) and the resulting sound quality will blow you away!
Several mags have rated the Karma highly (the best in class) including a major tech review magazine and Rolling Stone magazine! Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Great player, needs more accessories
Review: Like many people who plan to buy a DAP, I started out planning to buy an iPod. They look pretty good I guess, and there are plenty of accessories ( cases, remote, extra docks etc) but what I really didn't like was the limited number of formats that play on them. I personally like WMA and many of the legal online stores only support this format...so after searching around I found the Karma. It plays a wide variety of formats, has a great interface, great sound quality ( better than the iPod ) and great battery life. It kind of sucks you can't yet get a remote or a Karma specific case ( this is changing though ), but those are my only real complaints. Yeah there have been reports of some flaky harddrives and scroll wheels, but I haven't experienced any of that. One big bonus with the Karma is the price, far cheaper than a similar size iPod, even if you factor in an extended warranty. All in all, a great buy, if you take care of it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Harddrive MP3 player
Review: First of all, this thing plays a nice selection of formats.. MP3, Ogg, and Flac.
Battery life is very good. greater than 12 hours for mp3 playback.
Copying songs to the unit is very fast over the USB2 connection, and its painless using the docking stationa and the included RIO software.
The sound produced by the RIO is top notch and the user interface is intuitive and a pleasure to use.
After comparing the different hard drive MP3 players out there, I decided that the Karma was easily the best for the money.
Rating:
Summary: ipod schmipod
Review: OK so the obvious comparison here is with the ipod. Let's get the negative out of the way first. It's not white, and the back isn't chrome, and when you mention what you just bought many people might not recognise the name. OK, now the good stuff. It's cheaper. It plays more formats - Vorbis & FLAC are both insanely great. The battery life is considerably better. It has ethernet on the dock, so it works with linux, mac, windows, whatever. The sound quality is better (to my ears). The support from the developers is amazing - lots of cool features being added all the time. This is the ONLY portable player to support gapless playback - this is a MUST for any dance music fans - how annoying is it when your ipod puts 1 second breaks between the tracks in your mix cds? There's more - much more - but don't take my word for it :) Best portable audio device on the market - period.
Rating:
Summary: One Week and LOVING IT
Review: I have owned my Rio Karma for a week now, and I can honestly say it is awesome. I use it at work, on the shop floor, and have no issues with skipping or not enough volume. Sound is clear and bright. I also use it at the gym, on the treadmill and resistance machines. It has not skipped one time. Software is user friendly, and very efficient. The menus on the Karma itself are easy to use, I love how quickly it moves between tracks, or any other command.
I have 2,500 plus tracks loaded, and still have over 13 GBs free space. The only thing I have found that I'm not crazy about, is when making playlists, to move a track up or down in the playing order, you must highlight the track, and use the arrow keys. One click on the arrow, and the track moves one space. Then it must be done all over again. But there my be something I'm missing. I didn't spend alot of time on that feature.
I have two friends with Ipods and one with the Napster, and I can say the Karma the best of the three. I bought it at Best Buy, with the two year replacement coverage. I like it so much I'm learning to sew so I can make a case.
Rating:
Summary: Best Features for the Best Price for the Best DAP out there
Review: Many of the early negative reviews for this item came out before the actual item did. Can we say "iPOD owners"? Seriously, This little Digital Audio Player has the best feature set at the best price. Near audiophile sound quality with the capability of supporting FLAC. Had this item over 3 months now and it works great. Awesome battery life even while using the more processor intensive vorbis decoding. Have it constantly playing without need of charge for 2 or 3 workdays. Extremely ergonomic and practically the only DAP that supports gapless playback! Most people ignore this function until they've actually experienced this player!
|
