A pretty recent review (May 10, 2002)

I'm considering buying one finally and came across this review. It actually has some pictures other than that same low-res one everyone is using. One question I have though... How loud is this thing (hard drives, fans, etc.)?

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9481439159.html

The only noise it makes is from its single hard drive. The fan never kicks in on mine (unit never gets hot enough to activate the fan unless it's 100 degrees in the room with it).

The hard drive itself is reasonably quiet, but not 100 percent silent. It's only audible at the quietest music listening levels. Assuming you're even in the same room with the thing, it's mainly a server for me, the only time it gets used for direct in-the-same-room audio for me is for working out on the treadmill, and at that time the music is cranked.

If you're burning a sizable CD collection it'll kick on. I've been burning for about two to three hours nonstop now and the fan is definately on. But, even with the fan on it is still very quiet.

If you have a sizeable CD collection and want to rip at a high rate you may want to consider upgrading the HD before you even get started (providing you are willing to sacrifice your warranty). The dinky 40GB drive to me is a joke when drives up to 160GB are now available. Get you a 120gig Maxtor and you'll be happy.

Jerz

Oh yeah, if you're going to order one now don't worry about the message on the site that says "next shipment due in soon". I called and asked before I ordered mine a week and a half ago and the guy told me that they were building them to order. Mine came within two days (of course I requested next day air).

Overall (and I've got my complaints) it is an awesome piece of equipment.

Jerz

Thanks Tony. It's good to know that the fan only operates when needed. I doubt I will ever rip a CD (let alone hours worth of CDs) on it.

As for the hard drive, like my Tivo, when I eventually upgrade it I will use one of the Maxtors with the fluid bearings. That drive is the best thing I've ever done to my Tivo. It is dead silent.

OK, I'm not trying to be a smartass here but when I said I was ripping my CD's I meant that I was recording them from the CDRW to the Hard Drive.

That said, why would you buy this thing in the first place if you didn't have an extensive CD collection?

Secondly, why would it matter how noisy the drive is (and the maxtor 120GB is pretty quiet) since the only time the drive should be running is when you're playing or recording music (this is an assumption here) in which case it wouldn't matter anyway because you'd have the volume turned up (to hear the music of course). It's not like a replay or tivo that constantly keeps the drive going because it's constantly recording.

And I WISH that it *only* took hours to rip my CD's to the HD; more like days. Of course, I could have opted to copy them via a slow lan connection at 128kbps (since I had most of the cd's recorded already) but I opted for the highest quality 320kbps (it should sound better than 128kbps right?) and 96kbps portable (to feed my ?riot? and rio 800).

Cheers!

Jerz

OK, I'm not trying to be a smartass here but when I said I was ripping my CD's I meant that I was recording them from the CDRW to the Hard Drive.

Yes, I know.

That said, why would you buy this thing in the first place if you didn't have an extensive CD collection?

My CD collection is already ripped. Also, any CD I get in the future will be ripped on my computer.

Currently, I am using a Rio Receiver streaming tunes off a server wirelessly located on top of my refridgerator. Check it out here. This setup is not that elegant (ok, ok, it's ugly). Using the Rio Central would eliminate the need for a music server and solve the crappy display problem with the Rio Receiver.

Secondly, why would it matter how noisy the drive is

Hard drive access noise doesn't bother me. Motor noise does. Because the Central is not in a car like the empeg, I assume it doesn't spin-down the hard drive when not being accessed. So, if the Central is on, I would imagine the hard disk is spinning. The whistling of a noisy hard drive makes me go crazy.

Because the Central is not in a car like the empeg, I assume it doesn't spin-down the hard drive when not being accessed. So, if the Central is on, I would imagine the hard disk is spinning.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that part.

The hard disk does spin down, much like the one in the car player. It's only spinning while actively serving up music.

OK, I thought you were crazy but I can hear the motor running now on the drive when it is not playing since it is still compressing the cd's I fed it over the weekend. Forunately for me the noise is drowned out by my beer meistr so it doesn't bother me.

I ripped about 250cd's in the past few days at 320kbps and 96kbps portable and last night I was using 69% of the 112GB capacity. This morning it was down to 64%. Does anyone have an idea about how long it'll take the thing to finish up with all of the audio compression?

Wow, I've never had it take more than a couple hours to finish up all of its compression. Then again, I've never tried to feed it 250 CDs in a single sitting, I always did them in small batches of fewer than ten at a time.

Does the user interface (main menu) still work, and does it show the little turning gears?

Note that it should be reasonably safe to power-cycle the unit, even it it's encoding, if you think there's something going screwy with the software.

I'll let you know when *I think* it finishes. I assume the only way to really tell is when I play an mp3 it actually shows 320kbps instead of the 1411(or something like that). I checked a few songs and they were definately not compressed yet.

Yes, the user interface works fine. I haven't noticed if the gears on the main page were still turning this morning, but when you goto the "about" menu and scroll to the bottom it tells you that audio compression is in progress along with the % of used spaced and the total amount of space.

I assume the only way to really tell is when I play an mp3 it actually shows 320kbps instead of the 1411(or something like that).

No, the way to really tell is to look whether the gears are turning on the main screen. Those gears are the "compression in progress" indicator. When they disappear, the compression is done.

If it's still compressing after a day, I'd reboot the machine, assuming the encoder thread is locked up or something. If there's compression left to be done, it'll pick back up again after the reboot (as far as I know).

Well, after 20 hours of ripping my last CD the RIO Central is STILL compressing the Audio. I can hear it working and instead of 65% of the 112GB used this morning we are now down to 62%.

I don't think that I'll reboot because it seems to be working; just has a lot to compress.

Yes, it could be just that it has a lot to compress, that is a possibility.

It's also possible that the encoder thread has messed up and is out of RAM or something, in which case a reboot will significantly increase the speed....

...rebooting... (cold boot)

Let us know if that percentage drops any quicker.

...so the fan is on and it is still compressing (down to 61%). I guess the hard drive generates some heat when it is compressing.

...after 32hrs we are down to 56% / 112GB and still compressing, the fan is still on and FWIW I didn't put it in standby mode last night (that shouldn't make a difference anyway should it?).

I don't think standby mode should make a difference.

I'm just surprised to see it taking that long to compress, but like I said, I've never tried to feed it that much in a single sitting.

There's also the consideration that it's an aftermarket hard drive, although I don't see why that would be an issue other than the possibility that the new HD might generate a little more heat than the original.

Well, I did leave my receiver on all night with the Central sitting on top so that may contribute to the heat. I turned off the receiver and I'll check to see if the fan is still on when I get home.

Tony, he is also encoding lower rate files for a portable... I remember that you have that feature turned off....

Good point, but still, even when I had that feature turned on, I never remember it taking that long.

Keep in mind it doesn't encode while ripping (despite what the icon might tell you) so if he ripped a large number of CD's in one go, very little encoding would have taken place until he was done.

At that stage there is something in the region of 100GB of data to MP3 encode TWICE in the background. That's a good 40 to 50 hours at least, not including time taken out to rip or play back any other CD's in the interim.

I would have thought it should be about done by now, though.

Rob

Hmm, I'm impressed to see Jeff (my boss's boss) come out with all that. Actually I suspect you could search and replace "Jeff Hastings said" for "Hugo Fiennes said"

Rob

OK, the gears are still turning and we are now down to 50% / 112GB so it definately appears to be working I also can definately hear the hard drive working so, I don't think there is anything wrong; I just gave it a lot to eat; a workout for sure.

I think I'm using this thing like it should be and with the size drive that should be sold with it (for 1500bucks anyway) so, if all is well maybe you guys will consider a larger drive? 40GB to me is worthless. I'll admit I'm 36 and have collected my fair share of CD's over the years but having more space gives me an incentive to buy more cd's (the record companies would like to hear that).

Thanks for the feedback rob, but we've been going for *only* 43 hours now...why would you think it should be done by now if you think it would *at least* take 40 to 50 hours.

Another question, it appeared to stop compressing for about two minutes after I played a song it then started back up again. Does it stop compressing when I play something on the HD? Does it stop playing when emplode is running?

Thanks,

Jerz

It doesn't stop playing when emplode is running, although it will briefly stop at one point during the synchronization process if you do that (it has to reboot as part of the synch). I seem to recall that it refuses to connect to emplode while it's in the middle of compressing (and emplode tells you so if you try it) so you can only use Emplode when compression is finished. I think the thread priority of playback/serving is higher than compression, but I don't think it completely stops compressing during playback.

why would you think it should be done by now
..because I thought you had posted your last update earlier than you had.

Someone else can better answer your other questions - I believe Peter wrote most of the task priority magic.

Rob

Another question, it appeared to stop compressing for about two minutes after I played a song it then started back up again. Does it stop compressing when I play something on the HD?

It shouldn't stop, but it will be going slower, as playback (obviously) takes priority over compressing. The only things that pause compression completely are (i) ripping, and (ii) the synchronise phase of an emplode connection.

In case anyone's interested, the reason for the first of those is that ripping and compressing contend really badly for IDE bandwidth if you try and do them both at once. And, because task priorities only affect CPU sharing -- not sharing of other resources such as IDE -- changing the priorities wouldn't help.

Does it stop playing when emplode is running?

No, unless you use emplode to delete the track it's currently playing...

Peter

Thanks, since I did a sync with emplode I imagine that is why the gears temporarily disappeared during playback. I got excited for a minute thinking it was finished.

As of 6:am this morning it was still compressing. I don't see this as a problem at all; was just initially curious if there was a rule of thumb on cd compression at two rates. Say for example it took ten minutes for eash compression then I could say 250 x 10minutes (for 320kbps) x 10 minutes (for 96kbps) = 25,000 minutes or 416 hours. Likewise if it only took one minute per compression I would be looking at 41.6 hours (apparently each compression takes more than a minute).

Thanks, this is a very cool piece of equipment.

Coming into this pretty exciting discussion months later I wonder if it is still compressing...? ;-)
Anyways, you had a little flaw in your calculation I think, it would not be 25,000 minutes but 5,000 minutes if each compression takes 10, so it should have been done after 83 hours. Say, its been about 3300 hours since your last post...
N.