Keep in mind that on bulletin boards, you only ever see the people who are having trouble.

That's absurd. Both this and the Empeg forums are brimming with posts by people who aren't doing any sort of complaining.

When I stated my dissatisfaction with the Karma (completely inoperable after less than a month of use), my post was quickly met with apologetic counter-posts from other consumers who doubted any link between dying Karmas and bad firmware (or anything else for which Rio could be culpable).

While I very much like my Empeg -- after years of use, it's still the best MP3 player I've ever had -- I wouldn't recommend the Karma to anyone. My own experiences and the experiences of others (on this board and elsewhere) don't permit me to do that.

As I said before, though, I'd likely buy another Karma if the reliability issues were convincingly resolved or falsified. Better customer service would be great, too -- I'm going through the Karma repair/replacement process, now, and it's as bad as others here have reported.