Well, actually my wife has hers. I've got an empeg.

Joy!

-Zeke

Hopefully my circuit city will have one soon.

They should have used a box I hate thoes kind of packages.

heh. it looks so much smaller now.

Please post reviews! A lot of people here would like to know what you think!

Some initial impressions:

Player - Nice and small, good heft. It takes a bounce off the floor well (yep, already).

Install - on a W2k box SP4, no problem. A overall install status bar would've been nice. The 'Finished' dialog box wound up under the master installer menu screen, so I wasn't aware it'd finished until I started poking around.

Rio Music Manager: So far it's crashed 5 times when I try to play a song from the interface, both during & after the scan has completed. This crash causes RMM to re-scan, which on my machine (4-5 k songs total) takes about 4-5 minutes. In fact it's doing it again now. I'll be avoiding this from now on, but I think Mr/Ms Average Consumer would be pretty pissed about this, as it's certainly fun to play a song or two when the scan is taking place.

Packaging: Not bad. The plastic box isn't my favorite, but it's gone in a few seconds (need scissors). CD- came in a plastic sleeve. For $400, at least a paper one. Sheesh! The storage bag was a nice touch though, as were the included USB & CAT5 cables.

Music upload: I used USB 2.0 (for the 1st time ever). Whooah nellie! FAST.

Earbuds: They're quite good for 'included' ones, but the Sony Phontopias kick their butt. My wife'll think they're fine.

Early Likes: Upload Speed, form factor, control layout, understandable menu scheme on the player.

Early Dislikes: No detailed .pdf manual or Windows help link in the Start Menu.

Install Goofs: moved aux input jack when installing the USB card (not included) causing me to curse that the RCA outputs weren't working (they are).

Time to throw a few more songs and make a few playlists. Caribe 2003 Mix is wearing thin.

Oh yeah, good idea including the tunes. I liked goofing with them and the interface before I got RMM installed.

-Zeke

Edit: Sound quality is fantastic.

Rio Music Manager: So far it's crashed 5 times when I try to play a song from the interface, both during & after the scan has completed

Hm. It would be cool to find out what song on your hard disk is causing it to crash and sending that to Rob so they can fix that bug. We thought we'd nailed all of them...

Also... Do the online "check for updates" feature in RMM once in a while... There's a firmware update for the Karma hopefully on its way soon.

Does this software build and use a database of your songs after it scans it or does it allow you to work directly from your directories?

Tony,
I've done it a few more times now, and it doesn't seem to matter which file. They're all .mp3's.
The software auto updated on install. I did it manually as well, no change.

To any one who might be reading this post as negative, and focusing on the bug:

The player effing rocks. Just fricking rocks. Using it feels as cool as my using empeg did when I got it the first day. 1/4 the size, same capacity as my first empeg and 1/3 the price, runs for 10 hours and has first class fit and finish. Absolutely spectacular.

KungFuCow: Just access via tags, like emplode. I haven't played with the synch function yet, this might do what you want. EDIT: There's also a file level interface (My Computer) I just hadn't noticed it.

-Zeke

So will your wife have to go buy her own


Happy now

Actually thats what I dont want. I have so many MP3s that the managers that use a database have an exceptionally hard time managing it all without slowing my system to a crawl.

I got an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach reading your post because I thought it did use a database style setup based on your description. Glad to see it doesn't.

So is you're wife gonna have to go buy her own

He is wife? Sucks to be him. ("So is you are wife")

KFC - It can use either interface. It's like using Winamp 2.9's database in terms of speed, but much more flexible. I've only got a PIII 800 and it didn't do a Musicmatch 8.0 or anything (ie- get up an leave for 45 minutes 'cuz you're not going to do anything else during its scan). The machine was perfectly responsive during the scan, as was the RMM software. A full scan took about 4-5 minutes. It's like the scan is a lower level background task. I've got (I just checked) 6251 tunes taking up a bit over 32 GB. You'll like it, I promise.

-Zeke

I just figued there was beer involved in that grammatical construction.

-Zeke

the managers that use a database have an exceptionally hard time managing it all without slowing my system to a crawl

This one doesn't. To a point. How many MP3s are you talking about? The "All Tracks" list can start to get a little slow past about 10,000 tunes (from memory).

The other views are superbly fast.

Glad to see it doesn't.

It does, but it doesn't force you to.

I've done it a few more times now, and it doesn't seem to matter which file. They're all .mp3's

We get WMP (the v6 OCX) to do playback of WMA and MP3. What version of Windows are you running? I've heard of some ME issues but that's all so far I think. We're going to move away from WMP if we can for a future version.

Rob

We get WMP (the v6 OCX) to do playback of WMA and MP3.

Try to play the same files in Media Player 6.4 (run mplayer2.exe). If they work, then it's a bug in RMM2. If they don't, then it's not.

Rob,
The machine is W2k SP4 and is up to date on patches. I believe my current WMP is 9.

Roger,
I'll try playing w/WMP 6 when I get home tonight. I worked around by dragging files from RMM to the Winamp window. There was also a message that an error log was created. I assume it'll be clearly lableled somewhere in the RMM directories. Shall I post it here or forward it to someone directly? PM me if the latter.

Quick question: if I already have an mp3 encoder installed legally, is there a way to use this instead of ponying $9.95 for RMM Pro? Just curious, I understand if you can't say.

-Zeke

if I already have an mp3 encoder installed legally, is there a way to use this

If it is registered as the MP3 encoder for WMP then it should work. Otherwise, it won't.

Rob

Rob, thanks. I'll take a look at that. I never use WMP to encode, but I did buy the MP3Pro encoder for Nero. I usually use LAME from within Exact Audio Copy, although I don't know if this counts as 'legal' or not.

Looking further, it seems that there's only three MP3 plugins available for WMP, none of which I have. I may spring for the $ just to keep all tasks in one program so SWMBO can do everything from there.

-Zeke

The encoder we've been working with is Intervideo. If you buy it via the RMM link you will get a special version which works on OS's other than just XP. It'll still work with WMP. I don't know about other applications though. Windows codecs are messed up

Rob

About 40,000

KungFuCow, please note that you don't have to have RMM scan and build a database. It is possible to load a Karma with tunes just straight from "My Computer". There's even an icon in RMM called "My Computer" which lets you navigate to and select tunes that aren't part of the database.

On my computer, I deliberately set RMM so that it doesn't try to scan any of my MP3 folders for tunes, and then I use the My Computer button to load tunes into it.

Note that it has to scan the tags of any folders I select for loading onto the player, so there is a wait when I first hit the "synch" button with a folder selected. But in your case, you'd just have to make sure not to press that button on the parent folder, just press it on a sub-section of tunes that is more realistic.

Roger,

Sure enough, mplayer2.exe chokes & dies on MP3's.

Off to try a few things...

-Zeke

Yeah, I discovered Mplayer2.exe won't play MP3s as well, for a project I'm doing. You need a newer media player than that...

... Which you say you've got. You say that you've got media player 9... But that's not mplayer2. Media player 9 is wmplayer.exe...

Try to play the same files in Media Player 6.4 (run mplayer2.exe). If they work, then it's a bug in RMM2. If they don't, then it's not

i think he was replying to that post by roger

So how is RMM supposed to be able to play MP3s if it uses mplayer2.exe? I have a fresh installation of Win 2000 here, fully service-packed with Mplayer2.exe and it refuses to play MP3 files.

not sure what your problem is. i can play mp3's fine with mplayer2.exe
vbr and cbr

edit: it doesnt calculate vbr length right, but thats no big deal. i dont use it to play, just to test a bit ago.

Ditto. Of course, I'm in XP, not 2k.

atm im in xp as well. but at work im on 2k. and it works fine there too.

I've got no love playing .mp3 in any version of WMP so far tonight. I've un- and re- installed WMP 9 with no luck. Frankly, I'm not going to f with it any more. Winamp 2.9 just works.

-Zeke

Further the saga, uninstall Nimo Codec Pack (Nimo50Build8.exe) fixed things. I've looked further and this also apparently contains spyware, rrr. After I uninstalled it WMP automatically downloaded an mp3 codec and began playing. Joy. RMM now plays w/o crashing no problem.

-Zeke

Something for the inevitable Karma FAQ I suppose...

And no, don't ask me right now. I'm full up at the moment.