Since Jemplode seems to be an interesting piece of glue between (among?) the Karma, Empeg and the RioCentral, I've been thinking of buying one of the latter.

Any opinions regarding whether it's worth the $500 from overstock.com?

-brendan

It's worth it to me specifically as a 100-percent-uptime networked music server and ripper. I can turn on my Rio receiver(s) any time I want and I don't have to leave my hot-running and noisy PC on in order to serve the music. It does fine no-brainer ripping and tagging, each time I buy a new CD I simply stuff it in the Central and walk away. I haven't ripped a CD on my PC in over a year. And with the latest release of Jemplode, it's possible to completely remove the MP3s from the PC's hard disk and just use the Central and the Empeg be the backups for each other.

But if you've already got a quiet PC that's your networked music server, there's a lot less of an advantage to having one. Personally, I could build a networked music server PC myself, but the Central is much nicer and more reliable.

Note that the above comments must be taken with a grain of salt, as my Central is a beta prototype that I didn't have to shell out 500 clams for. I say this in the interest of full disclosure, even though I personally don't believe that my opinion of the device is any different because of it.

Truly, my major concern is the quality of the mp3-ripper. Any idea what codebase is used and/or what its relative quality level is compared to lame?

-brendan

The ripping code is decent, it's custom empeg-team work. Out of my entire collection, only one particularly badly-scratched CD wouldn't rip, and I had to feed it to EAC on the PC. The CD in question was so badly scratched that it wouldn't play in any standard CD player, so I don't count that as something I should expect to be able to rip easily.

The encoder is the ARM encoder which is based on the Fraunhofer code. When I chose to re-rip everything at 256 on the Jupiter, I did some listening comparisons with the same tracks LAME-encoded with really high quality VBR, and couldn't tell the difference. However, the Central is fixed-bitrate-only, so if VBR is important to you, then it's not an option. Personally, I'm happy with 256 fixed and I'm not near maxing out the Central's or the empeg's hard disks, so it's a nonissue for me.

One of the nice things about the Central is that it's so brain-dead easy to rip stuff, I actually did my whole collection in batches over a few weeks without hardly thinking about it. Just grab another stack off the CD rack and feed them to the Central in multiple-CD-mode while I'm doing something else in the same room. It pops the drawer for the next disk, literally you don't have to touch any front-panel buttons once the process is started, just swap the discs and push on the drawer. When the last disc from that stack is done, pull it out and close the empty drawer, and let it encode for a while. Next day, feed it another stack. Honestly, if it weren't for the Central, I probably never would have started, let alone completed, my re-rip project. The 128's were good enough so that the hassle of doing the rips on the PC outweighed my desire to have higher quality MP3s.

What about tagging?

Ok, lastly: how old is the firmware in the central? Does it/will it ever get another update?

-brendan

There has not been a Rio Central s/w or f/w update in years.. if ever(?).
The kernel is Linux, and can be hacked, but nobody has done much.

Not even in the farm-team league below the Empeg's league!
But it apparently does just work, and should continue to do so.

Cheers

There has not been a Rio Central s/w or f/w update in years.. if ever(?).

New firmware was released only about 2 months ago. It was created last year, but just released recently.

What about tagging?

What about tagging? It tags automatically using the built-in CDDB, and will automatically dial/broadband the online CDDB if a tag is missing from its internal database. You can fix up tags either from the front panel (via the remote or via a USB keyboard) or with Emplode/Jemplode.

Ok, lastly: how old is the firmware in the central? Does it/will it ever get another update?

Another update is very unlikely. The current firmware works fine. The only realistic update I could see happening to it is for supporting direct plug-in of newer portables. But since it's a discontinued product (*), they don't have any reason to do this.

(*) The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates only because it shares a codebase with some of the newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta testers for new code.

> Another update is very unlikely.

Hmm. If there were a way to strap lame in there, I'd buy a bunch of 'em. Still. It's an intriguing idea...

> (*) The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates
> only because it shares a codebase with some of the
> newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta
> testers for new code.

You say that as if it hadn't been a strategic move by empeg-fans who now work at Rio (aka the original developers) as a way of keeping their in-car experience up with the times!

Ok, I lied about final questions. Here are the final final questions:

1) Is it CDDB only, or can it also use freedb?
2) How easy is it to find the ethernet adapter (which is optional)?

-brendan

Hmm. If there were a way to strap lame in there, I'd buy a bunch of 'em.

Actually, I get the impression that there is a way to substitute your own encoder with a little hacking. Dunno exactly how, but I seem to recall they said it could be done. You'd have to compile an ARM version of LAME with a cross-compiler.

1) Is it CDDB only, or can it also use freedb?

CDDB only. I don't think that one can be hacked in.

2) How easy is it to find the ethernet adapter (which is optional)?

Pretty easy.

Hey, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a whole separate BBS for the Central, via the link at the top of the page. That's the appropriate place to be asking all these questions. Do a search there to see about which ethernet adapters will work.

The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates only because it shares a codebase with some of the newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta testers for new code.

At least, that's what we tell everyone. The real reason it receives updates is because we've all got one. Nowadays we've all got Rio Centrals too (they found some in a cupboard when closing down Sonicblue) but it's been so long in code terms since anyone tried a Rio Central release from the code trunk that it seems too much like hard work to try and update it. (Though red flashing lights still go off if it fails to compile, so we know it'd only be a question of not working. And a rip-to-flac-and-vorbis Rio Central that supported big winchesters would rule.)

Peter

Wanna give hints on how to hack in LAME?

yes yes!

Wanna give hints on how to hack in LAME?

It's totally in-process and static. There's no sane way of hacking in Lame, either at run-time or compile-time, that I can see at first glance. Are you dead sure we said it was do-able?

Peter

Why would I want lame over the encoder the central uses now ?

Are you dead sure we said it was do-able?

No, I'm not actually. Perhaps I misunderstood or I'm remembering wrong. Ah well, was worth a try.

Why would I want lame over the encoder the central uses now ?

LAME is an ongoing project where they keep tweaking it to get the best possible sound quality out of it. So, in theory, a very new copy of LAME could sound better at a given bitrate than an old copy of the Fraunhofer encoder.

However, at 256kbps, I can't tell the difference between the original CD and a Central-encoded file, let alone being able to tell the difference between LAME and Fraunhofer. So at that bitrate, I have no real need for LAME.

Except that VBR files can be smaller than 256CBR ones.

Except that VBR files can be smaller than 256CBR ones.

I was told that the ARM encoder on the Central could theoretically be told to do VBR, too, but that they didn't bother implementing it in the UI. So that's not really relevant to the comparison.

Nowadays we've all got Rio Centrals too (they found some in a cupboard when closing down Sonicblue)

Ah. Now we know where they were hiding when they all went mysteriously out of stock during that 'firesale'.

Ok. Put my order in for one. Also, a karma, since I got to the gym yesterday and my mp3 player's battery was dead AGAIN.

Went for the trifecta...

Now I gotta read up on this Rio Receiver thing...

-brendan

Does the Rio Central have a "sleep" mode, or do you have to turn it on each time you want to use a rio receiver, or do you just leave it on all of the time?

Does the Rio Central have a "sleep" mode, or do you have to turn it on each time you want to use a rio receiver, or do you just leave it on all of the time?

Yes, the Rio Central does have a stanby mode, very similar to the empeg's standby mode. It is meant to be left powered on all the time, and placed into standby when not in use.

In fact, there is no way to power it off from the front panel or the remote. You can only put it into standby. On the back of my prototype (in a hard to reach spot) there is a master power switch that is the equivalent of unplugging the power, but I don't know whether the final units even included that at all.

It serves the Rio Receivers equally well whether it's in standby mode or awake and playing music itself. It also can serve receivers and play music while it's ripping and encoding CDs.

The PDF indicates the Rio Central has an on/off switch in back.

Two more Q's:

1) The Linksys USB100TX are the currently recommended adapters for both the Rio Receiver and the Rio Central, yes?

2) Recommendations for speakers for the Rio Receiver? It says it's got a 10W/channel amp. Not sure what's appropriate for that.

-brendan

1) The Linksys USB100TX are the currently recommended adapters for both the Rio Receiver and the Rio Central, yes?

The Rio Receiver doesn't need a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor: it already has Ethernet, and doesn't have USB! And if the only reason you want networking on your Rio Central is to attach Rio Receivers to it, you can do that with HomePNA (telephone cables) with no extra adaptors at all.

2) Recommendations for speakers for the Rio Receiver? It says it's got a 10W/channel amp. Not sure what's appropriate for that.

10W/channel is more than it sounds. Any bookshelf speakers should be fine. We've used them with quite big Mission floorstanders and they were fine too.

Peter

What if the online CDDB doesn't have something either?

Then you use emplode to fix the info after ripping.

Sorry, I should have asked more clearly. What do they get named in the meantime?