Firmware 1.41 out

Just a heads up.

http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/support/rio/product.asp?prodID=113

-Aaron

Excellent. Thanks for the heads-up.

--Dan.

It looks as if the album order is still not repaired.

If I have an album set up with the song titles in RMM, List One below, the songs are always shown as randomized on the player playlist, as in List Two below, when the random is set on OFF. When I select random as ON all it does is randomize the original random list... Everything is correct on the empeg and in RMM... In fact if I rearrange them on the player on reboot the list goes back to the same random list as before.

List one: (Playlist is correct in RMM)
01 - Song Title
02 - Song Title
03 - Song Title
04 - Song Title

List Two: (The songs are always in the same random order on player with Random turned off and is in a different order on each album)
01 - Song Title
04 - Song Title
02 - Song Title
03 - Song Title

Make any sense?

Sean on NC

Make any sense?

If you're choosing those songs by going to the Artist menu, choosing an artist, then choosing Play All Albums, then yes, that's a known bug. Otherwise it isn't. Are the track-number tags correct? How did you put the music on the Karma?

Peter

Is this a normal amout of problems for a new tech product to have? I'm just wondering if they maybe rushed this to market too quickly. Based on some of the things I've read on this board, it seems like more than just minor bugs.

Based on some of the things I've read on this board, it seems like more than just minor bugs.

Keep in mind that on bulletin boards, you only ever see the people who are having trouble. For each person with a complaint, there are many more who don't have that trouble and are therefore happily enjoying their product rather than posting on bulletin boards.

For instance, the problem with the track order being reported above is something I've never encountered on the Karma. When I queue up Dark Side of the Moon, for example, it plays in order. (And gaplessly, I might add. )

In reply to:

---

If you're choosing those songs by going to the Artist menu, choosing an artist, then choosing Play All Albums, then yes, that's a known bug.

---

That is too bad. Maybe it will be fixed in the next release ...

Sean in NC

had my first karma lockup today
1.41
was playing all tracks by one artist, then went in to artists and selected play all tracks. music stopped for a second then came back on. hourglass spinning. finally music stopped, hourglass still spinning. i took my headphones off and heard the hdd head clicking back and forth. reset fixed it.

I can't reproduce it using the same steps you just described. Can you make it happen a second time?

no, i cant. i tried a couple times too.

oops
heh
just noticed i had created an account on here earlier and was checking it out. forgot i was still in it when i replied.

so uhh... yeah, what streeter said.

Hahahahaha!

Well, so much for the idea of an anonymous, stealth account!

So, is a good way to fix this error to add a Track # to the Id3 tags instead of relying on the title to order the lists?

BTW, To add Track# fields to Id3 tags use Mp3- Tag Studio 3 by Magnus Brading:

Create a TXT file with the numbers you want up to 99 like this:
01
02
03
04
...
99

Name file anything you want.TXT

Open Mp3 - Tag Studio 3 and select the "Use Explorer Browser tree" checkbox and select the "Tag/Rename from List" tab. Under "Tag/Rename from List" tab locate the TXT file you creared in the "Input list " box then under Options section select the "Tag" radiobutton and then in the File Row Format section select the "TrackNr" checkbox. Select an album from the Explorer Browser tree and press the EXECUTE! button for each album you want to tag the Track field for...

Takes a while but it took me 1 hour to do 13,000 songs. I still have not determined if this fixes the playlist ordering bug yet however. i will keep y'all updated...

Sean on NC

Wow... that's really clever. I didn't know you could do that with MP3-TagStudio.

Thanks for the enlightenment!

Create a TXT file with the numbers you want up to 99 like this:


Alternatively, if you wanted to add the track number to the beginning of your title (that is, change from "SongName" to "08 Songname" for example) There is an easy way to do this in MP3TS. (Assuming, of course, that your tags already have the Track Number field properly filled out.)

Select the "Direct Tag Manipulation" tab in MP3TS. On the right side of the screen there are two columns containing 7 data entry boxes each; all you need is the pair on top.

Put <TrackNr> <Title> in the left hand box; put <Title> in the right hand box. Put a check into the "Include Subdirectories" box if you want to do it all at once, and click on the "Execute" button -- and you're done. It should take only a few minutes on a reasonably fast computer to change 13,000 tags that way.

This is a very powerful tool. In addition to combining whatever tag information already exists into whatever fields you like, you can also add your own text strings. So you could put <TrackNr> textstring <Title> and get an output that looked like "08 textstring SongName" for your new song title.


Before doing this, I would recommend that in MP3TS you choose "File...Settings...General Tagging & Renaming..." and look at the very bottom check box, where it allows you to "Zero-Pad Track Numbers to Length 'n', where n can be anything from 1 to 9. Two is probably sufficient for most usages, although I have seen audiobooks ("Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel) that required four. The reason you want your track numbers zero-filled (that's with leading zeroes) is for alphabetizing. Otherwise your tracks (if you sort by title) will alphabetize 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 which is less than optimal.

Note that the zero-padding your tracks only works if you have ID3V2 tags enabled.

tanstaafl.

tag and rename has an option to set the track numbering in a directory, depending on the way its sorted in the window at the time. much easier than the mp3tagstudio way.

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.

So your argument is that there are a huge number of people not complaining about the Rio, but your individual experience overrides all of that?

Or is it that there are too few people not complaining but ``brimming'' in some other way?

It's probably a bad idea to change your thesis in the middle of your post. At least without editing.

I mean, I don't own a Karma and I'm not going to defend it or excoriate it (since I have no data to do so), but firtst you say that the forums are brimming with people not complaining, but then that the experiences of the few that do have problems are more than that. Which is it?

Of course, the RMA problem seems to be well documented for those unfortunate few (or many?) who are having problems. There's no defense for that.

I don't know -- I think there's a big difference between an established community board and a new product board ... Until you build a community, the only people showing up are ones with problems. After some critical mass, the community develops into something more interesting (like the Empeg BBS). This is purely conjecture, though, but it makes sense to me

ms

So your argument is that there are a huge number of people not complaining about the Rio, but your individual experience overrides all of that?

As I stated quite clearly, my experience and the experiences of others on this board and elsewhere.

... firtst you say that the forums are brimming with people not complaining, but then that the experiences of the few that do have problems are more than that. Which is it?

My observation that the board is loaded with people who aren't complaining was in response to tfabris' claim that "on bulletin boards, you only ever see the people who are having trouble," which is patently preposterous.

I also see numerous posts that do not speak well about the quality of the Karma (bad firmware, frequent lock-ups, parts coming off, etc.).

What is difficult to understand or accept about this? It's not some kind of zero-sum game, in which favor or disfavor of the Karma eclipses its opposite.

Okay, fine. Would you have posted on this board about your Karma if it was working right? The fact that you were a previous member of this board and didn't until it broke indicates that you wouldn't. (I take it back. You did ask about an Ogg converter first, before making some complaints.) Most people are like that. While it may be hyperbole to say that ``you only ever see the people who are having trouble'', it's well based in the truth.

You also seem to be claiming that the hard drive is not the culprit -- that it is the fault of the firmware or hardware design. If that were the case, wouldn't you expect to see hundreds of posts claiming that their Karmas have failed? How many have you seen? (I don't read the Riovolution board, so it may be that many, but I doubt it.) Instead, the boards are ``brimming'' with people whose Karmas are working properly. The ratio of complainers to defenders seems to be pretty high. Given that most people who have correctly functioning Karmas aren't going to post, the actual ratio is bound to be much higher than that.

I'm not saying that it's not your right to be angry or that it's not your right to have gotten a sour taste from the Karma. That's human nature. It's not even inherently wrong to discourage people from buying what you've concluded is an inferior product. But that doesn't make it a logical conclusion, either.

I will agree that my wording was a superlative ("only") and is therefore incorrect. It should have been, "in general, you see a disproportionate number of complaints on bulletin boards". Also, I was referring to bulletin boards in general, such as riovolution, not necessarily this one. This BBS does have a lot of people who aren't complaining, but they're talking about a myriad of different topics not related to the Karma.

My response was in response to Nikko's implication that the Karma was somehow a substandard product because he's read some complaints about it. My point is that there will be complaints about any product, and that you must keep in mind the proportion thing when reading bulletin boards.

One thing that I wanted to clarify. You said

"...other consumers who doubted any link between dying Karmas and bad firmware (or anything else for which Rio could be culpable)... "

I wanted to clarify that if a Karma hard disk fails, there's no way it could be related to the firmware. It's a hardware fault, period. However, Rio still needs to be held responsible for this, and I agree that good customer service in these areas is important. If Rio isn't providing a satisfactory method for replacing a player that's under warranty, then I agree that needs to be addressed.

Just don't say that the entire product line is bad because of a few failed hard disks.

I agree with a lot of what Milo has said with regards to Karma instability. Oh wait, I already said that a while back. Granted, a lot of firmware fixes have come out since I returned mine, but as we saw with v3a5 of the player software, not all firmware upgrades are truly upgrades.

I'll also say that he's spot on with his suggestions that there is a lot of Rio apologia to be found on this BBS, which is only natural, since a lot of people got in on the ground floor, and feel a special connection with the Cambridge team and their products. Some of the members have been given special favors (alpha status, software development opportunities, etc.) and don't hide these facts at all -- their potential bias is quite evident, and though I think they do an admirable job of keeping out most of it, a portion of it is going to seep through.

But I do think there is definitely merit in Tony's suggestion that a lot of people come to BBS forums (especially the tech support areas) to complain, and rarely do products get heralded when they "just work." If they're truly amazing products, maybe someone's geekbone will stiffen enough for them to write a long post extolling the product's greatness. For us empeg people, that's not all that uncommon. But I would say that the "product greatness" required to generate 100 positive posts on a BBS is a lot higher than the "product crappiness" required to generate 100 negative posts. It's not a zero-sum game, and I think most people who have enough perspective on the issue would conclude that the Karma was definitely rushed out the door, but no more rushed than any other products are these days.

As far as comparing the Karma to the empeg, that's unfair, since the empeg has had several years to develop into what it is now. Do a forum search and you'll find problems from Mark I owners, I'd say about as many problems as we're seeing in Karma's now. Give the Karma platform some time to grow, and it's likely to be as reliable as the empeg. (woohoo, a circular post dependency!)

woohoo, a circular post dependency!

Admit it. Your entire post was created for the purpose of referencing Bitt's post!

Am I *that* transparent???

Like I said, I don't have one, so it could be the worst product ever as far as I know, though I doubt it. I just have a problem with people deliberately ignoring the fact that people with a problem are more vocal than those without one, especially to the point of drawing invalid conclusions.

It'd be nice if we had some return statistics, but if the reports of the RMA process are accurate (and I believe they are), I'll bet that they'd report that zero players have been replaced so far.

Okay, fine. Would you have posted on this board about your Karma if it was working right?

That question is pretty much irrelevant, but check this.

You also seem to be claiming that the hard drive is not the culprit -- that it is the fault of the firmware or hardware design.

For the umpteenth time, there is more to my opinion on the Karma than my own experiences. The hard drive may or may not have been the sole culprit in the demise of my player, and the death of my Karma was not the only issue I had with it. Other people have had problems that have nothing to do with the hard drive. The whole of these experiences make the Karma something that I would not recommend to anyone -- not at this time, anyway.

the death of my Karma was not the only issue I had with it

Oh. You never said that.