To quote:

Hello Pearl testers!

You've heard all the buzz with the impending release of the the Rio Karma...and have had the great urge to set some misguided folks straight on some of the things being reported.

Well, got the thumbs up from VP Prod Mktg (thanks Kevin B): "All embargos are lifted they can say what they want" so get at it.

You are welcome to talk about any of Pearl's features, correct misinformation, and reveal your enthusiasm for the product. Please stay away from current issues (known or unknown) and other subjects which might reflect badly on the unit. Of course, whatever you post, do post on the forum in this thread so that you can share your contributions with other testers...and I can keep an eye on you

Get on it!


Any questions?

Keep an eye on you? Sounds a bit ominous considering they know where you live as well

How's it feel in your hand? It looks quite chunky but I think that's just because it's quite short and it's hard to judge in a photo.

It is quite nice actually. I normally do not use portables much, but I find it is great in a pocket. There have been someone who have tested it held in the hand while jogging, and he reports that it is very comfortable to hold. Just from carrying it around, it feels fine by me.

This is exciting. Now I can stop lurking and finally show everyone how cool I am. Actually, it will be good to be able to set people straight and answer questions.

The player fits perfectly in my hands. I have pretty average-sized hands, but I can reach around the entire unit and control it. Both the scroll wheel and rio stick are controllable by my thumb, and I can hit the volume with one of my fingers.

Even though the design does seem kindof chunky (yet very small, not sure how that worked out) it seems like a lot of thought went into the ergonomics. I couldn't imagine a more perfect fit.

What software if any do you use to get the music on the player.

How about more pictures

Interface. The person I've heard about the karma from said the interface wasn't always as intuitive, and buttons don't always do what you'd expect them to. This shouldn't be a problem once the user gets to know the player, but it could be at first. Agree, Disagree, No Opinion? (I'm in no was slamming the player. I love complex gadgets, and won't mind learning how to use it)

Matthew

Rio Music Manager (2.0) - Very nicely done, by the way! Currently WinTel oriented.

Rio Music Manager Lite - java based, built into the Karma (wow, it is hard to get used to typing Karma instead of Pearl).

File Taxi capabilities are there as well.

How about a video like the old mk1 video (I think Chip made). I know that sold a few players.

Hmm...

I think the interface is easy and straightforward. Keep in mind, though, I have never played with any other MP3 portables (except the S50, and only briefly there). I am told that it is similar to the Riot - people who know better, please correct me on that.

As to ease of use, I like it. It has a lot of power user functions, but there are also simple routines (play everything, etc.) for those less willing to tinker.

That is DNNA marketing's job. I am horrendous with a camera.

Built-in Java-based "Lite" Version, eh?

Interesting to see if you know the answer to Jerz' question:
http://empeg.comms.net/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=karmageneral&Number=173722&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1

And Tony, you're almost ready with that Karma FAQ right?

Well, it really depends on how much yardwork there is to do, doesn't it...

Seriously, battery life is a function of backlighting, menu and disk usage. The advertisements have the quoted battery life, based on a standard set of conditions. As with anything else, your milage might vary. I would personally run out of energy before the Karma did, but that is not saying much in my case...

Who're they calling misguided?

Misguided??? Clue please.

Oh!!! Clue struck. Misguided as in all of the web write-ups that have been popping up. Most with almost, but not quite, wrong information in them. Yahoo. Slashdot. That kind of thing.

Everybody's a comedian.

I meant his question about a direct transfer from Karma to Rio Central and/or empeg. The Karma has both hardware (USB host & Ethernet) and software (RMM Lite) support, so am I missing something or is that doable?

To be honest, I have no idea. I do not know anything about the Central at all.

I meant his question about a direct transfer from Karma to Rio Central and/or empeg.

Currently not implemented. Rio Central's software hasn't been updated in quite some time. Then again, we haven't seen Central<->Empeg transfer either.

Yeah, More pictures! C'mon!

One thing I've been dying to brag about is the great real-time playlist management features in the Karma.

First of all, the "now and next" screen (renamed something different in the Karma) has more entries than the empeg does because of the higher rez, it has the artist as well as the track name, and it shows the prior track above the current track. (Seeing those things implemented in real life, I now know why they didn't do them on the lower-rez empeg. Wouldn't have worked. But works on the Karma.)

When you're in this screen, you can press the wheel and get a little menu of things to do. You can use the wheel to re-order the tunes right there on the screen (very nifty and intuitive, and fun, when you try it), you can choose to insert tunes by artist and such using their full track-selection interface. You can delete tunes from the running order right there as well. Then when you're all done mucking about with the order, you can save it as a playlist.

All of this without interrupting the playback of the current song.

Oh, and the Karma's boot-up animation as well as the backdrop for the VU Meters visual are mine.

Then again, we haven't seen Central<->Empeg transfer either.

Wasn't the theory always that the empeg not supporting soup views the reason for empeg <> central transfer not happening.
I think it's more because the central has become the bastard child of empeg.

How does Rio Music Manager compare to emplode. Does it work as good for changing track info.

Does the karma have it's own database like the empeg or does it just use the tags.

I meant his question about a direct transfer from Karma to Rio Central and/or empeg.

Actually, that would be this question based on the fact that the Rio Central doesn't have hierarchal playlists and neither do any of the new players so since it was the same format I was *hoping* my investment in a product a year old would actually function with the new products that use very similar technology. If not I'm going to have to slow down on being the early adopter of these things. I feel like I invested a chunk in the riot as well and didn't get any sort of compatibility with it either.
....but I'm glad to see such a cool line of new products hit the streets.

It's good to hear they made it easier to insert / append than on the central. So you can scroll through the now/next list without skipping right.

I feel like I invested a chunk in the riot as well and didn't get any sort of compatibility with it either.


And the riot was the one that needed to sync with the central the most due to the god awful software used to manage it.

Hmmm. What else is cool about the Karma?...

The Seinnheiser headphones that come with the player are actually really decent! Unlike every other portable player I've seen up until now. They aren't quite as good as the Fontopias at bass, but they have decently smooth highs and are surprisingly warm for earbuds.

Oh, it's got Voladj built-in. Well, it's not Voladj, but it's a similar implementation, entitled "automatic gain control".

Crossfade works nicely.

EQ is five-band parametric. User interface for the EQ is really slick. It also has a "preset" mode with the things I hate "Rock", "Pop", "Jazz" etc., but you can turn those off and just go into the custom EQ modes. So I'm happy.

Rolling the scroll-wheel to FF and RW feels really nice. Works even better than the Seek Tool screen on the empeg. Oh, and it does have a track profile just like the empeg's Seek Tool screen.

Creating playlists in Rio Music Manager is pretty sweet. I have created some very large playlists by doing the following:

- Go into "Albums" view.
- Scroll down the list of albums
- Right-click on an album and say "Add to Playlist". Or drill down into the album, select or multi-select tracks, and rightclick and say "Add to Playlist"
- The first time you add to a playlist, it prompts you for which playlist (or "New")
- Subsequent times you add to playlist, there is a new rightclick option waiting for you: "Add to <playlistname>".

So that way, if you're choosing to quickly build a single large playlist, you can just zip through your list of albums, rightclicking on whatever you want in the playlist. It's very fast and very intuitive.

Rio Music Manager is very slick, and is actually comprised of three programs: RMM itself, Rio Taxi (the file transfer feature), and the internet update wizard.

You can have RMM catalog the music on your hard disk for you (using the "My Music" tab) where it goes by the tag data and organizes artists/albums/genres. Or you can choose the "My Computer" tab and then you've got the familiar Explorer interface pointing to the raw files on your hard disk. Either of those is a valid source for getting files onto the Karma.

RMM does not freeze/block during transfers. It can be in the middle of uploading 10 gigs of files to the player, and you are still free to do anything you would have done before you started the upload. Unlike emplode, all file transfers are handled in a separate little "details" window which queues up all the changes you're making and starts background-processing them. Example: I started uploading 15 gigs of files, then went about building playlists and selecting other tunes to upload.

The "details" window in RMM that shows the in-progress file transfer data can be edited on the fly. Let's say you've chosen to upload 20 albums to the player, and it's going along and churning those files to the player. You can open the details window and see each and every song title in the list as it goes to the player. Every song title is in that window, and next to it it either says "completed", "Transferring xx%", or "Pending". Now here's the fun part. Let's say you realized you don't want album number 17 in that list to be transferred. Scroll down to it (they're all still "pending" down there), group-select the songs, and rightclick and hit "cancel". The text next to those songs changes from "Pending" to "Cancelled" and it skips them when it hits that point in the list.

Ethernet is 100 megabit, of course. I don't know how well it's speed-optimized against USB 2.0 since I don't have a USB 2.0-capable machine to test with. I know that ethernet is faster than USB 1.0, I just don't know how much.

Player is reasonably good with gapless playback on things like Pink Floyd albums. About the same as the car player is right now, maybe slightly better.

Oh, did I mention, you can rip CD's right inside Rio Music Manager? Available formats to rip to are: WMA, MP3, OGG, and FLAC.

So you can scroll through the now/next list without skipping right.

Ah yeah, forgot to say that. When you're in the now/next screen, the scroll wheel will move up and down in the list without skipping tracks and then you press the wheel on whichever track you want to act upon (that action can be insert, delete, move up/down, that sort of thing).

I don't know how well it's speed-optimized against USB 2.0 since I don't have a USB 2.0-capable machine to test with.

What the...? Go invest in a $50.00 PCI card or $100.00 PCMCIA card and report back....

400 megabits per second tranferrate versus 100 has GOT to be worth the extra money.

One really cool thing for Empeg folks too is that the Rio guys have been very lenient about what is allowed to move from RMML back into jEmplode, so a lot of the features (like Tony's description of non-blocking sync, which RMML has also -- except I haven't yet implemented right-click=>cancel -- definitely doable though) will likely be in the upcoming jEmplodes.

So now finally everyone knows why jEmplode appears to be dead ... I've been ripping it apart to build RMML for the Karma for the past several months. I'm definitely not ditching you guys It's not officially decided exactly which features will move back into jEmplode and which are owned by Rio, but I think it will be really good for both. From what I understand, the eventual goal is that Empeg will run off of the same protocol as the Karma ("protocol2"), which will be nice. Once I get a chance to relax, I'll be piecing jEmplode back together, hopefully faster/better/stronger. Depending on the official rules, I may be able to have jEmplode control both Empeg and Pearl together (perhaps sync between them also) -- it may have to be that you need to buy a Karma and copy the rmml.jar off the player into jEmplode to get around licensing problems. We'll see If Rob and gang feel particularly generous, maybe I'll be allowed to release some other unsanctioned apps I've written on top of the ported Karma libraries.

Another nice thing is that RMML can run as a standalone app or as an applet launching off the Karma (because of timing, Karma may not launch with the applet support, but rather just a downloadable jar -- that remains to be seen). However, this opens up opportunities for a jEmplode applet that can be launched off of Hijack, which several people have asked for.

I think you guys will really be psyched about Karma -- it's pretty awesome ... The new hardware is really slick -- the cradle is clear plastic and backlit so the whole cradle lights up with a cool looking glow.

Anyway -- everyone get your piggy banks ready, because I think you'll definitely be wanting one of these guys.

ms

wow. so who's daring enough to post a link to this thread on slashdot and the other watering holes?