This may have been linked to before... but there is no "Reviews" section and I always like when reviews, even outside ones, are posted on a site. Maybe someone else will find these review worthwhile:

ePinion.com
TechTV
ZDNet UK
MP3 Pirate I did a search! I don't frequent this site! Actually, the reviewer ripped his own collection..

Keep in mind that the prices quoted in these reviews are not all up to date.

Thanks for putting up those reviews. I would say that the TechTV and the ZDNet ones, while rightly enthusiastic, give the impression that the reviewers used the Receiver for about 10 minutes. The epinion and mp3pirate ones are much more in depth and highlight both the pros and cons of the system.

I agree with the conclusions of all 4 of these reviews. The Rio Reciever is an excellent product and should be strongly recommended. You should take a look at the limitations shown in these articles and make sure they aren't show-stoppers for you, so that you can make an informed decision. However, at the price point ($150-170 street), it seems like a pretty easy decision to get this for most users.

Mp3pirate has a lot of inaccuracies though that annoyed the heck out of me.... I'd recommend looking at their review if you are considering buying an mp3 player, but I had these caveats:

"Another annoyance is that the server software doesn't like UNC paths. The server must be on the same machine where the music files exist. If your music is dispersed on multiple computers, you're out of luck. If you publish music files on the network via a shared folder, the server should map a drive letter to the shared folder. Playlists must use the drive letter instead of UNC names. For example, use m:\REM\losing_my_religion.mp3 instead of \\jukebox\REM\losing_my_religion.mp3"

This is just wrong. The Rio Receiver CAN play music from remote network hosts without mapping the drives. This is what I am currently doing. (I am under the impression that this generates 2x the network traffic though)

"It's best to rip your CDs using the best quality possible, so you won't have to re-rip later on. I rip to CD-quality 128kbps, 44kHz VBR mp3 files."

This very obvious is NOT CD quality, more like an FM radio station. CD Quality would be 320 kbps or thereabouts, and near-CD quality would be 200+ kbps.

"External speakers make the receiver unwieldy in tight spots. For example, the Bose Wave Radio packs excellent sound in a very compact package."

Well, it is my understanding that, if you wanted to, you could plug in powered PC speakers which are quite small. However, most PC speakers sound like #$@$.

"Like all other players, the Rio Receiver lacks automatic volume level monitoring. This is similar to the phenomenon in which television commercials are louder than the other programming."

This problem is actually pretty minimal if you use the same encoding software for all your songs. If you downloaded them from the internet or something, it still probably isn't a big deal except for just a very few songs. If you have a problem with just a few songs, you can re-rip them, re-download them, or normalize them yourself.

"When the network becomes saturated, the receiver produces noticeable delays in the music."

It should just be pointed out that, with the exception of some office environments, networks rarely become saturated.

When talking about possible competitors:
"Stereo-link is similar to the Rio Receiver in that it plays mp3 files and other formats. However, it plugs into PCs via USB. Like serial cables, USB cables can only extend a foot or so."

Well, I think the spec on USB is more like 15 feet, but with quality cables, signals can be reliably sent to about 50 feet, possibly further with USB hubs (though this becomes expensive). He is right that USB does seriously limit the usefulness of the Stereo link though. I don't know anything about the stereolink (nor am I interested if it is limited by USB), but he should at least give accurate information about it.

I think most of the limitations about the Rio Receiver he pointed out are legitimate, in particular about the screen and the limited search/playlist features, but he does make numerous mistakes in his article. Hopefully, Sonicblue will come out with a software update sometime. I suppose we should all just keep our fingers crossed.

One Thing I agree with:

"At 10 watts per channel, the Rio Receiver sounds far better than a PC with a medium-end sound card."

Right on but make that "sound better than a PC with a SB-Live or other high-end card." Hooked up to a high-end stereo, the Rio Receiver is going to still be light-years ahead of the PC hooked up to the same stereo (the frequency response in those "Y-cables" that PC's use are very poor). Of course, at 128 kbps, you are limited by the quality of your mp3's. I'd recommend reripping your CD's or redownloading the songs to get full usage out of this system.

Happy hunting, and for those of you that buy the Rio Receiver, I don't think you will be disappointed (though a software update would be fantabulous).

-Biscuits

Yeah, I didn't understand his network saturation complaint, considering the Ibiza installation that the Empeg team did. I think the kid needs to check his network wiring!

And regarding the auto-volume-level thing, he did the review before Voladj was available for the Receiver. I'm running Voladj on mine now, it rocks.

network saturation complaint

We did find that we had problems with the server software when the server PC was CPU-bound. Maybe he was playing a game on the PC, and thought it was network-bound, rather than CPU-bound.

Ibiza installation

We went to some lengths to avoid network saturation. The server machine has four network cards (3 Intel eepro100, plus onboard LAN). We only used the Intel boards, each of which runs independently to a 3x10/100 hub/switch.

Each hub was (IIRC) actually three 10/100 hubs in a box, switched between the three.

So, the network was effectively partitioned into 9 pieces, with (an average) 7 Receivers on each segment.

This kind of load can be driven easily by a single network card, which is why we partitioned it up like that.

As for CPU-usage, the box was something by Asus, with (IIRC) a dual-processor Pentium 3 -- the server software is multi-threaded. The disk is a single 9Gb (might be 18Gb, can't remember) U2W SCSI disk plugged into the onboard controller.

It didn't break a sweat, even with all of the units up and running at the same time.

Trivia:

The white box that you can see on top of the rack (under the Receiver) in this picture is a wireless box. This allowed me to do the necessary server management by the pool -- using a laptop, with a great view of San Antonio bay .

The CPU was a 1GHz single PIII, not a dual... don't remember the hubs being anything more flash than your average 24 port 10/100 hub, ie a single 2-port switch between the 10 and 100 mbit segments.

Hugo

OK, I'm probably wrong on the CPU, but I definitely recall that the 24-port hubs were each effectively 3x8-port hubs in the same box.

If you recall, they had separate status/usage LEDs for A, B and C (each of which covered 8 ports) on each box.

Biscuitsjam:

I posted the links and then read the reviews after.. I noticed many of the same errors in his review, but at least he said "I use this thing every day."

The one thing that got me was that he was talking about Audiophile type needs but said he encoded his files at 128kps! But, in his defense, his collection was ripped to support a portable player.

The argument that the receiver should have had speakers is short sighted I think. While I do agree that Rio could benefit from a unit that is truely plug-and-play (one network connection and one power connection), adding this to the Reciever would have not only have added to the cost, it would have also add to the size. Besides, Bose has been designing speakers for decades - most likely a speaker set-up designed into this thing wouldn't sound too good.

His comment about network traffic seemed odd too... I remember reading somewhere that someone set up a batch file that had a bunch of simutaneus transfers of large files over a small LAN and the Reciever never skipped.

USB = 1 foot?!!? Maybe the only USB items he owns shipped with a 1 foot cable or something... Funny for a computer guy to think that! I thought it was a typo at first, but he goes on about it for awhile.

Finally, commercials on TV are not louder as far as peek output is concerned. They are compressed with higher average output. I know this isn't news to anyone here, so I will stop.

Maybe we could write an email to this guy pointing out a few corrections while also thanking him for a fair review? I think he'd receive it kindly. The review was only posted a month or so ago, maybe he doesn't even know about this board!