I have a brand new Karma that I am setting up for a friend.

The music is all loaded, and I have one genre that I wish to have the Karma play in random order.

It would appear that to do so, I must use the "Rio DJ" function, but in my Rio Music Manager software, that option is grayed out, and the help system says that Rio DJ may not be available on all players.

Does the Karma support Rio DJ?

Is there a way to create a playlist on the Karma and have it play in random order?

Also... I just ran the "Check for Updates" feature in RMM, and the program went through the "Logging In" and "Checking List of Servers" bit for about half a dozen repetitions, then said "No updates are available at this time."

Is this a temporary problem, a server down or something?

tanstaafl.

If it's just play a particular genre in a random order, select that Genre on the Karma and then turn on shuffle.


Now I'm going to appear really dumb!

The on-line help does not mention the word "shuffle" anywhere. The word "random" appears only in reference to the "Rio DJ" function.

So, ummm... after I select a genre on the Karma, how do I turn on Shuffle?

I did look through the menus on the Karma, and didn't see it. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to own a Karma...

In my defense, the only thing I use my own Karma for is listening to Audio Books, where shuffle mode would be counter-productive.

tanstaafl.

You are not the only person to complain that the Shuffle feature on the Karma is hard to reach. It should be its own main menu item.

Instead, it is located in the Settings, Playback screen.

If you want to build a playlist in a random order from a particular genre, do this in RMM and then send it to the player (it'll stay in that order once it's there).


Hmmm... I can get a pseudo-random order in Windows Explorer by arranging the files in order of file size.

If I arranged the directory in question that way, then dragged it into RMM, would RMM leave it alone and import it into the Karma in that same pseudo-random order?

I'll have to try that.

tanstaafl.

I think RMM might try to sort stuff by track number if you're dragging from the PC onto RMM.

I think RMM might try to sort stuff by track number if you're dragging from the PC onto RMM.


No... actually RMM pretty relentlessly and undefeatably arranges the tracks alphabetically by title, regardless of what order I arrange them in in Windows. RMM does a pre-scan, sorts that by title, then imports the tracks alphabetically.

I managed to get pretty much what I wanted by taking the genre in question (called "favorites", an eclectic mix of 340 tracks containing everything from Pachelbel to Pink Floyd), sorting the genre by file size in RMM by clicking on the column header, then highlighting all 340 tracks in their newly sorted order and adding them to a playlist.

So now, instead of playing the Favorites genre, she'll play the Favorites playlist.

tanstaafl.