[Ingo]

I'm putting some music on this little Sansa Fuze I bought my girlfriend for her birthday. It's a pretty sweet little player. Then I started reminiscing about all the wonderful time I spent with my Rio Karma back in the day.

HEY! Why the heCK hasn't anything come along IN 6 YEARS that comes close to the music playing fun-ness that the Karma had?

Anyone who never tried out one of these players should feel extremely fortunate. Aparantly if you did own or use one you will forever be left disappointed by every DAP you buy.

The Karma's UI, IMO, truly made every other UI that I have ever used on a DAP look stupid. OH YEAH, and it had an AWESOME dock that WAS INCLUDED that had great analog out and also ETHERNET connectivity. OH YEAH, and it had one of the best pieces of music managment software ever written. OH YEAH, and it sounded better than 99% of everything that's come out since then.

It's truly sad when I think about it that Rio went under. They were the best and brightest in the fledgling DAP market.

Rio Karma, I miss you. Maybe some day you will be ressurected to destroy all the BS-filled DAPs of the world (Hopefully with high-capacity flash memory).

 

[faichiu]

you can mod up to 32gb cf and replace new battery for it.

 

[blacknile]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ingo /img/forum/go_quote.gif OH YEAH, and it sounded better than 99% of everything that's come out since then.

Can you support this claim with quantifiable measurements?

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blacknile /img/forum/go_quote.gif Can you support this claim with quantifiable measurements?

Bah, since when does anyone measure that stuff?

as soon as i take the time to figure out how to make RMAA work properly with my emu 0404 (pci), I'll start measuring the SQ of DAPs that can play lossless.

fwiw the Karma has a 55mw headphone jack, which is pretty beefy compared to most of the competition.

 

[CHRIS7509]

I was all over this player when it came out, I finally found something that had everything I was looking for ( except for the cheap plastic reviews ), by the time I had the money the Touch Zen just came on, after a hard and long decision I went for the Touch Zen .. i know i'd have been pleased with either one, they are both good players .

 

[marvelusjd]

I miss mine quite a bit. Mine lasted 5 years so I definitely got my moneys worth. Great feature set, Rio DJ feature that rocked, fully customizable EQ, etc, etc.

 

[GN85]

Trekstor Vibez.

Sadly, it looks like it's going the Karma's route.

 

[RubenNYC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GN85 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Trekstor Vibez. Sadly, it looks like it's going the Karma's route.

Yep, the Vibez is discontinued. Fortunately, mine is still kicking after 2 years 2 months and counting. Plus I have a working Karma hidden away as a backup.

I do think there is reason for optimism: One of the guys working for TrekStor used to work for Rio, and is responsible for all the kick ass beta firmware updates that, to me, made the Vibez the best music player on the planet. (As I understand it, I think he's also the same guy who created the Rio Carbon - Developer's Cut firmware.) So, even though the Vibez is no more, I'm hopeful that the "next big thing" out of TrekStor's Cambridge, UK, office will be just as good.

Ok, back to reminiscing about the Rio Karma. Remember this? DAP Review: MP3 Player News and Reviews: Content / Digital Audio Players / 1000 Things about the Rio Karma

 

[beeman]

Well i use my karma everyday and it is a great player. it does have somr annoyances though. Like wierd navination that wont perimit going back to an album liist when you have selected to play one song off that album - you have to go throught the menu again to get back to the album list. However the on-the-fly playlisting is amazing. i dont know why other players have not tried to emulate this feature. basically you can create a playlist - selecting which songs/albums you want to play next. you can apend songs or play them after the current song- you can name the playlist and save them to the players memory, amazingly simple but i've yet to see something like this on another mp3 player.

 

[abitdeef]

I had the Rio Carbon, that was a really nice little dap with a very rich sound, I do miss Rio

 

[Ingo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RubenNYC /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ok, back to reminiscing about the Rio Karma. Remember this? DAP Review: MP3 Player News and Reviews: Content / Digital Audio Players / 1000 Things about the Rio Karma

Yep... I've spent hours browsing that article.

There were some SERIOUS fanboys of the Karma (including me) for good reason.

 

[RubenNYC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ingo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yep... I've spent hours browsing that article. There were some SERIOUS fanboys of the Karma (including me) for good reason.

One thing that's not in there: Purely by accident, if you really, really wanted to, you could create nested, query-based playlists on the Karma. It wasn't supposed to allow that, just one of those things it accidentally inherited from the empeg/Rio Car.

 

[Ingo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RubenNYC /img/forum/go_quote.gif One thing that's not in there: Purely by accident, if you really, really wanted to, you could create nested, query-based playlists on the Karma. It wasn't supposed to allow that, just one of those things it accidentally inherited from the empeg/Rio Car.

Crazy...

With all the other cool features of the Karma, I probably would have never utilized that but it's just more evidence that the Karma was totally awesome.

 

[catachresis]

I still have two Karmas.

I have one Creative Zen Touch.

I'd stick to the Karmas, but I've had trouble finding good drivers for transferring files on WinXP. If someone were to enlighten me. . . .

 

[panda]

it is a shame such a good product had to die out. a smaller thinner better looking version of it with SD card support would have been sublime.