Rio Karma Support Drill-Down?

[Drooling Dog]

I'm an iPod owner, but a friend of mine is considering a Rio Karma. He doesn't know anything about MP3 players, so I told him I'd look into them for him.

One of the thing that really frustrated me with previous MP3 players I owned was the inability to drill-down from Genre to Artist to Album to Song. If I wanted to listen to an album, I had to browse by Album. I didn't like that at all. I wanted to know what albums were available within each artist.

With my iPod I can select Genre=Progressive Rock. Then I can stop and play all the progressive rock, or continue to see what progressive rock artists I have. From there I can select Dream Theater. Again, I can stop and listen to all the Dream Theater, or select an album to play.

After having used iPods for a few years now, I'll never use a player that doesn't support drill-down. I don't think I could even recommend one.

Does anyone here know if the Rio Karma supports drill-down like this?

Thanks.

[Viper007Bond]

Tell him to get a Neuros:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=166229

Also see:

http://forums.hostrocket.com/showthr...threadid=11509

[deathazre]

yes it does. you can play all music from any one artist, album, genre, year, or an individual song.

the karma also about half the size of the neuros (neuros is 5.3x3.1x1.3, karma is 3.0x3.1x1.0) and has a dock station with RCA-out and an ethernet jack. USB2 and power connectors are on both the player and the dock. Plays MP3, WMA and ogg vorbis.

[ScorLibran]

And don't forget about FLAC on the Rio Karma. It's the only portable I know of that supports a compressed lossless format.

Alternate format support is something to consider for anyone who may want to explore encoding formats that are newer and more efficient than MP3. (Nothing wrong with MP3, of course, but multiple options are a good thing.)

[Drooling Dog]

Originally posted by deathazre
yes it does. you can play all music from any one artist, album, genre, year, or an individual song.

deathazre,

I realize you can play artist, album, genre, etc., but does it actually drill-down through all of them?

I downloaded the Karma manual online, and it doesn't show any drill-down. To select an Album, it said to select Play Music, then select Album. By "drill-down", I mean select Play Music, then select Artist, then select Album within that artist.

[Drooling Dog]

Originally posted by ScorLibran
And don't forget about FLAC on the Rio Karma. It's the only portable I know of that supports a compressed lossless format.

Alternate format support is something to consider for anyone who may want to explore encoding formats that are newer and more efficient than MP3. (Nothing wrong with MP3, of course, but multiple options are a good thing.)

Yeah, I thought about that when I bought my last iPod. Unfortunately, being the ultimate early adopter that I am, I switch players too often (on my 2nd iPod already), so I need to stick with a file format that will work on any player.

My friend, on the other hand, is very slow to adopt new technology. This might be a good option for him.

Another Karma Question:

Like most other players, I assume you're not trapped in to using only their software to rip and catalog, right? In other words, ripping with EAC/LAME is okay?

Thanks again.

[ScorLibran]

Yes. You can rip/encode with anything, as long as the format you're encoding to is supported by the player. I don't own a Karma (yet), but I'm pretty sure VBR mode is supported for MP3. But even if not, you can encode with LAME in CBR mode, for example. You don't need their software to rip/encode, but you may need it to transfer files to the player (or at least the right device driver to enable another application to copy to it).

[Drooling Dog]

Cool. Thanks. Anyone know about the drill-down stuff?

[Coman]

LOL

well anyway, back to the derailing.

Originally posted by Viper007Bond
Tell him to get a Neuros:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=166229

You almost convinced me about neuros in all your threads but i did some research and came up with some cons: a big drawback is USB 1.1 (cannot compete with USB 2), it's bigger and heavier than many others (iPod, iRiver, and even archos), it stops playing when you go to the menu, and also many say it has a poorly designed, confusing interface. But 2 of the biggest pros of this player is that it has 20GB and costs only $200.

[Viper007Bond]

The new version is USB 2.0 and it's open source. If you don't like the interface on it, hack it up or find someone to hack it up and wala.