Rio Karma

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The Karma is a digital audio player made by Rio. It measures 2.7x3x0.9 inches and weighs 5.5 ounces. It has a 20 gigabyte (18.6 gibibyte) hard drive. The Karma is notable for its support of Ogg Vorbis and FLAC playback in addition to the usual MP3 and WMA formats, however it will not play MP2 format. It's one of the few digital audio players that is able to play MP3 tracks gaplessly (not inserting audible gaps between them [and it has been said that the Karma can remove silence at the beginning and ending of audio tracks to further its gapless capabilities]) making it popular among audiophiles. It also bears the distinction of supporting file transfers via Ethernet through its docking station (as well as the standard USB 2.0). It is not supported as a plug & play removable drive (although the program Rio Taxi does allow any data to be stored). Like many Rio players, the Karma's firmware has an equalizer (but notably a 5-band parametric one), cross-fader, animated menus, dynamic playlist generation, and visualizations. Rio no longer actively markets the Karma; although it can still be purchased from other distributors, it is getting harder to find, particularly in the UK.


Contents

[edit] Notable Karma Settings

[edit] Playback Screen

The Karma has three options for what is displayed on the play screen

  • Progress Indicator
  • Profile Indicator
  • VU Meter for left & right channels.

[edit] Language

Options include English (US), English (UK), German, French, Japanese, & Spanish.

[edit] Dock Settings

For docking, there are four options for the "cradle glow".

  • Static, with glow level setting
  • Pulse with timecode
  • Pulse while charging
  • Pulse to music

[edit] Orientation

The player can be configured for right handed or left handed use. For left handed use, the screen is inverted.

[edit] Modifications

The player uses a Hitachi 1.8" hard drive which is available in other sizes than 20 gigabytes. With some simple case modifications it is a trivial matter to install a larger capacity hard drive.

[edit] External links