I have owned an iPod (3gen, 15 gb) for a month. I have to say that i am quite happy with it. My favorite thing about the iPod is its intuitive user interface. However, i really hate how i can't listen to live albums without the dam 1-2 second song silence, and the battery life is pretty crappy. I came across the Rio Karma in a thread on ipodlounge.com stating that it very intelligently supports gapless playback of ogg and mp3, even if you haven't specifically encoded those files to do so. So, i have a few questions for all you rio karma owners.

How good is the user interface as compared with iPod's?

How good is the gapless playback, is it as good as the live CD transitions between songs where there is absolutely no gap? Even if i haven't encoded my mp3's with no gaps?

How is the Java interface? I have a Mac (OS X) and am curious as to how easy syncing will be through the web interface. (how fast is ethernet compared to firewire)

I am very interested in selling my iPod (i'll get around 275 plus shipping for it, it's got a lot of extras) and picking up a Rio Karma. But i really coulnd't get much perspective on it from ipod forums.

Thanks for your time
Mike

Using ogg vorbis gives perfect gapless no matter what. I also tried with mp3s from LAME 3.90.3 and there is only a slight *blip of silence* during track change; it's no where near 1 second of silence though. The only downside to ogg is the reduced battery life (10-12 hours compared to 14-16 hours with mp3). I think FLAC is also supposed to be gapless.


I haven't tried the iPod, but the Karma interface is very easy to operate. I was using it right out of the box. You can read the manual (always read the manual!) to learn little tricks if you want.

I think the ethernet transfers at around USB1 speeds, so it'll be a lot slower than firewire. I've never used the ethernet/Java program, but it is a nice feature to have.


Go to this site for all your Karma needs- http://www.riovolution.com/

You might find this information useful:

Gapless Playback

Hmm, it says this:

The Rio Karma portable player has a feature which detects a sudden drop to silence at the very end of MP3 files and removes it. It moves from one track to the next with no noticeable problems

Is this false? It seems to contradict you, canyoneroboy. (unless i'm reading it wrong, which his highly possible)

Also, i would just use OGG if i could. But, all my music (about 1000 songs) are in mp3 format. Is there a way to convert mp3 to ogg without losing quality?

Short answer, no. This would require transcoding and always loses quality.

No. Transcoding equals loss in this case. You'll have to rip your CD's again to the proper format.

So gapless playback of regular mp3's is not as good as OGG ? And what is the best program to rip my cd's to gapless OGG format? (I am a mac user, i doubt there is one for mac, but i also have a PC so that's fine)

This is a true claim. The playback of mp3 files on the Karma is most of the time perceptually gapless(from my personal experience).



Gapless playback of regular mp3s is not as good as Vorbis because mp3 does not have full gapless support like Vorbis.

Ogg Drop and tenc