Hi. My Rio Karma died on me a few months ago. As a replacement, I ordered an iAudio X5. However, I have my doubts now and want them cleared.

Has anyone performed an ABX test of the iAudio X5 v/s the Rio Karma? If so, does the X5 come close to the Karma in the sound quality department? Please let me know as that would help me decide whether I need to send my X5 back (it is still un-opened) or keep it. If I need to send it back, I'll probably wait a year for the new Sigmatel chip based DAPs to hit the market but that is tooooooo long a wait.

Someone please lemme know. Thanks.

If you have doubts... assuming you have a good sound card, use RMAA( www.rightmark.org ) to run a complete range of measurements with the DAP driving a load equal to the headphones that will be used. For accurate noise measurements of what will be possible in actual use, be sure to do a measurement with the volume level set at what you normally use for music playback. If the soundcard input does not have sufficient gain to make up for the difference for RMAA to measure properly, you'll have to have a very clean gain stage(a high quality headphone amp, for example) before the sound card line input to notch teh gain up a bit.

-Chris

Unfortunately, I have a very crappy computer with onboard sound. Hence, I do not have the resources or the right technical expertise to conduct this test. Thanks for the info anyway. Will bookmark this thread. Might come in handy some day.

For some Rio Karma vs. iAudio rants check out a few threads at Riovolution (like this one http://forums-riovolution.com/index.php?showtopic=16513).

From what I've read X5 player has a lot of issues - starting from 9999 files limit which can be painful for 60GB player, ending on non-gapless playback which, honestly, disqualifies the player for me.

Messer

From the Rockbox wiki it seems that they picked up development for the X5 - i guess it might take some month to get ready though.

I bought the 20GB one. I don't think the 9999 files limit will matter to me. I miss the gapless playback of the Karma, but now that the Karma is dead, I had to live without it. So far, I like the X5-not as much as the Karma though.