My beloved Rio Karma appears to have bitten the dust. It won't boot up (hangs on "Player Starting" and requires a paper-clip reset to switch it off). I've tried firing it up in recovery mode, but then the firmware update program (RioKarmaFlash_168.exe) reports "No Player Found". It's not clicking, and recovery mode gets past the hdd: message, so I don't think it's a hard drive failure. If anyone has any other suggestions I'm all ears.
However, the main purpose of this posting is based on the assumption that the Karma is dead and needs to be replaced. The Karma had become primarily a device for use in the car, and it had one specific feature that was very useful: an automatic gain control that adjusted the playback volume to boost quiet sections. I'm not talking about a replaygain-like facility (ie. similar to Soundcheck on an iPod), nor am I referring to dynamic range compression. Rather, this is a gain-riding function. Whatever replacement player I get MUST have such a facility. So the question is: what other players out there include an AGC? Once I have a shortlist of those, I can do other research to choose which one to get. Second on the list of requirements would be gapless playback of LAME-encoded MP3s. (Sound quality is really not that important - it'll be used in a noisy car, after all).