..I should point out that I am head of software development at Rio. My opinions are going to be biased, and of course they are just that - opinions.

I'm sure anyone else commenting on Karma who has a strong interest in a rival product - even an open source one - will want to post a similar disclosure. Right..?

Rob

Right. I deleted my post. I was about to post links. This is better, giving the individual a chance to identify himself. Thanks.

I think this is where the dramatic music swells, right? Maybe the lights go out for a second and when they come back on, somebody on the Empeg BBS is gone?

"I have gathered you all here together to disclose the identity of the murdered!"

I think the phrase is "busted"...

I’m not trying to hide anything. In the past I have written some code for the open source Archos firmware (Rockbox). I just want the perfect portable hard drive MP3 player.

Yes, the Archos still suffers from many, many issues (many of them can not be fixed in software) but, through 2 years of software development it has become a pretty polished piece of firmware (a plug in system, full playlist editing capabilities, many games, configurable fonts, configurable info screens (much like emphatic) etc.)

Pretty much the Archos is quite similar to the empeg with the ability to hack it to your desire (depending on how much time/effort) people/you want to put into it. This is exactly what I think many people are looking for. The number of people who have bought the Archos because of Rockbox is simply stunning.

I currently own an empeg and love its capabilities. It works perfectly for what it was designed to do.

However, from previews of the Karma, I thought it would be THE player. But, it has nowhere the polish of the empeg. Not only that, but it has many shortcomings and bugs that should not be present even in a 1.0 product.

I have owned or still own an ipod, archos player, archos recorder, neuros, creative jukebox, the empeg car player, numerous flash, CD, and other various mp3 players. I have owned the Diamond PMP300 (the first MP3 player) the Mambo X (the first MP3 CD player), etc. I have over 1300 CDs and I want to be able to access them and play them whenever and wherever. It seems that every product misses here and there.

With the Karma the whole file taxi is a big issue. Having a compact portable hard drive in your pocket makes it difficult to understand why it can not be mounted as a standard hard drive. Why not make a standard fat32 partition, and still have the proprietary Karma partition?

Rob, I don’t mean to sound harsh or uninformed, but does your team not have a UI person? It seems that there should be a design team for the actual hardware and another for the software. Many people are mistaken when they think that a UI can just be thrown on top of some code, but unless your code is perfectly modular, then this usually doesn’t work as planned. The UI developer needs to work with the “engine” developers throughout the entire process.

The hardware while being larger then advertised is incredibly powerful and I would love to see what can be accomplished with it. Just look at the synching animation. It’s beautiful. Why isn’t the screen used to its potential. I am thinking about embedded album covers that are viewable on the device, full screen animations, etc.

I will keep the Karma through my trial period and hopefully these firmware upgrades that everyone seems to have except for the customers will make it work better. I truly believe that with all the bugs present that you should have held off on the release until closer to the holiday season.

Greetings!

I think we all share the same goals of trying to make the best portable player around. My role in it is very minor in the beta, but I can assure you that many of these thoughts were raised at one time or another.

The hackability issue is something that cannot be avoided. Because it is a dedicated system, not a raw kernel, it is not very hackable at all.

File taxi and partitioning as FAT: I understand. It would be nice, but many of these products share a similar code base, and I do not know if it would be possible to implement in this case.

The UI has a lot to handle in the background - there are a lot more options. While beta testing, we all gave the players to people cold, with various levels of experience, just to see what they would make of it. The goal was to get a UI that people could get to the basic functions easily, while still allowing access to the more powerful features. I think they did pretty well. But, then, I have been using the interface for a little while. Perhaps it grows on you... <insert your favorite joke here>

The size advertising, yes. Someone made a mistake. It was not a deliberate lie, or intentionally to deceive. At least, not that I know of.

As for the graphics, yes. There is a lot that can be done with this, and hopefully more will as the Karma matures further in the marketplace. I would love to see more visuals, myself.

I think the concern was that your posts came off as extremely negative and also a bit hostile. I don't know if that was your intention, but you had a lot of people scrambling about, trying to verify your concerns and problems (some of which were true, some I have not personally seen). It also seemed that you were raising the same issues, with increasing (perceived) anger and bitterness in your postings, in multiple locations.

I know that I am also trying to help make the best portable player. As is Rob. As are many other people here.

Yes, the Archos still suffers from many, many issues (many of them can not be fixed in software) but, through 2 years of software development it has become a pretty polished piece of firmware

..where as Karma has been out for all of 1 day. I would have liked to have got v1.11 into production but we couldn't get it qualified in time. It was always intended to be online by the time any customer received a player, and that is a screw up, but it should be there very soon.

Beyond that, it is a wide audience and customer feedback that creates a great product. We've had several months of beta testing with a quite diverse team but day one of retail shipping will always generate a slew of reports and feedback. In your case the feedback was "this sucks, I'm returning it" so clearly there's nothing I can do to help with that.

But, it has nowhere the polish of the empeg

It doesn't have three years of incremental development behind it. Even so I think it outshines the car player (with which it shares a codebase) in most areas.

Many people are mistaken when they think that a UI can just be thrown on top of some code

The UI was designed before anything else, although our codebase *is* exceptionally modular as it happens. You haven't really made it clear what you hate about the UI so much, except some trivial stuff like a misaligned control. It makes me think you're totally missing the point (which by implication is still our problem) as the player is so patently simple to use. The only bit I really dislike is the playlist editor (which most other players have chosen not to implement) but since the Now Playing view provides a really nice method for building playlists out of the running order I'm less concerned about that.

It may be true, though, that in terms of final polishing more work has gone into the filter graph than anything else. The core audio functionality is #1 priority and already has many additional capabilities which are just waiting to be exposed.

The UI developer needs to work with the “engine” developers throughout the entire process

In fact we use a short iterative development discipline (eXteme Programming) to ensure that all members of the team work closely.

Just look at the synching animation. It’s beautiful. Why isn’t the screen used to its potential. I am thinking about embedded album covers that are viewable on the device, full screen animations, etc.

Toby will be pleased to hear that he is responsible for the only part of the product you actually like. It took him all of half an hour to write. Album art, visualisations etc are gloss features that get held back or added in to iterative releases. For example, right now the only visual is the VU meter, but all the car player visualisation core is there ready for them to get plugged in. I think your comments have proved that there are *already* too many 1.0 features and launching with even more of them would have pushed the project out indefinitely. The QA regression plan already takes several days to run, and must be run for each and every RC (1.11 has taken two RC's which is why it's not online today).

I truly believe that with all the bugs present that you should have held off on the release until closer to the holiday season

I think you misunderstand retail purchasing. Christmas is the start of October - there is no opportunity to get into a store after that (well, not this year anyway).

Rob