#207165 - 26/02/2004 21:59
RioCentral
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Since Jemplode seems to be an interesting piece of glue between (among?) the Karma, Empeg and the RioCentral, I've been thinking of buying one of the latter.
Any opinions regarding whether it's worth the $500 from overstock.com?
-brendan
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#207166 - 27/02/2004 00:52
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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It's worth it to me specifically as a 100-percent-uptime networked music server and ripper. I can turn on my Rio receiver(s) any time I want and I don't have to leave my hot-running and noisy PC on in order to serve the music. It does fine no-brainer ripping and tagging, each time I buy a new CD I simply stuff it in the Central and walk away. I haven't ripped a CD on my PC in over a year. And with the latest release of Jemplode, it's possible to completely remove the MP3s from the PC's hard disk and just use the Central and the Empeg be the backups for each other.
But if you've already got a quiet PC that's your networked music server, there's a lot less of an advantage to having one. Personally, I could build a networked music server PC myself, but the Central is much nicer and more reliable.
Note that the above comments must be taken with a grain of salt, as my Central is a beta prototype that I didn't have to shell out 500 clams for. I say this in the interest of full disclosure, even though I personally don't believe that my opinion of the device is any different because of it. 
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#207167 - 27/02/2004 00:57
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Truly, my major concern is the quality of the mp3-ripper. Any idea what codebase is used and/or what its relative quality level is compared to lame?
-brendan
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#207168 - 27/02/2004 01:18
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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The ripping code is decent, it's custom empeg-team work. Out of my entire collection, only one particularly badly-scratched CD wouldn't rip, and I had to feed it to EAC on the PC. The CD in question was so badly scratched that it wouldn't play in any standard CD player, so I don't count that as something I should expect to be able to rip easily.
The encoder is the ARM encoder which is based on the Fraunhofer code. When I chose to re-rip everything at 256 on the Jupiter, I did some listening comparisons with the same tracks LAME-encoded with really high quality VBR, and couldn't tell the difference. However, the Central is fixed-bitrate-only, so if VBR is important to you, then it's not an option. Personally, I'm happy with 256 fixed and I'm not near maxing out the Central's or the empeg's hard disks, so it's a nonissue for me.
One of the nice things about the Central is that it's so brain-dead easy to rip stuff, I actually did my whole collection in batches over a few weeks without hardly thinking about it. Just grab another stack off the CD rack and feed them to the Central in multiple-CD-mode while I'm doing something else in the same room. It pops the drawer for the next disk, literally you don't have to touch any front-panel buttons once the process is started, just swap the discs and push on the drawer. When the last disc from that stack is done, pull it out and close the empty drawer, and let it encode for a while. Next day, feed it another stack. Honestly, if it weren't for the Central, I probably never would have started, let alone completed, my re-rip project. The 128's were good enough so that the hassle of doing the rips on the PC outweighed my desire to have higher quality MP3s.
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#207169 - 27/02/2004 05:38
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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What about tagging?
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs
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#207170 - 27/02/2004 08:15
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Ok, lastly: how old is the firmware in the central? Does it/will it ever get another update?
-brendan
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#207171 - 27/02/2004 08:37
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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There has not been a Rio Central s/w or f/w update in years.. if ever(?).
The kernel is Linux, and can be hacked, but nobody has done much.
Not even in the farm-team league below the Empeg's league!
But it apparently does just work, and should continue to do so.
Cheers
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#207172 - 27/02/2004 09:09
Re: RioCentral
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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There has not been a Rio Central s/w or f/w update in years.. if ever(?). New firmware was released only about 2 months ago. It was created last year, but just released recently.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736
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#207173 - 27/02/2004 10:57
Re: RioCentral
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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What about tagging? What about tagging? It tags automatically using the built-in CDDB, and will automatically dial/broadband the online CDDB if a tag is missing from its internal database. You can fix up tags either from the front panel (via the remote or via a USB keyboard) or with Emplode/Jemplode.
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#207174 - 27/02/2004 11:00
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Ok, lastly: how old is the firmware in the central? Does it/will it ever get another update? Another update is very unlikely. The current firmware works fine. The only realistic update I could see happening to it is for supporting direct plug-in of newer portables. But since it's a discontinued product (*), they don't have any reason to do this.
(*) The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates only because it shares a codebase with some of the newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta testers for new code.
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#207175 - 27/02/2004 11:10
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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> Another update is very unlikely.
Hmm. If there were a way to strap lame in there, I'd buy a bunch of 'em. Still. It's an intriguing idea...
> (*) The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates
> only because it shares a codebase with some of the
> newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta
> testers for new code.
You say that as if it hadn't been a strategic move by empeg-fans who now work at Rio (aka the original developers) as a way of keeping their in-car experience up with the times!
Ok, I lied about final questions. Here are the final final questions:
1) Is it CDDB only, or can it also use freedb?
2) How easy is it to find the ethernet adapter (which is optional)?
-brendan
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#207176 - 27/02/2004 11:52
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Hmm. If there were a way to strap lame in there, I'd buy a bunch of 'em. Actually, I get the impression that there is a way to substitute your own encoder with a little hacking. Dunno exactly how, but I seem to recall they said it could be done. You'd have to compile an ARM version of LAME with a cross-compiler.
1) Is it CDDB only, or can it also use freedb? CDDB only. I don't think that one can be hacked in.
2) How easy is it to find the ethernet adapter (which is optional)? Pretty easy.
Hey, I don't know if you noticed, but there's a whole separate BBS for the Central, via the link at the top of the page. That's the appropriate place to be asking all these questions. Do a search there to see about which ethernet adapters will work.
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#207177 - 27/02/2004 12:04
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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The empeg is discontinued, too, but it receives updates only because it shares a codebase with some of the newer products and they can use us as unwitting beta testers for new code. At least, that's what we tell everyone. The real reason it receives updates is because we've all got one. Nowadays we've all got Rio Centrals too (they found some in a cupboard when closing down Sonicblue) but it's been so long in code terms since anyone tried a Rio Central release from the code trunk that it seems too much like hard work to try and update it. (Though red flashing lights still go off if it fails to compile, so we know it'd only be a question of not working. And a rip-to-flac-and-vorbis Rio Central that supported big winchesters would rule.)
Peter
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#207179 - 27/02/2004 12:17
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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yes yes!
_________________________
Brad B.
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#207180 - 27/02/2004 12:25
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Wanna give hints on how to hack in LAME? It's totally in-process and static. There's no sane way of hacking in Lame, either at run-time or compile-time, that I can see at first glance. Are you dead sure we said it was do-able?
Peter
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#207181 - 27/02/2004 12:34
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Why would I want lame over the encoder the central uses now ?
_________________________
Matt
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#207183 - 27/02/2004 12:55
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Why would I want lame over the encoder the central uses now ? LAME is an ongoing project where they keep tweaking it to get the best possible sound quality out of it. So, in theory, a very new copy of LAME could sound better at a given bitrate than an old copy of the Fraunhofer encoder.
However, at 256kbps, I can't tell the difference between the original CD and a Central-encoded file, let alone being able to tell the difference between LAME and Fraunhofer. So at that bitrate, I have no real need for LAME.
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#207184 - 27/02/2004 13:16
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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Except that VBR files can be smaller than 256CBR ones.
_________________________
Brad B.
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#207185 - 27/02/2004 13:25
Re: RioCentral
[Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Except that VBR files can be smaller than 256CBR ones. I was told that the ARM encoder on the Central could theoretically be told to do VBR, too, but that they didn't bother implementing it in the UI. So that's not really relevant to the comparison.
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#207186 - 27/02/2004 20:36
Re: RioCentral
[Re: peter]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/02/2002
Posts: 3411
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Nowadays we've all got Rio Centrals too (they found some in a cupboard when closing down Sonicblue)
Ah. Now we know where they were hiding when they all went mysteriously out of stock during that 'firesale'.
_________________________
Mk2a 60GB Blue. Serial 030102962
sig.mp3: File Format not Valid.
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#207187 - 28/02/2004 15:41
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Ok. Put my order in for one. Also, a karma, since I got to the gym yesterday and my mp3 player's battery was dead AGAIN.
Went for the trifecta...
Now I gotta read up on this Rio Receiver thing...
-brendan
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#207188 - 28/02/2004 17:33
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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enthusiast
Registered: 30/01/2002
Posts: 264
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Does the Rio Central have a "sleep" mode, or do you have to turn it on each time you want to use a rio receiver, or do you just leave it on all of the time?
_________________________
Steve
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#207189 - 28/02/2004 20:42
Re: RioCentral
[Re: lockuplever]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Does the Rio Central have a "sleep" mode, or do you have to turn it on each time you want to use a rio receiver, or do you just leave it on all of the time? Yes, the Rio Central does have a stanby mode, very similar to the empeg's standby mode. It is meant to be left powered on all the time, and placed into standby when not in use.
In fact, there is no way to power it off from the front panel or the remote. You can only put it into standby. On the back of my prototype (in a hard to reach spot) there is a master power switch that is the equivalent of unplugging the power, but I don't know whether the final units even included that at all.
It serves the Rio Receivers equally well whether it's in standby mode or awake and playing music itself. It also can serve receivers and play music while it's ripping and encoding CDs.
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#207190 - 29/02/2004 03:03
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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The PDF indicates the Rio Central has an on/off switch in back.
Two more Q's:
1) The Linksys USB100TX are the currently recommended adapters for both the Rio Receiver and the Rio Central, yes?
2) Recommendations for speakers for the Rio Receiver? It says it's got a 10W/channel amp. Not sure what's appropriate for that.
-brendan
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#207191 - 29/02/2004 06:00
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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1) The Linksys USB100TX are the currently recommended adapters for both the Rio Receiver and the Rio Central, yes? The Rio Receiver doesn't need a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor: it already has Ethernet, and doesn't have USB! And if the only reason you want networking on your Rio Central is to attach Rio Receivers to it, you can do that with HomePNA (telephone cables) with no extra adaptors at all.
2) Recommendations for speakers for the Rio Receiver? It says it's got a 10W/channel amp. Not sure what's appropriate for that. 10W/channel is more than it sounds. Any bookshelf speakers should be fine. We've used them with quite big Mission floorstanders and they were fine too.
Peter
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#207192 - 29/02/2004 09:53
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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What if the online CDDB doesn't have something either?
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#207193 - 29/02/2004 09:56
Re: RioCentral
[Re: Daria]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Then you use emplode to fix the info after ripping.
_________________________
Matt
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#207194 - 29/02/2004 09:58
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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Sorry, I should have asked more clearly. What do they get named in the meantime?
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#207195 - 29/02/2004 10:04
Re: RioCentral
[Re: Daria]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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I don't remember for sure but I think it was something like cd## track # really generic.
_________________________
Matt
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#207196 - 29/02/2004 10:09
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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I'm just wondering if I got one and ripped a stack of cds if it would be obvious what was what afterward.
Probably I won't get one; It's a neat idea but it's not worth $500 to listen to music at home, the PC I have copies of music on is on 24/7 anyhow with 2/3tb of disk spinning...
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#207197 - 29/02/2004 10:22
Re: RioCentral
[Re: Daria]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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I don't get too many it doesn't find so it hasn't been a problem. I really like the idea but the problem is with two other mp3 players I still have to keep everything on the pc anyway. They need to make a product suite that has a home, car, and portable player in one package and have them all work together so you can rip and store everthing on the home player then copy to the protable and car players. I am guessing that is kind of what they were going for but it didn't work out.
_________________________
Matt
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#207198 - 29/02/2004 10:58
Re: RioCentral
[Re: Daria]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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I'm just wondering if I got one and ripped a stack of cds if it would be obvious what was what afterward. Yes, it's obvious, because you can look at the number of tracks on the album and their running times and match up a given CD to a given untagged album. Or just play one of the tracks.
Also, I wanted to say that Emplode is not the only way to fix up tags. You can do it from the remote (not easy) or from a USB keyboard (a bit easier). So the PC isn't required.
Another note is that the CDDB is pretty comprehensive (although not error-free), so it's very rare to rip a stack of CDs and have even one unrecognized album, let alone more than one.
the PC I have copies of music on is on 24/7 anyhow with 2/3tb of disk spinning... This is an example of one of the situations where I would not target-market the Rio Central: You've already got a music server covered. I like the Central because it's a silent 24/7music server, and I didn't already have one.
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#207199 - 29/02/2004 11:03
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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I really like the idea but the problem is with two other mp3 players I still have to keep everything on the pc anyway. With the latest release of Jemplode, I can now copy freely between the Central, the Empeg, and the Karma, and I don't technically need to store the files on the PC any more. I still keep them there because I'm beta-testing the Karma and need to wipe it often for certain tests, but if I were just an ordinary user I wouldn't need to.
They need to make a product suite that has a home, car, and portable player in one package and have them all work together so you can rip and store everthing on the home player then copy to the protable and car players. I am guessing that is kind of what they were going for but it didn't work out. Yeah, I agree. If the Central had taken off, we'd be plugging the empeg and the Karma (and all the other new Rio portables) directly into it right now. That was the dream. Ah well. 
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#207200 - 29/02/2004 11:14
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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This is an example of one of the situations where I would not target-market the Rio Central: You've already got a music server covered. I like the Central because it's a silent 24/7music server, and I didn't already have one.
I'm not necessarily averse to moving functionality off that server onto other things; if I moved enough off it I could crash it more often (I also do some development including kernel development on it) but even at a considerably discounted $500 the Central probably isn't sufficiently cheap to make that the next functionality I move off it. (I moved several things onto the machine I replaced my router with, a $100-on-clearance GallantWeb email server I'm not using the bundled software with).
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#207201 - 29/02/2004 12:15
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Yeah, I agree. If the Central had taken off, we'd be plugging the empeg and the Karma (and all the other new Rio portables) directly into it right now. That was the dream. Ah well.
That's why it would be good if they made all three products together and sold it in one package. Then we wouldn't have to worry about it doing well to get support for other produts because they would work together out of the box.
_________________________
Matt
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#207202 - 01/03/2004 04:17
Re: RioCentral
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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I think what would really rule would be the Rio Central codebase (+LAME) running on an Epia fanless wonder with a touchscreen TFT hooked up. Sort of like the dev platform I was thinking of for Central II.
Hugo
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#207203 - 01/03/2004 05:33
Re: RioCentral
[Re: altman]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 13/04/2001
Posts: 1742
Loc: The land of the pale blue peop...
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Any chance of you getting a few brought over if you have contacts
_________________________
P.Allison fixer of big engines
Mk2+Mk2a signed by God / Hacked by the Lord
Aberdeen Scotland
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#207204 - 01/03/2004 08:46
Re: RioCentral
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Have you thought of just selling the software and the user could supply the hatdware ?
_________________________
Matt
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#207205 - 01/03/2004 09:42
Re: RioCentral
[Re: altman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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I think what would really rule would be the Rio Central codebase (+LAME) running on an Epia fanless wonder with a touchscreen TFT hooked up. Sort of like the dev platform I was thinking of for Central II. Except for the fact that Epia fanless wonders come in nicer cases than the one the mucking funkies who designed Rio Central came up with, what's all that bad about the Central's existing platform? Proper ethernet would be good but apart from that it's pretty much sorted.
Peter
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#207206 - 01/03/2004 10:03
Re: RioCentral
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Epia fanless wonders come in nicer cases
That's just so tempting right now. Unfortunately, I think Jen would kill me.
_________________________
-- roger
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#207207 - 01/03/2004 10:07
Re: RioCentral
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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I think one of their fanless P4 machines will be my next desktop.
_________________________
Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday
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#207208 - 01/03/2004 18:21
Re: RioCentral
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Does anyone know anything about the AVX music server hush is selling now ?
_________________________
Matt
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#207209 - 01/03/2004 21:05
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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enthusiast
Registered: 30/01/2002
Posts: 264
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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The price according to the web site, EUR 1.750,00 , seems a little high, some cool features though.
_________________________
Steve
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#207210 - 01/03/2004 22:33
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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enthusiast
Registered: 30/01/2002
Posts: 264
Loc: Tucson, AZ
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Ordered a Rio Central from overstock.com, this will finish off my home music project.
_________________________
Steve
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#207211 - 01/03/2004 23:06
Re: RioCentral
[Re: lockuplever]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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That's what I say too but I am still curious about it.
_________________________
Matt
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#207212 - 02/03/2004 09:53
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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stranger
Registered: 10/06/2002
Posts: 35
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Something I've not seen discussed here and very little on the "proper" forum is that can the hard drive be replaced with a MUCH larger one on the central? I am currently using a separate computer for music storage as I've got a 250GB drive there... so the central by itself would be only local storage and not mass storage of all my music. Any thoughts?
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#207214 - 02/03/2004 10:39
Re: RioCentral
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14496
Loc: Canada
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The thread you linked to is inconclusive in that regard. I think someone just has to try it, and see what happens.
There are two kernels: the "flash kernel", which likely lacks LBA48 support, but which also has no need for it, so long as the "disk kernel" can be found within the first 128GB of the drive.
The "disk kernel" on the Central appears to already have LBA48 compiled in, so it should be able to use drives up to 2TB or so.
Cheers
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#207215 - 04/03/2004 13:48
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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RioCentral just arrived. My god. It's huge.
-brendan
PS - and the darn USB<->Ethernet adapter doesn't arrive until tomorrow.
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#207216 - 04/03/2004 13:54
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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"My God, it's full of songs."
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#207217 - 04/03/2004 13:56
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Heh. Those were *exactly* the words that came to mind.
-brendan
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#207218 - 04/03/2004 14:02
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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In the right light, the prototype lexan-cased versions of the Central looked kind of like the monolith, too...
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#207219 - 04/03/2004 16:29
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Ok, this device is even cooler that I thought it could be:
1. It comes with a couple year old copy of the CDDB inside. Supposedly, once I actually bother to connect it to something, the newish firmware has an update to the CDDB too.
2. If it can't connect to the internet, it defers tagging new MP3s until it can connect (I think?)
3. If it has trouble making MP3s, instead of ejecting the CD, it says there was trouble. If you eject the CD and insert it again, it tries ONLY THE TRACKS THAT FAILED LAST TIME.
Whoa.
-brendan
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#207220 - 04/03/2004 16:40
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Supposedly, once I actually bother to connect it to something, the newish firmware has an update to the CDDB too. Unfortunately, you won't see its software auto-update feature working. Cancelled product and all. So you can't get your new CDDB that way.
At www.rioaudio.com, there is a downloadable ISO image that you can use for an update (burn onto a CD, insert CD into Central). There are two of them, a smaller one with just the firmware, and a larger one with a newer CDDB. However, at last report, the larger of the two files is corrupted. So only get the smaller one. That smaller one is necessary, though, since it fixes a couple of egregious bugs.
If it can't connect to the internet, it defers tagging new MP3s until it can connect (I think?) It defers tagging until you go in and select "Connect now to download album information (3 albums)" or something like that. I don't think it does that part automatically.
it tries ONLY THE TRACKS THAT FAILED LAST TIME. Yup, it's pretty smart about that stuff.
Also, try multiple-CD mode, that's pretty cool. However, only do it AFTER you've gotten the 1.04 software update installed. One of the fixed bugs is that it sometimes rebooted if it was in multiple-CD mode.
And don't try to do your whole collection in one go. Just do it in batches, say 10 CDs or so. Because it encodes in the background, there's a such thing as feeding it too much to chew on at once.
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#207221 - 04/03/2004 17:07
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Re: auto-update
Actually, I was talking about the deferred tagging there. Wasn't clear on my part.
Thanks for the heads up on the bad ISO. I was going to grab the bigger one...
It's in multiple-CD mode now. Done about 15, half untagged. No crashes yet. I suppose the "Feeding It Too Much" issue is due to the arm encoder being a bit...slow...
Does the CPU have a fpu?
I haven't connected it to RMM at all, since when I hooked it up, I got a driver error AND it caused the karma to not be recognized until I unplugged it. Hrm. Gotta play with that later.
Didn't know the firmware update was via CD-R. I can do that next.
-brendan
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#207222 - 04/03/2004 17:10
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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I haven't connected it to RMM at all Because RMM doesn't work with it. You use emplode. 2.0 final is fine. Or, if you have an ethernet adaptor for it, the latest Jemplode works and lets you do hierarchical playlists.
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#207223 - 04/03/2004 17:13
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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I suppose the "Feeding It Too Much" issue is due to the arm encoder being a bit...slow... Not really, it's more of a disk space issue. Those CDs have to be stored in raw mode on the hard disk until the encoding is done. You can fill up a 40gb disk drive pretty quick if you keep shoving CDs in.
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#207224 - 04/03/2004 18:20
Re: RioCentral
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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When I got mine I just kept feeding it cds until the drive got full and then I waited for it to finish encoding to feed it some more.
_________________________
Matt
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#207225 - 04/03/2004 18:25
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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addict
Registered: 27/12/2001
Posts: 441
Loc: Central, NC, USA
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I upgraded to a 120gb drive first thing... no problems yet with hard drive space...
Sean in NC
_________________________
_____________
Sean in NC
130gb MK2a w/ 32mb ram
80gb MK2a empeg spare
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#207226 - 05/03/2004 00:23
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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I'm at 80% right now, after 45 CDs over 10 hours. The math seems wrong. Even if it's *really* slow at encoding, that ... seems...
I suspect I might be also creating both 256 (central) and 128 (portable) files. Perhaps I should open the instruction manual...
-brendan
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#207227 - 05/03/2004 00:40
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Yeah I think the default is to create some portable files too. It's under setup - recording quality.
_________________________
Matt
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#207228 - 05/03/2004 09:28
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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For what it's worth, it was up to 84% full by the time I went to sleep (4am), according to the About screen. Woke up (10am), it's down to 80% full, and still says "Audio Compression Is In Progress".
From all I've read, the ARM encoder is fixed-point, perhaps that's why it's amazingly slow?
Still...very cool device.
-brendan
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#207229 - 05/03/2004 10:14
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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From all I've read, the ARM encoder is fixed-point, perhaps that's why it's amazingly slow? The ARM encoder is amazingly fast considering the platform it runs on. The Rio Central has a 200MHz Strongarm, which, bearing in mind it's single-issue, has about the performance of a Pentium 133.
Peter
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#207230 - 05/03/2004 10:29
Re: RioCentral
[Re: msaeger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31600
Loc: Seattle, WA
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When I got mine I just kept feeding it cds until the drive got full and then I waited for it to finish encoding to feed it some more. Yeah, but then you sat there wondering why it never finished encoding and why it was taking so long. You thought the machine had locked up.
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#207231 - 05/03/2004 10:38
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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still says "Audio Compression Is In Progress" If you do ever get round to reading the manual, you'll see that the little "cogs" animation on the status-bar gives an indication that compression is still going on.
Peter
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#207232 - 05/03/2004 11:04
Re: RioCentral
[Re: peter]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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> The ARM encoder is amazingly fast considering the
> platform it runs on.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the encoder software itself was slow, only that the combined hardware/software platform was relatively slow compared to what I'm used to: two LAME encoders on a dual athlon 1900 system.
Obviously, the speed difference should be expected.
> If you do ever get round to reading the manual,
I went through the entire manual last night. But, point taken about posting before RTFM.
> you'll see that the little "cogs" animation on the status-bar
> gives an indication that compression is still going on.
I initially made that assumption. But when I turned off multi-cd mode at one point, the cogs went away??? Turning the mode back on made them reappear. So, I began to doubt that they represented compression going on...hence checking the about screen for the "Audio Compression In Progress" line.
-brendan
PS - device is super amazing cool!
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#207233 - 05/03/2004 11:38
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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In order to improve ripping speed, encoding gets suspended when you're ripping. We have no DMA - all disk I/O is done with load and store instructions, by the CPU. So we have to be clever to get ~10x rip speeds
Hugo
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#207234 - 05/03/2004 12:19
Re: RioCentral
[Re: altman]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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> In order to improve ripping speed, encoding gets
> suspended when you're ripping.
AHA!
I'm still at 80% for the last 3-4 hours (no movement on free space since I awoke), the gears are turning though. Haven't ripped anything since I awoke either.
Is it possible that by leaving it in multi-cd mode, it's actually not encoding at all, even if I'm not ripping CDs at the time? Overnight, I put the unit in standby, which allowed it to go from 84% to 80%...
-brendan
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#207235 - 05/03/2004 14:06
Re: RioCentral
[Re: brendanhoar]
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enthusiast
Registered: 09/06/2003
Posts: 297
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Yep. It appears if I put it into "standby", intead of "on", it encodes relatively fast (down to 77% now). Otherwise, it seems to just not encode at all. Running 1.02.
Downloaded the 1.10 ISOs last night, wonder if the upgrade will make any differences in encoding while on area?
Notably: I had no crashes while ripping. Not sure if that's because it's not configured for the internet or not yet. Sounds like the posted crashes were around the time of cddb lookups. Anyhow, the 1.10 is supposed to take care of that! I suppose there aren't release notes for 1.10, it being a post-end-of-life release? Didn't see any on rioaudio.com/digitalnetworksna.com nor in the zip file.
More fun...
-brendan
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