Hi folks,

The place I was going to buy a Karma from fell through due to a wait on getting a verified PayPal account, so while I wait to find somewhere else I have some more questions...

1. How long does the Karma take to power up into a useable state? My Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 is instant within 30 minutes of a power down, and then take 20 seconds or so from a cold start (>30 minutes)

2. How is music played on the Karma? Dumb question perhaps, but on the Nomad Jukebox 3 (NJB3) you have a music library which you add parts of (albums, artists, genres) to a queue which can then be shuffled and played. Is the Karma the same, different...?

3. How quick is the UI? On the NJB3 the UI is vaguely quick, but slows drastically when a lot of tracks e.g. 5000, are added to the queue. You can wait 10 or so seconds for the queue to load, and to switch between the queue and track details. Are there any particular pain points for the UI on the Karma?

4. Does the Karma show the average bit-rate, current bit-rate, type of bit-rate e.g. VBR/CBR, and codec of the audio file being played?

5. For MP3's, can you view the track number field from the ID3 tag?

That's it for the moment I think...

TIA

Greetings!

Lessee... Folks, feel free to correct me...

1) About 5 seconds from a cold boot state.
2) You have the usual album, artist, genres, you can create your own playlists or have the karma select material for you with the DJ function. Various shuffle options.
3) Very quick. Very very quick.
4) Yes. It has visual, track info and other display modes. You can also click to get all of the track details, including track number, codec, average bit rate, etc.
5) Yes, in the track detail display.

#1: Early in development, they were toying with a "standby" mode that would allow it to wake up instantly like Creative unit is described as doing. There were some problems getting it to work perfectly, and since it boots from a cold start so fast anyway, they just decided to have it always cold boot.

#2: Don't forget that with Jemplode, you can even do hierarchical playlists.

#3: More than just very very quick. Basically instantaneous for anything you'd want it to do.

#4: Don't forget the VU meters!

#5: It doesn't exactly show you the track number "from the ID3 tag". It shows you the track number that's stored in the player's database, which for most intents and purposes is same thing. When you first put the song onto the player, that track number is whatever was in the ID3 tag at that time. But if you want, you can edit that track number on the player later using the management software, at which point it'll be different than the track number in the ID3 tag.

Note that #3 is related to #5. The player doesn't look at ID3 tags at run time. Only the management software looks at the ID3 tags as it imports the songs. After that, all song data is stored in an efficient database on the player which can be read from memory instantly. That's why the player's UI is so fast, why song selecting is instantaneous, why track-to-track skipping is gapless, etc... Because it doesn't have to read through ID3 tags each time it wants to do something, it's all stored in the database already.

Great, thanks to you both for the replies.

I've finally got a Karma! Well, it's on its way from Canada or the USA.

Can you offer any tips in terms of preparation before I receive it?

They would be gratefully appreciated :-)

Can you offer any tips in terms of preparation before I receive it?

Get the MP3 collection on your PC's hard drive in order. Clearly labeled and well-organized subdirectories, properly-named files with the track number as part of the title so that they are sequential, and... most importantly...

GET ALL YOUR TAGS FILLED OUT COMPLETELY AND CORRECTLY, including the track numbers, the genres, the years, etc.

Correct all spelling or grammar mistakes in the tags that might cause one artist to be listed as two different ones (Beatles <> The Beatles).

Remove all garbage from your tags such as JPG album covers and such.

Make sure your USB 2.0 port is working properly, verify it by using another USB2 device on that port if you have one.

Download the latest Rio Music Manager and the latest Karma firmware from the web site so it's ready to install when you get the player.

My MP3's are thankfully spick (sp.?) and span.

USB2 I'm not so sure on, but it seems to be OK for USB1 devices.

Is there any other application software, or just RMM?

Are there any good FAQ's to read?

Thanks :-)

Is there any other application software, or just RMM?

Jemplode and RMMlite also work with the player via ethernet.

Are there any good FAQ's to read?

The one at riovolution is pretty good. I actually wrote one for the official Rio site but haven't seen it appear there yet.

Lessee... Folks, feel free to correct me...
[...]
3) Very quick. Very very quick.

[begin OfficeSpaceVoice]
Umm, yeah, I'm going to have to, um, disagree with you on that.
[end OfficeSpaceVoice]

When I do an "insert track" into my running playlist,
it takes 15 seconds for the track menu to pop up.
And I have less than 4000 songs on the player.
To me this counts as a major UI pain, and one of my
relatively few complaints about the player.
(I also realize that it is much much much quicker, if I'm willing
to navigate through the artist, or album hierarchy.
But sometimes I just want to insert by song title, and
that is so painfully slow that it is completely unusable.)

Granted, most everything else is lightning fast, but insert track
most definitely is not.

Fair enough. I wonder why that particular thing takes so long? It's one of the very few things the Karma does less-than-instantly.

Note that it's only slow when you're trying to get a list of all tracks (just tracks) like that. If you go in through Artist, and then drill down to the appropriate album, then it's instantaneous.

For instance, I just inserted Dear Prudence by The Beatles. I went "Insert, Artist, B, The Beatles, The White Album, Dear Prudence", and each selection was instantaneous. But saying "Insert, Track" results in the wait.

So if you happen to know the artist and album, that's your work around.

So if you happen to know the artist and album, that's your work around.

Aye, and I said as much in my original post.

Well, I have some sound blurbs on the player where I've been a bit inconsistent about the artist name (was it "The Simpsons" or was it "Homer" or was it "Homer and Marge", etc.) Of course, I'm equally hosed on those by the fact that I don't have a consistent naming methodology for the title of the sound blurb, either!

But there are some songs (e.g., one hit wonders off of 80's compilations) where I can't always mentally dredge up the name of the artist quickly. Similarly, I can't remember which 80's compilation has the song, so search by album also eludes me.

A more rapid insert-by-track would spare me some grief the next time I get a craving for one of those songs by The Buggles, The Vapors, M, Ian Dury & the Blockheads, Technotronic, Falco, Animotion, The Waitresses, The Toyes, or Ram Jam.

On further reflection, perhaps the Karma is trying to save me from making crucial errors in matters of taste!

Thanks Tony. Now I look forward to it arriving :-)