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The Karma features a 5-band Parametric Equalizer
which allows you to control not only the output level of 5 frequency bands, but
also the mid-point and width of each band. Parametric equalization offers the
most precisely customized sound available. Also available are some
presets that can be chosen depending on the type of music you are listening
to. There is a special menu here as well that will allow you to
enable/disable auto gain control as well as stereo separation. (usually for
older tracks)
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From the Organize menu, you can create and edit
playlists as well as delete content all from the player itself. You can
choose to delete by album, artist, track or all.
On-the fly playlist creation
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Speaking of playlists, the Rio Karma supports
on-the-fly playlist creation. This is actually the most important
feature for me and is one major reason why I'm still not a fan of the IPOD.
While the Jukebox Zen did have this feature, the Rio Karma provides you with
complete control of your playlist. From the main play menu, you can click on the wheel and it will
show you a menu that does not only allow you to insert new
music, but also append, re-order or remove files from the playlist. You
can see why the Karma excels when it comes to playback features!
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The Settings menu has quite a few submenus which
include: playback, play screen, power, display, resume, time & date,
language, network, dock, orientation, audible prompts, menu button and
troubleshooting. Again, there are too many and I'll only go over some of them
with you. The playback submenu allows you to enable/disable shuffle
mode, repeat mode and cross fade. The power submenu allows you to set
the auto standby. Options available are 2, 5, 15 or 30 minutes or you
can turn this option off as well. The display submenu will allow you to
determine how long the screen backlight shall remain on as well as adjust the
contrast of the display. The Network submenu will allow you to configure your network
settings. A real nice touch is the Dock submenu. You can actually
control how the blue LED's on the cradle will function. For example, you
can set it to always on or pulse to either music or when charging. There
is a Troubleshooting submenu as well which allows you to rescan your music
files and list any bad tracks that may be on your player.
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The Features menu includes options such as a
stopwatch and Rio Taxi stand-alone application that will allow you to transfer
files from one device to another using a Rio player.
Rio DJ
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Finally, I would like to show you the very cool
Rio DJ feature which allows you to create track running orders based on your
file's ID3 Tag information. They include the following: Entertain
Me!, Play All, Top Tunes, New Music, Memory Lane, Sound Off..., Forgotten
Gems, Deja Vu and Radom Mix. Let's briefly go over a few of these.
Entertain Me! - Creates a running order composed
of the most recently played tracks.
Top Tunes - Creates a running order composed of
a set number of the most frequently played tracks.
New Music - Creates a running order composed of
the most recently loaded tracks during a set amount of time.
Memory Lane - Same as New Music except it plays
the least frequently played tracks
Sounds Off... - Creates a running order composed
of tracks from a specific decade.
Forgotten Gems - Creates a running order
composed of the most popular, but least recently played tracks.
Deja Vu - Same as Forgotten Gems except it plays
the most popular and mostly played tracks
Random Mix- Creates a running order composed of
all tracks, played in random order.
All of these work pretty damn good if you manage
your ID3 Tags properly.
Network Features
The Rio Karma has some very nice networking features. Besides just
syncing or connecting via a network connection, you can actually open your web browser and type in the
Karma's IP address to gain access to your files via a java-enabled web-based
version of Rio Music Manager and Rio Taxi. While these features are
mostly for advanced users, they are quite useful and gives you the ability to
access and manage your files from just about any computer.
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Above is a shot of the web-based "Lite" version
of Rio Music Manager.
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