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Topic: Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120 (Read 9035 times) previous topic - next topic
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Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

I'm finally going to get a HD based MP3/Vorbis/AAC player and need some advice on which to choose. My basic requirements are:

1. Should have a line-in and be able to record uncompressed/lossless audio.
Recording my band / liveshows is one of the major reasons I'm getting an HD based player and this feature should be reliable and provide good sound quality (comparable to better MiniDisc players).

2. Stable firmware. Should play all supported formats without too much problems.

3. No spoony software. Uploading files using Windows Explorer would be nice, but if I have to use some special software it shouldn't be too annoying (unlike MusicMatch).

Any help or suggestions are appretiated. I'm also not too fixed on those two products, but from what I've read they are the two most likely to meet my requirements.

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #1 –
Can only speak for the iHP's,

Quote
MP3/Vorbis/AAC player


MP3/Vorbis- yes AAC-No

Quote
Should have a line-in and be able to record uncompressed/lossless audio.
Recording my band / liveshows is one of the major reasons I'm getting an HD based player and this feature should be reliable and provide good sound quality (comparable to better MiniDisc players).


Has both Optical and Analogue line in, can record both MP3 and Wav from an external source, however MP3 is limited to 195mb and Wav is limited to 795mb.
It will stop recording when these limits are reached and recording will need to be re-started. The 120 has an external mic in jack.

Quote
Stable firmware. Should play all supported formats without too much problems


I've not encountered any problems with the supported formats.

Quote
No spoony software. Uploading files using Windows Explorer would be nice, but if I have to use some special software it shouldn't be too annoying (unlike MusicMatch).


Works via USB 1 or 2, drag and drop from Windows explorer.

There has been a lot of complaints about the recording limits on this player, it's down to personal choice and usage requirements.

It is an excellent machine.

Cheers

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #2 –
Sounds very nice, indeed.
From what I've read so far at Riovolution.com the Karma doesn't seem to have any recording features at all and use some kind of prop. FileSystem (-> no mounting), can anybody verify that?

Another option seems to be the Creative Jukebox 3, which is known for its excellent recording features, but lacks Vorbis support and is too huge to fit into a pocket.

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #3 –
dev0, take a look at this:

http://www.neurosaudio.com

i'de get one of those puppies myself, but it's a hassle to ship over seas ... 

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #4 –
Hi,

I can recommend a Karma, because it plays back mp3 & vorbis files flawlessly, the software is nice (and includes a Lite version in Java) and the latest firmware is stable enough.

However, it doesn't feature a line-in (or if it does, I haven't found it).

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #5 –
Quote
Sounds very nice, indeed.
From what I've read so far at Riovolution.com the Karma doesn't seem to have any recording features at all and use some kind of prop. FileSystem (-> no mounting), can anybody verify that?

The Karma does not record.

Neuros can record wav up to 48 khz sampling rate (common for DAT recordings) as well as the CD standard 44.1 khz.  It has a level meter and gain control  which may not be necessary if you are feeding it from a mixer board, but would be handy for  a microphone feed.

On their long term wishlist is Flac recording, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #6 –
I'm in Europe too, so shipping of the Neuros could be a problem, but I'm sure I could find a way. What about the size of the Neruos - is it small enough to fit into a pocket?

The lack of recording rules out the Karma, which seesm to be quite nice except for this (major) lack.

Choices left:
iRiver iHP-100/120
Creative Jukebox 3
Neuros (?)

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #7 –
Quote
I'm in Europe too, so shipping of the Neuros could be a problem, but I'm sure I could find a way. What about the size of the Neruos - is it small enough to fit into a pocket?

There are at least 2 vendors who will ship to Europe.  One of them can also exchange the hard drive up to 80 gigabytes.  See http://www.cool4u2view.com/

On size, the HD backpack is roughly the size of the Archos player if you've seen them, and the flash backpack is roughly the size of the original Rio.  I got the combination bundle with both versions.  For me the flash one is shirt pocket size, and the HD is pants or jacket pocket size.  The hard drive they use is a 2.5 inch laptop model.  In the future they will go to 1.8 inch.

Edit: on needing special software..
To record music, play back the recording, and retrieve it to your computer, no.. it just mounts as a USB drive.

To Play music loaded from your computer, it needs a database of tag information to find the files on it's own drive.  There is a monolithic sync program that runs on windows, but you can also just copy the files over and use an available Java program (which should run on just about any OS) to build the database.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #8 –
I'd like to hear someone, who owns a Creative (Nomad) Jukebox 3: Does it need any software? Is it mountable? Battery life?

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #9 –
Quote
I'd like to hear someone, who owns a Creative (Nomad) Jukebox 3: Does it need any software? Is it mountable? Battery life?

dev0

the creative needs two seperate programs: 1st is a bloaty and ugly music manager which accesses the music files. it works, but could surely be a lot better... and 2nd is the "creative filemanager" which copies other filetypes seperately on the player. so regarding this, the iriver would be a much better choice.

battery life is about 11 hours and can be doubled with an optional battery (it has two slots).

regards; ilikedirt

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #10 –
I was afraid to hear something like that. I'll most likely go for the iHP-120 then. It seems to be quite powerful and feature-complete, but also very expensive.

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #11 –
you know what they say..."you get what you pay for."

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #12 –
You may refer the review site below. It's has most of HDD player.
Hope it helps.
http://www.dapreview.com/

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #14 –
This site has a good deal of reviews for mp3 players: http://gear.ign.com/audio.html

To reiterate, don't get the Karma if you want something that can record.  If you're serious about recording, think about a dedicated DAT rig too.  It'd be more expensive but the quality is going to be much improved.  And here at HA, quality is what matters 

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #15 –
Quote
If you're serious about recording, think about a dedicated DAT rig too.  It'd be more expensive but the quality is going to be much improved.  And here at HA, quality is what matters 

How is the inherent quality any better than a same-rate wav file from a HD recording (external mike)?

I can see that a dedicated recording machine would have conveniences like real VU meters and gain controls.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #16 –
Quote
Can only speak for the iHP's,

Has both Optical and Analogue line in, can record both MP3 and Wav from an external source, however MP3 is limited to 195mb and Wav is limited to 795mb.
It will stop recording when these limits are reached and recording will need to be re-started. The 120 has an external mic in jack.

Ouch this is bad... Any plans for fixing? It should be nice to do a non stop recording until the HD gets filled... Main reason to dump the short duration DATs... Stopping/resuming each 90 minutes sounds like... annoying.

Nice to know it has optical(digital), with a proper feed, i don't see any reason the quality to be worse than DAT. I think these devices are the audio tape killers
She is waiting in the air

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #17 –
Anybody know the maximum time you can record on the iriver hp-120?

I know it depends on a lot of settings (bit rate, etc), but can somebody give me an idea. I think you can record it as mp3's as wav's. I'm more interested in the maximum on WAV's. 

rj

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #18 –
the manual on iriver hp120 says recording is limited to 790mb for wav and 195mb for mp3. what sort of limitation is this imposing on wav's?


rj

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #19 –
Quote
Anybody know the maximum time you can record on the iriver hp-120?

I know it depends on a lot of settings (bit rate, etc), but can somebody give me an idea. I think you can record it as mp3's as wav's. I'm more interested in the maximum on WAV's. 

Assuming a WAV file is what, 1024kbps or something, this website tells us that 128kbps at 790MB mean "14 hours, 22 minutes, 53 seconds (862 minutes total)".

So, considering that 1024=128*8, we have 862/8~107 minutes total.

I don't know if I made any mistakes in the calculations above, apart from the kbps in WAV thing for which I already said I'm not sure.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #20 –
CD quality WAVs (2ch, 16-bit, 44,100 Hz) are 1,411,200 bits per second.

EDIT: My playing time seemed off. I'm going to verify it.
"Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."
—Aldous Huxley

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #21 –
Quote
the manual on iriver hp120 says recording is limited to 790mb for wav and 195mb for mp3. what sort of limitation is this imposing on wav's?

As a sanity check, the extended (now pretty much standard) CDR's are 700 mB/80 minutes,
though that isn't a hard translation as the data format has more error correction data.

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #22 –
Last night I went and bought a NetMD player. I brought it back almost as quickly as I got it. Bug ridden software and 'Check In \ Check Out' your music suck....

Good idea. Poorly executed.

Anyway, I started digging around this morning and came across this little gem. 
 
(Might want to run Spybot S&D after going here, Best Buy now has Hitbox trackers.)

I thought about this thread and wondered if you had picked a unit yet dev0?

This one looked interesting because of both AAC, and the line in recording. Anyone else have Santa stuff one of these in your stockings?

Rio Karma vs. iRiver iHP-100/120

Reply #23 –
I wish the Rio Karma did recording too, if it did, I would be barricading my door not to go out and buy one immediately.

But doesn't it seem like more and more nextgen portable players, include recording capability?