I’m interested in getting an mp3 jukebox, and i was wondering if anyone here had any experience with either of the two i am looking at.
I’m looking at the Rio Karma
or the Dell DJ 15
If anyone has any words of advice on either of these, or any other mp3 jukeboxes, i’d love to hear it. Thanks!
Allen
Haven’t heard anything about those, but if it were me, I’d look at the iPod or MINI iPod.
Daniel
I’ve got a Rio Nitrus (1.5GB hard drive based) and am quite happy with it. Queried some friends “in the know”, and apparently Rio is a pretty good name amongst the mp3 players.
The iriver players also get very good reviews. iriver makes some hard drive based players. That link is to the USA site and not the European site. Follow the iriver.com link to get to the European sites.
I have an iriver CD based MP3 player (SlimX 350). It works well, but the interface is a bit difficult to use when I use it in the car. The hard drive based players have a better interface and a larger screen.
The iriver players have very good sound quality. Some players skimp on the sound quality to get more battery life, or just because most consumers just don’t care about sound quality. For me, sound quality is a very important feature.
One thing about the iPods is that Apple doesn’t skimp on the sound quality. They’re among the best as far as sound quality goes. The audio geeks love them for that reason.
If I was to look for a hard drive based MP3 player right now I’d be looking at the iriver players and the Rio Karma. I don’t know about the Dell. I’d be very suspicious about the sound quality of the Dell. I’d need to find some reviews of the Dell by hard core audio geeks. Never trust a review in something like PC Magazine. Those fools have no idea how to test for audio quality.
Try to play with each player in person so you can check the interface on them. Make sure you like the interface and can navigate around it without too much trouble. Once you get 1000’s of songs on there you need a good interface so you can quickly get to the music you want to listen to.
How do you plan on using the player? Is it going to be for only portable use? Are you going to want to plug it in to your home system?
It will be mainly for portable use…at school, on trips, in the car, things like that, (no unicycling, i’d be way to worried about hurting it), but being able to use a splitter cable and use it through my receiver does sound good. I have heard incredible things about the Karma’s sound quality, and many other good things about it. A few of my friends just recently told me about the Dell DJ, and i think at least one of them plans on getting one, so I will try out his when he does. I’m not sure where i could get my hands on a Karma to test it out, but I will try to.
Thanks for your help guys!
–Allen
this iRiver is looking more and more attractive by the minute
does anyone have any experience with this?
Yeah I looked at both of those and the Dell DJ info is to confusing for me to just look at the price and gig size. I think I would get an iPod.
I don’t have a hard drive based MP3 player so I can’t comment specifically about the iRiver or some other brand. My current portable MP3 player is a CD based player by iRiver. It works, but there are things that it could do better. When the high capacity players (like the hard drive based players) get better I’ll make the jump.
Some sources for more info on iRiver products:
iRiver Global Home
iRiver Community Forums
MisticRiver iRiver Enthusiasts site
A fan site for the Rio:
RioVolution
If I was shopping for a new hard drive based MP3 player there are two features that would be absolutely critical: 1) excellent sound quality and 2) gapless playback.
Gapless playback would be critical for me. My current CD based player doesn’t do it. I get a gap between all of the MP3 tracks. Hard drive based and flash memory based players, however, can do gapless playback. Not all of them do (currently very few of them do), but it’s possible. I like to listen to entire albums and I like to listen to Pink Floyd and classical music where the albums are recorded with no silence or gaps between the tracks. When gaps get put between the tracks the album is ruined.
Currently the iRiver IHP-120 and IHP-140 do not do gapless playback of compressed files. iRiver is working on it and they say they’ll have a new firmware out in June that will enable gapless playback of MP3 and OGG files. I don’t really recommend buying a product like this based on future promises. That June date could end up being December, or it could end up never happening at all. It’s better to see it and hear it in the flesh than to hope and pray they implement it after you buy it. I’d be surprised if they didn’t get gapless playback in the IHP series, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen soon. But never trust a software schedule. June could very well end up being December.
The Rio Karma reportedly does gapless playback of MP3 and OGG files now. The iPod does not (take that you iPod fans).
Here’s a little essay about gapless playback and the current lack of gapless support in the current MP3 players: MP3 Players: Buyer Beware
My solution to the gapless playback issue will likely be to encode albums like Pink Floyd and classical music with OGG-Vorbis so I can get better gapless playback. I’m still waiting for the players to mature a little bit more and I’m waiting to see how much this OGG-Vorbis format catches on. OGG is currently the best choice for gapless playback of compressed files. MP3 and AAC both require hacks and tricks to achieve what is close to gapless playback. OGG can do it as part of the standard (although the player also has to implement gapless support for OGG).
Thanks J_C!
The gapless playback is a major point for me, and i knew that the Rio could do this. I found out about that the iRiver could not currently, but that there were plans for firmware.
I know that mp3 CD players can’t do gapless playback, but one option that you could do is to rip the entire album as one track. I dont know what software you use to convert, but i do know that Audio Converter can do this.
I’ve got an iPod. I have the 10GB version and currently have 2100 songs on it. For me, the only drawback about it is I’m paranoid about breaking it. Its just so perty.
john
Everyone has a Rio…
I have a Rio, I bought it about 2 years ago… <_<
It’s the Rio One… can you believe it!!
It still works perfectly, has built in 32mb and a card of 64.
All together, waaaay back then, it cost me about $140 for all of it, headphones included.
I’m saving for the Rio Fuse, but it’s so expensive for that little toy, I like mine, so I think I’ll wait a little while longer… or something…
how can they call it iRiver? its so simular to iMac and iPod.
you would think there would be a law suit or some thing.
I have considered ripping things like Pink Floyd’s The Wall to a single large MP3 file. It will result in no gaps between the tracks, but you loose the ability to jump to a specific track. It’s not an ideal solution.
I’m also trying to think long term. When I take the time to rip my CD’s I want them to be in a format that I will be happy with 10+ years from now. I don’t think I would be happy with many of my albums ripped to to a single large MP3. But then, I’m also not sure if gapless OGG will still be viable and supported 10+ years from now.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC) will copy an audio CD to a single large WAV and a CUE sheet. From there it has tools to compress the big WAV to an MP3 or OGG or other supported format. ISO Buster will also rip an audio CD to a single large WAV and a CUE sheet, but it won’t handle any of the compression to MP3 or OGG. EAC and ISO Buster are free. Well, ISO Buster is actually part freeware and part shareware.
The large WAV file and CUE sheet give you an image of the audio CD (much like an ISO image of a data CD). For some fun you can use a virtual CD utility like DAEMON Tools to mount the audio CD image as a virtual CD drive. From there you can use Windows Media Player (or any other player that can play audio CDs) to play the audio CD in the virtual CD drive. As far as Windows Media Player is concerned, the virtual CD looks just like a regular audio CD with multiple tracks and everything. Kind of cool. But CD images are not compressed so it uses a lot of space on your hard drive. This doesn’t really have anything to do with MP3 players, just something interesting you can do with an audio CD image. I’m actually listening to a CD image right now as I’m at the computer.
iRiver has a beta firmware for my SlimX 350 that can play OGG. Right now it only supports up to 160 kbps and doesn’t do gapless OGG. When it gets out of beta I’ll give the new firmware a try to see how the OGG support is. Hopefully the final version will support higher bit rates and gapless playback. We’ll see.
Once you pick the player, the next big decision is picking good headphones to go with it. The stock headphones with any MP3 player are not worth listening too. Better headphones will make a big big difference. But picking what is better is a whole other can of worms.
iRiver was established in 1999. At that time lots of companies were naming themselves and their products i-something, e-something, and other trendy names. Unfortunately, I’m at a loss right now to think of any other company names or product names from that period that have the i-something style name. I know they’re out there, just can’t think of one right now.
The first iMac was introduced in August 1998.