Picked up my new E on Wednesday. Stereo sounds great, but the 1-disc CD player is a little limiting, especially for longer road trips.

I'd be interested on hearing the opinions of everyone on what type of MP3 player they have, how they like it, and any other suggestions on this topic.

I've only purchased one MP3 player in my life, and that was an $80 Nomad model for my teenage son. I'm thinking that I'd like something with more memory, but still don't want to spend much over $150 to $200.

What are your ideas?

Since I have DX, I went with a head unit that plays MP3/WMA files on CDR's.
Cost less than $150 and comes with all mounting kit/adapters.
Just download pdf instructions for factory stereo install from H and A and it's a breeze.

[quote:59b57773d4=" "]Since I have DX, I went with a head unit that plays MP3/WMA files on CDR's.
Cost less than $150 and comes with all mounting kit/adapters.
Just download pdf instructions for factory stereo install from H and A and it's a breeze.[/quote:59b57773d4]

I'd have to purchase a CD burner for my PC, which is something I'm not ready to do right now.

I really like the idea of having thousands of songs in one unit, instead of having to burn and play CD's.

[quote=" "]I'd have to purchase a CD burner for my PC, which is something I'm not ready to do right now.
[quote]

CD burners are practically free these days.
My 48X Liteon CDRW cost me $20 over a year ago, and paid for itself over and over copying games, softwares, etc that are supposed to be copy-proof.
It's quite handy to have your favorite band's entire cd collection on one CDR.

I'm enamoured of the Rio Karma for these maintsteam reasons:

1. Best audio output bar none.
2. Great UI.
3. No delay skipping songs at all, even jumping ahead 20-30 songs at a time.
4. Gapless playback.
5. Crossfade.
6. Matches my NBP E. :) :) :)

And for other reasons that probably don't matter to you:

1. Karma firmware is developed and maintained by some of the same folks who developed the software for my empeg/riocar unit (and who still use the empeg/riocar themselves). In fact, the Karma's player software shares some of the same codebase so, updates to the karma firmware end up in the unofficial releases for my discontinued car player.

2. The major 3rd party software for managing empeg/riocar content (JEmplode) now works with the Karma and Rio Central too. In fact, Rio/DNNA contracted out with the developer to create Rio Music Manager Lite for Mac and Linux users, on the stipulation that he could add Karma support to his free JEmplode. Everyone wins.

Things I don't like or you might not like:

1. They never released a wired remote control for the unit, even though it has an interface for one.

2. Rio Music Manager is a bit klunky vs. iTunes. If you're a big iTunes user, then that might drive you to consider the iPods.

3. Unlike the iPod, there are no mini-PDA features.

4. Unlike the iPod, there is a dearth of 3rd party accessories for the unit.

5. They were going to release a 40GB version but didn't. Maybe later this year...

-brendan

[quote:4541484f83=" "]I'm enamoured of the Rio Karma for these maintsteam reasons:

1. Best audio output bar none.
2. Great UI.
3. No delay skipping songs at all, even jumping ahead 20-30 songs at a time.
4. Gapless playback.
5. Crossfade.
6. Matches my NBP E. :) :) :)

[/quote:4541484f83]

I wholeheartedly agree with brenden's (entire) post. The Karma is a fantastic addition to the "E."

I, too, have a Karma, and am working on installing a permanent dock in the car so that I can listen and charge my Karma at the same time while driving, and just plop it in the dock.

For the Karma owners out there, go to Rio's Japan site and see the extra dock you can buy! All I have to do now is figure out how to reroute the AUX in to under the dash for a seemless install!

another vote for the Karma. I've had my Karma for quite awhile and am pretty active on the forums for it as well. I think the Karma is definitely in the top 2 or 3 for sound quality, user interface, headphone amp, and design. And for the price now (under $250 mail order) it just can't be beat for a 20gb unit with the features and sound quality that you get. The fully customizable parametric eq, gapless playback and cross-fader combined with the ability to playback the most codecs (mp3, ogg, wma, flac) make it unique in it's feature-set as well. Not to mention great battery life. Over 12hrs per charge (does vary depending on the codecs you use. ogg is more processor intensive so it decreases the per charge life) using the more processor intensive codecs. About 15hrs with MP3's.

So no iTunes? Oh well. Rio Music Manager is no slouch. It also offers ethernet capability which no other DAP has.

It doesn't have a plethora of accessories (yet). Some scoff at the three month warranty, but aftermarket ones are around. The Best Buy one is a good deal for four years.

Hmmm...think a lot of this is all repeat from the Archos thread. Maybe we should name this the Rio Karma thread with all the votes for it so far.