Customer Reviews

Rio 500 64 MB USB MP3 Player (Teal)

5 star:		(125)
4 star:		(82)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

This is my second plunge into the world of MP3 players and the experience has been considerably better than my first. The Rio 500 offers about as much as you could expect from an MP3 player these days (outside of the cheap headphones). The USB upload is considerably faster than the parallel ports that most MP3 players utilize. The sound is good and the software program that is included makes transferring audio from CD to the player a snap. Transferring downloaded files is just as easy. My only real complaint is the terrible directions/manual. Instillation of the drivers (Windows version) was not adequately explained. I'm somewhat of a computer geek so I figured it out in short order, but somebody unfamiliar with plug and play instillation could easily find themselves stuck with the player unable to communicate with his/her computer. Outside of that this player is, in my opinion, the best available.

I just purchased the Diamond Rio 500 and after you get it working it is super but don't look to Diamond for any kind of support. The technician I spoke to didn't even seem to know what a MP3 player was much less how it works. He referred me to a manual on the CD that doesn't exist and provided nonsense answers to my questions.

I purchased the Diamond Rio 500 for both music and Audible books. The Diamond technician stated it doesn't and never would work with audible books.

I was ready to return the Diamond Rio 500 to the store for a refund but I decided to call Audible first. The Audible receptionest was very helpful. I found out that the firm ware to run Audible books on the Diamond Rio and other MP3 portable devices is expected to be out the 2nd week of December.

They have a prototype Diamond Rio 500 and Audible's receptionest said the quality was excellent better than thier own player which can be purchased from them for $99.00.

The receptionist at Audible knew the answers to all of my questions about the Diamond Rio 500 even the ones unrelated to the Audible books. THE SAME QUESTIONS THAT THE DIAMOND TECHNICIAN COULDN'T ANSWER.

Thanks to Audible I have the Diamond Rio up and running and it is fantastic. I am anxiously waiting for the firm ware upgrade so I can listen to books while I exercise or do housework.

Due to the lack of documentation and support, I would not recomend this player to anyone without a lot of patience. Anyone who just wants to just "plug it in" and start using it is going to be disappointed.

After researching and reviewing a number of mp3 players before making this purchase, I decided on the Diamond Rio 500, mainly for its 64megs of memory on board.

A week after the purchase, I could not be more impressed. Within 15 minutes of opening the box, I had the software and drivers installed and the first set of songs uploaded. I also upgraded the firmware from the Rio site, which gave me several more preferences and options (equalizer, program play, backlight options, etc.)

A few points for consideration when purchasing, which took me days to gather and confirm:

** I can get anywhere from 13 to 17 songs on the 64 megs on board. That is more than I expected, but I will be investing in a 64 meg Smart Card (which the Rio can accept once you upgrade the firmware) to have more songs at my disposal.

** The Rioport Audio Manager software (what you use to transfer songs to the player) is not great, but not nearly as bad as I had read. It is not intuitive and does not come with directions, so it's a trial and error thing. I will try MusicMatch or Real Jukebox to see if it's any easier.

** The player itself comes with very weak documentation. I suggest going to the Rio website and looking for the manual, which is slightly better. I usually learn hardware without the book anyway, but if you are manual-dependent, this may be a problem.

** I'm up to about 7 hours on my first battery, including 3 transfers of songs. This is not nearly the battery hog I expected it to be. I have purchased lithium batteries because I read that I can get more play time off them, but I'm still waiting for the first battery to die!

** The song quality is excellent, both with mp3s I've downloaded off the web and those I've converted from CD. I will complain about the headphones. Not because they mess up sound quality but because the pads keep falling off them! They aren't as comfortable as I prefer.

** I use the Rio for jogging/walking and 90 minutes of train travel to work every day. It is small, compact and impossible to make skip. It suits my needs (compact, ease of use, more mobile than a CD player) just fine. It has also been dropped once with no ill effects.

I could not be more pleased with this purchase, and highly recommend it for others looking for mp3 players!

After purchasing (and returning) a number of other mp3 players I decided to try out the Rio 500.

First Impressions Very small and light, Buttons in convenient locations, Nice scrolling display, No AC Adapter, Headphone buds (Junk), Instructions (very bad), Included software (Not easy to use),

Ok the first thing I did was to visit the Rioport.com site and download the firmware upgrade soft ware. The unit came with 1.04 firmware. I upgraded it to 2.12. One thing this upgrade gives you is access to the 64meg smart cards. This will take the unit up to 128meg.

I installed the default management software but I prefer MusicMatch. I downloaded the Rio plug in for MusicMatch and was up and running. One down side of the plug in for MusicMatch is the fact that it defaults to rio300 and you must manually change it each time to upload to the player.

The other mp3 players I tested used parallel ports and the Rio claims 5 times faster than parallel ports. They must be comparing results to some old ancient port as I saw no difference in upload speeds. However the USB is easier to install and did not have the hardware compatibility problems the parallel ports did.

As far as sound quality goes the Rio was similar to the others with one difference. The built in EQ settings seem to be more noticeable. In other words there seem to be more noticeable results when selecting EQ setting of JAZZ or ROCK for instance. Other players did not seem to have much difference between the settings. The lack of a graphic equalizer did not seem to affect the quality. The volume is more than adequate. It has ha setting between 0 and 20 and I keep mine around 6-8.

I have found the display quit acceptable. The name of the song is the file in which the mp3 file was saved. And it scrolls across the screen as it is being played. This enables quite long titles to be displayed with out truncating them

The lack of a AC adapter port was a bit of a disappointment but is a little offset with the 13 hour play time. You do get this with alkaline batteries but expect about 4-5 hours playtime with rechargeable AA's

Make sure you have a good charge on the batteries before uploading to the player. The unit died once when I was uploading. This totally corrupted the Rio. Could not even turn the unit off. The unit was totally locked up. I called the support line at the diamond site adn was promptly told to download a recovery program from there web site. After installing the software on the PC and following the instructions I was back up and running. Apparently this software talks to the USB port and resets the firmware in the unit.

One of the best features on the Rio is the audio book feature. Here is what they are.

Bookmark -> You can store up to 16 bookmarks on the Rio. These come in very handy when listening to a book in a public location such as a doctor's office waiting room.

Variable speed rewind/fast forward -> If you have a recording that is over a few minutes in length it can be quite a pain fast-forwarding to say the 28:00 minute point. With the Rio you just hold down the FF and it starts out at about 10 times speed but it increases the longer you hold the button down.

Browse feature -> By clicking the browse button once you can scroll between items in a folder. By clicking twice you can scroll between folders. By click a third time you can scroll between bookmarks.

Audible support -> The main reason I purchased a mp3 player is for books on tape. And the above features are the best I have seen for a MP3 player but after signing up for audible (Rio is one of the players supported) I can listen to a 15 hour book in one sitting. This is a different format than my other mp3 files but I have found it very useable as well.

Final thoughts -> I really like the Rio 500 and the ability to accept mp3 and audible file formats makes it a keeper in by book. As a mater of fact I ordered a second for my wife.

I just got the Diamond Rio. It is a wonderful product, here's why : What do you strive for in a MP3 player ? Good sound, Space for music, compactness, cool look, competitive pricing, and I can honestly say that the Rio 500 meets each of these qualities. The sound is barely distinguishable from a true CD. Unless your are a true audiophile you will not be able to tell the difference, UNLESS you like listening to music REALLY LOUD, then you might be able too find a small distortion in the MP3 version. The 500 can also hold a lot of songs, because it is 64 Megs and also you can transfer your songs because of its USB connection. It looks great! It is also the size of a pager. AND IT DOESN'T SKIP! This product is worth its price. This maybe the last "pure mp3" model available because after christmas the SDIC will be putting a detector which won't let you download free mp3's unless explicity stated by the musician. SO GET EM NOW! It only takes one AA batteria for 12 hrs of playback which is pretty good. The LCD is a very nice neon blue. The only problem with this product are the bad earphones. Contrary to one of the reviewers I believe it is quite easy to install. I didn't read the manual. Just plug it into your USB port ( IMPORTANT YOU NEED A USB PORT TO RUN IT )and then windows automatically asks you for the driver cd, then you pop it in restart your computer and Viola! Don't ponder the value of this product too long because before you know it they will be Sold OUT! Happy Listening! Cheers

I just purchased the Diamond Rio 500 and am very pleased with it. I have read several of the reviews and would like to comment on some of the features. I have heard that the volume is very low. This is true when you use the included earphones. When the Rio arrived I did not open the stock phones. I connected a set that came with my minidisc player. The volume is so loud that I have to keep it set to less than half way 10 out of 20 to keep it from blasting. With the stock earphones the 20 setting sometimes is to low. Some say that it eats batteries. Well I thought so too. In a very shot time the battery meter goes down to one bar and you want to replace it before it stops working. Well I left mine in and it died 7 or 8 hours later. I kept waiting for the player to stop but it just went on and on. I found out later that if I used the on and off switch instead of sleep mode the batteries lasted even longer. Playing the Rio at full power with the included earphones will also shorten the batteries life. I upgrade the firmware to v2.12, which was very straight forward, and installed a 64mb smartmedia card. The unit functions perfectly with this card and I now get two hours of different music. There is a menu selection that allows you to play songs from factory memory and smartmedia seamlessly. You can also select random and it will play randomly all songs in one memory area and than switch to the other and play all the song randomly there. There is basically is no manual except for a getting started card. The player itself is very simple to use and intuitive. The help card tells you the secretes and the rest of the features can be figured out easily. Diamond Tech support is easy to reach and will answer any question you may have also. The software has complete online documentation. The sound is awesome. It is much better than even the best earphones can produce. Some of the presets on the equalizer work pretty well. You can also user select the bass and treble and this works great. Would I recommend the Diamond Rio 500, you bet. It is very small and lightweight. The controls are nicely placed and simple to operate. I especially like the jog shuttle, which controls the volume, and if you push on the wheel allows you to access menus and adjust most of the features. The bookmark feature makes it possible to listen to audio books by saving your place so you can go back to where you left off without having to do a search. The USB interface works great and allows you to transfer two hours of music in about (10) minutes. If you are looking for a MP3 player that can be upgraded to 128mb of memory, is easy to operate, sounds great, ultra compact and light weight buy the Diamond Rio 500 you won't regret it. PS Diamond has addressed a lot of the earlier issues with the player and they no longer exist. I hope you have found this review useful.

This is a great product. Sound output is just as good as a CD player. After spending time researching, I found that this was the only mp3 player that could support over 64MB of memory, which is an advantage over other mp3 players because you don't have to constantly switch fragile memory cards to get another hour of music. With updates that can be downloaded from diamond's website, the rio500 can now support 64MB of external memory, so the player can have a total of 128MB of memory, which is more than anything out there. (The flash-ROM is useful in quickly and easily updating the rio). I had no problems installing the software. And downloading songs to the player is incredibly fast. With a download rate of 0.5MB per second, it takes just 4 minutes to fill 128MB of memory. The built-in equilizer is useful in boosting bass and treble. The adjustable backlight it very bright. It also includes random and repeat play modes, as well as some other progroming functions. A bookmark feature is useful for listening to books. My only complaint is that the software is confusing to use at first. Oh, and also buy better headphones along with the Rio, since the earbuds it comes with are basically junk. With its tiny size, sleek design, and good quality, it's well worth the $200 pricetag.

The Rio500 is a great MP3 player - in this reviewer's opinion, the best on the market currently. Its size (smaller than a pack of cigarettes) and weight (about an oz.) recommend it to shirt-pocket musicophiles and, especially, athletes! (You can jog all day with nary a skip, and with the included netting belt-clip, it will definitely NOT pull your jogging shorts down, weighing about the same as a pager.)

Interface with any USB Macintosh is seamless, and the included software, Casady & Greene's SoundJam MP, is the finest Mac application in decades. All you need to know is how to work the plug, and how to drag and drop, and you'll be organizing your Rio playlists with no trouble. If it isn't already, SoundJam will become your MP3 player of choice, too.

The Rio takes SmartMedia cards and can reportedly handle any size, including the upcoming 100+ MB cards; mine works perfectly with a 32 MB Sandisk SmartMedia card. (96 MB is just about perfect for listening to a full 72-minute CD recording, say of Beethoven's Fifth, at 160 kbps sound quality.)

I also get great sound out of a phones-to-cassette adapter, which I use to playback MP3's in my car. My only complaint is that the included ear-beads are terrible, both acoustically and for the fact that they just won't stay in! Alternative headphones can be used, but drain the power source (1 AA battery) rather quickly. A solution might be NiMH high capacity rechargables.

This little device can change your lifestyle. If you like to listen to music while you run or work out, then go get one of these. Don't wait.

After using mine for several weeks I have the following suggestions:

1) Based on the comments here, I didn't even bother to install the included software.

2) I suggest using MusicMatch Jukebox over Real Jukebox. I have both, and the MusicMatch software has much better flexability when it comes ripping CDs and organizing your mp3 library on disk. Both will allow you to download to the Rio. MusicMatch creates disk folders with the following hierarchy "Artist:Album:Songs" so its easy to keep your stuff organized on disk. Real Jukebox wants to store all your stuff ripped songs in the same folder (I appologize if I'm wrong here, but I didn't see any way to make real create an organized disk folder arrangement). MM allows you to sort by track in the library. I couldn't get Real to do this. It's kind of weird not to be able to retain the original CD's track order with out creating a playlist for each CD you rip. I didn't like this about Real.

3) Get new headphones immediately. Don't even bother to use the ones included. It just makes the Rio sound bad. Suggestion: Sony MDR-A30G.

4) I agree you'll use batteries, but so far it's not as bad as I thought from the comments here...

The only reason I didn't give the Rio 5 stars was the lack of a AC power converter. It would be nice to save battery life while hooked to the computer.

After briefly owning the 300 and now owning the 500 for about 3 weeks now...I think that I can do a fair job at outlining the improvements over the 300. However, there is one annoying area in which Rio did not address with the 500 and for all the criticism of this issue...it really puzzles me why this was not corrected. Let me turn this up a little bit so Rio can hear it...MORE VOLUME!! Geez! Again, Rio has cut the top end off the decibal scale short. However, I have recently found the solution to this. Until just a couple of weeks ago...I have never tried the "in the ear" type of headphones...better known as "ear buds". These type of phones seem to be more efficient and the increase in volume efficiency is quite noticable. At the top end of the volume setting (20)...it is more than enough for all my music and for many songs...too much volume. I find with these type of phones...the 18 volume setting is a good compromise for all the I music use on the 500.

Ok...now that I got that out of the way. Here is one aspect of the USB connection that I have yet to hear mentioned. Besides much faster download times(about 2mins. for a 64meg. transfer)...the actual connection at the player end is much easier than that darn parallel connection for the Rio 300. For someone like myself who changes the music on my player 6 days/wk. (for the gym)...this is reason enough to upgrade to the 500. When I owned the 300...I got the darn player end of the parallel connector stuck in the player because I did not apply equal pressure to both sides of the connector head while pushing the retractable clips in to remove it. The connector was stuck at an angle and I had to do some careful tweaking to get it out. The USB connection does not have any clips that you have to push in and just slides in and out with great ease.

The overall look, feel and functionality is also a big improvement. I love the various settings that I can manipulate with the side volume wheel. You have to push the wheel in to display these options.

Also, the ID3 tag support. Here is an important note on the tags. If you are going to Rip you entire CD collection or part of it...choose you ripper carefully. I have 3 rippers on my PC...each for it's own purpose. MusicMatch, Real Jukebox Plus, and of course the RioPort software that you need to download MP3's to the player.

If you want your ID3 tag information displayed in a particular format, as I did, then Real Player Jukebox is the way to go. Besides being the fastest ripper (average about 5x normal speed)... you can configure how the ID3 tag info is displayed in the options menu. I chose the following setup...Song Title-Artist-Album. If the total amount of display info exceed the width of the 500's LCD dispaly window...the information will slowly scroll from right to left in the play mode. This is the case for all my music with those 3 fields of display.

The RioPort Audio Manager software is OK but I am really anxious for MusicMatch to support the USB download for MP3 transfer to the player. MusicMatch is superior when it comes to just playing the MP3's and MP3 management IMHO. The "auto DJ" feature is perfect for memory limited MP3 players like the 500. At 128kbps(Cd quality)...you get about 1min. of playing time for every meg. of memory. Just set the AutoDJ for 1 hour and at 128kbps...it will randomly grab 1hr.(about 60megs.) of MP3's from the specified groups that you choose. Why RioPort did not include such a thing with their software is beyond me.

One last thing...I also purchased the 32meg. flash memory card. It is real easy to install and now gives me a solid 90mins. of great CD quality music. Make sure you first hit the "format" button in the RioPort AudioManager program before attempting to download MP3's to it. After formatting (just like you must do with the internal 64megs)...you are good to go.

All in all...I consider this one of the best gadget purchases I have made in a long time. Particularly, because I use it almost everyday in the gym. It's small, lightweight, and just plain awesome. Just hit that play button and move the top slide lever to the lock position and let the music rock. No amount of bouncing around will interrupt the music. And I love the long, puzzled looks I get from my gym buddies as they try to figure out what that little black (I use the black holder with clip that came with the player)device is clipped to my side. "It's too small to be a cassette player...hmmm...what the heck is that"?

I held back on the 5 stars because of the volume issue. And of course, just like hard drives, there is no such thing as too much memory...64megs is nice...but you know that is going to be minimal compared to what we will see in the next few months to a year from now.

Later, Drew