Diamond Rio Digital Player

by Rio

Product Details

Product Manual [748kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 3.2 x 5.8 inches ; 2.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000JBAT
• Item model number: PMP 600 RIO
• Batteries: 1 AA batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (265 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,812 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Welcome to the future of personal audio. The tiny Diamond Rio player plays MP3-encoded digital music, the open Internet standard that's shaking up the industry. It stores your music files in 32 MB of RAM instead of on CD or tape, so it has no moving parts and it can't skip.

About the size of a deck of cards, the Diamond Rio player weighs under three ounces and can store up to an hour's worth of music files encoded at 64 Kbps or half an hour's worth of files at 128 Kbps. The supplied Windows software and PC connector cable let you upload new selections, delete old ones, change the playback order, and even create new MP3 files from your own CDs.

What about sound quality? MP3 is a compression technique that discards a lot of the information captured by normal CD encoding. True audiophiles will hear the difference. But the overall effect is surprisingly clean, and the Diamond Rio's extreme portability more than makes up for the subtle degradation.

The Diamond Rio connects to your PC by a parallel-port adapter. In our tests, hardware setup consisted of nothing more than plugging the supplied parallel adapter into our PC's parallel port, attaching the connector cable, and dropping a single AA battery (supplied) into the Diamond Rio unit. The parallel adapter has a pass-through connector so that you can use the port for your printer or other parallel device.

Software installation under Windows 98 also went without a hitch. The default installation puts two applications on your system: the Rio Manager and the MusicMatch Jukebox. You use the Rio Manager to download new selections to the Rio player, delete selections from your lineup, or clear all memory so you can start with a fresh slate. It also lets you view the size of each selection, control the play order, and see how much RAM you have left for storing music. We downloaded a bunch of MP3 music files off the Web to the Windows desktop, dragged them into the Rio Manager, and clicked on Download. Approximately three minutes later, we had stored 30 minutes of digital music.

The supplied software lets you make MP3 files from your own CDs using your computer's CD-ROM drive. You can select 128 Kbps, 80 Kbps, or 64 Kbps encoding. The highest-quality 128 Kbps encoding is definitely worth using for music you really care about, but it creates files that are twice as big as those encoded at 64 Kbps. This means you'll be able to store only about 32 minutes of music at a time.

The Diamond Rio is a computer peripheral, and, as such, it's not quite as easy to install or use as a conventional portable audio gadget. But it delivers great sound, extreme portability, and access to the wealth of MP3 music on the Web. It's a trailblazing technology that's a pleasure to experience.

Pros:

• Compact, lightweight
• Won't skip
• Uses open MP3 Internet music format
• Allows you to create MP3 files from your own CDs
• Near-CD quality audio

Cons:

• Only 30 minutes of play at near-CD quality
• Requires a Windows 95/98 PC to use. Not compatible with Windows NT or Mac.

Amazon.com Product Description

Internet Music in the Palm of Your Hand! Diamond's Rio PMP300 is the first portable MP3 music player for under $200 that stores up to 60 minutes of digital-quality sound. It's smaller than an audio cassette and has no moving parts, so it never skips. Powered by a single AA battery, Rio provides up to 12 hours of continuous music playback.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great portable system with a few problems., November 26, 1999

By 

Matthew (Morgantown, WV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond Rio Digital Player (Electronics)

The Rio PMP300 is a great portable system if you have access to your own computer. Some advantages are that it's very small, very light, it doesn't skip, It only takes 1 battery which runs for at least 10 hrs, and the music can be free on the internet. You can also take tracks right off your favorite CDs. The 1 problem that I have with it is that it only holds 32 MB which is about 7 or 8 CD quality songs. It could hold more if you don't mind radio quality. If you want to get more memory on this thing it's not cheap. You can double your memory from 32MB to 64MB for about $100. I am going to wait for the price to go down before I buy more memory for mine. The software that it comes with is pretty good too. I also like the overall design of the buttons and player. It has a Hold option, 5 different Equalizers, Replay and Random modes, and a cool A~B feature which is pointless fun to play with.

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sounds like a good idea.... But leaves much to be desired, July 12, 1999

By 

Nick Paul (Omaha, Nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond Rio Digital Player (Electronics)

I bought my Rio about 2 months ago. It plays perfectly, and I have no complaints with the performance. But if you are going to take this with you as a truely "portable" unit you are going to be stuck with only 30 minutes of storage for cd quality music. Maybe that's not a problem for you, but personally I need more of a variety of music when I take this on a trip. And the extra 32-meg flash memory cards cost $100!! That's way too much just to hold an extra 30 minutes of music. I recently sold my Rio and purchased a portable Minidsic player/recorder for $275. My advice to people would be to save an extra $100 and go for the minidisc. It uses digital sound, and does not skip. You can use it to record mp3's from your computer and the blank 74 minute discs cost less than $5 a piece, as opposed to $100 for a 30-minute flash memory card for the Rio. Minidisc is a much better overall value than the Rio. I would not recomend any buy a portable mp3 player until the storage can be greatly increased at a much lower cost.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Still Not Enough Space!, November 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rio PMP 300 Special-Edition MP3 Player (Electronics)

As you may surmise from my email address, I know and care a thing or two about mp3s and their future. Unfortunately for anyone who bought one, Diamond Rio is not in that future. Granted, this 64mb unit (upgrade to 96 for a hefty charge) is an improvement over the impotent 32mb original. But if you care at all about the quality of the music you listen to, and if you also like the idea of listening to a lot of DIFFERENT music when you're out and about, then DON'T BUY THE RIO! The mp3s I encode are ripped at a bitrate of either 160 or 192kbps depending on the contents of the song. At that you could only fit about 12 songs onto this guy (if you're lucky). What a waste! There is a cd-mp3 player (which interestingly amazon does not offer...) which allows you 10 times the capacity (and with 40 sec esp there is not much chance of skipping). Also, down the road a few months there will be a player with a 4GB+ capacity! I don't know the specifics of this technology, but I am willing to wait for that and let Diamond Multimedia go back to making killer graphics cards -- something that they are actually good at.