Customer Reviews

Rio Riot 20 GB MP3 Player (MP3/WMA)

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

... I have used an original Nomad player, the Archos player, and the iPod. Of the three, I definitly like this one the best. It isnt even close.

Just because this device works great for me doesn't mean it will work for everyone. I think the iPod serves a different nitch in the market so you want to pick the player that will fit your needs the best. I think the primary advantages for the iPod is the speed of the file transfers, and the size of the device.

If you need a player that will fit into your shirt pocket and transfer your CDs extremely quickly, then go with the iPod. For me I went with the Riot instead because:

1. I like the display for the Riot 100x more then the iPod. The iPod display is pretty good, but it doesn't have enough information or enough real estate for me. The Riot's interface makes it much easier for me to find my CDs, and see my play list as I go.

2. I like the ability to remove files and manage my play lists in the player itself. I travel alot, and 90% of the time when I am listening to the player I am away from my computer. Being able to remove that song from that CD you just hate is a great bonus, and whipping together an "80s Playlist" is a big advantage to me. I do have a couple of issues with the play list and que, but overall I like this feature enough that it overrides the rest.

3. The size of the hard drive. Lets face it, for most of us 20 Gigs is going to cover our entire collection, I have 150 CDs, and I ripped them all at 192 rate for better quality and loaded them all into the Riot and still have 9 gigs of space remaining. With only 5 gigs of space (or even 10 with the iPod that will come out soon), I just can't say that. To me I would rather take longer to transfer all of my music then have fast transfers where I got to pick and choose a portion of my music. For someone who is around their computer more often, or where 5 gigs is more then enough for your music collection now and in the future then this may not be a big issue.

4. Size to me just wasn't a big issue. The player is about half the size of a CD player, and with the carrying case it is easy enough to carry along. I have to walk every day to the train and back, and I have no problem with the size of the player on the way. I think the size of the iPod is an advantage, but to me I wanted the larger hard drive and bigger display rather then the smaller size. The player easily fits in my coat pocket, and when I don't have one on, the carrying case works well enough for my needs. I wish they had included a portable plug instead of the standard one, but it isnt that big a deal.

5. And last but FAR from least is the FM tuner. It is great when I get bored with my own music to turn on the FM tuner and listen to some music. It is also nice to get the news or traffic updates while listening to the player. I would have prefered an AM/FM tuner so I can listen to my sports and news shows as well, but it is a minor quibble.

6. I have noticed a number of people complaining about the battery life on this device, and I must point out that I simply have not had these problems with the device. I generally charge my Riot over night then play it all day at work and in my car, and under this usage I have yet to run out of battery power during the day.

Overall, I find this player to be perfect for myself. It can hold all my music, has a great interface and allows me to control my music while away from my computer. I think if you dont HAVE to have a player which will fit into your shirt pocket then I would go with the Riot over the iPod.

I was very hesitant about buying a Riot after reading some of the initial negative reviews. Well, I went ahead and bought it and have found that now most of the issues expressed in those negative reviews have been corrected through firmware (v1.9) and Win XP/2000 driver updates and the Riot has proven to be a great product for me...I noticed battery complains in several early reviews and this seems to be correctable. The firmware fixes problems with batteries draining prematurely -I upgraded right out of the box, so I never had this problem, but be sure to follow the upgrade directions and calibrate the battery after the firmware upgrade in order to prevent inaccurate battery readings (also mentioned).

The other main complaint I read was pops and sound problems in MP3 files encoded under a Win XP or 2000 OS. I have never experienced these as I am running Win 98, but sonic blue contends that their driver update fixes this. It also helps if you stop running other programs while encoding music and if the software has an option to run it at a higher priority, then enable that option.

As for the player, the sound is great. I encoded all 150 of my CDs as MP3s at 192Kb VBR and still have room for another 100 albums - SWEET! I have yet to try WMA but I hear the sound is even better. The battery lasts 10 hours at least and it even took me about 5+ hours to intentionally deplete it (for batter calibration) with full volume music and backlight alway on! ...You can download the trial version (20 complete luanches) of a great encoding product using the LAME standard... Using high quality encoder softare will also ensure error free songs.

When you encode your CDs to mp3 files, make sure to edit the ID3 tags for accuracy and consistency as the Riot will organzie all the music around them...For instance, make sure to use the exact same artist name and genre for two albums by say The Offspring. If you put one as "Offspring" and the other as "The Offspring" it will store them as 2 separate artists and it will not be so easy to compare all the albums by The Offspring. It would be nice if the Riot used "The" as a wild card and considered all Offspring artists the same. The same goes for genre, so be careful not to store one album as say "Punk" and another by the same artist or group as "Punk Rock". I found this out the hard way and had to redo some albums. Freedb is a great tool in the encoding software for looking up albums and artists, but the user needs to monitor consistency on their own to avoid the above problems. Also consider changing the recording year of compilation albums to match the approx date of the original songs (think of the decade play lists).

Definitely upgrade the RealPlayer software to the RealOne free player. To transfer music (which is not very obvious at all), go to "My Library", clear all songs (select all and delete - not required but makes it easier to manage many songs), then "Scan for Media" (file or option menu) and select only those folders with music you wish to transfer. Once all the music is added to "My Library", right click and Select All, then right click and "Copy To..." => "Rio Riot". The view should switch to the "Devices" => "Rio Riot" screen and all new songs should be added with "Ready to Transfer" status displayed in green. Click the "Transfer" button in the lower left of the window. Do this over night as large transfers can take several hours.

For the most part the player has been great and I only have a few minor irritating issues, so hopefully some of these will be addressed in future firmware updates. The USB is slow, but once I transfer everything I don't expect to do large amounts again. The interface is a bit confusing at first and the Back button doesn't go back when you go from the menus to playing a song, which is kind of a pain. When you go to play music by Genre, it lists all the songs of that Genre and there is no way to see the artist or album in that view; I don't know how many people have 2000+ songs memorized, but scrolling through all songs of say the Rock category is less than helpful. A better method would be to select Genre, then Artist, then song. Also, when playing a song, the Track Info does not list the Genre, comments or year imbedded in the ID3 tag. Finally, the Song info is purposely ghosted in the background when in the menus, which is confusing at best. It would be cleaner for the volume, scroll bar and upcoming tracks or track info to disappear when in the menus, then the song and play mode could either be ghosted or remain dark, but overlapping menus and information is confusing. Of course, imported play lists would be great and just the ability to see the Riot drive as a hard drive as you do with a Digital Camera would be extremely helpful. Finally, the menus are a bit slow when viewing songs, albums, or genre lists.

For the most part I have been quite happy with the Riot. It is a bit big, but I can't imagine having an even smaller screen and the player is still smaller than a Discman. Don't let a few negative reviews dissuade you - for ample music storage from a PC, the larger screen and great sound, go with The Riot. With future firmware upgrades the interface will surely continue to improve.

Okay.

I have been watching the RIO RIOT on amazon, and other than the price dropping like a stone, I have noticed some trends in the reviews. The trends are this:

1. Customer service stinks. I would have to agree, due to the details of the complaints, and taking a personal look at the diamondww website, that there might be a problem with c.service.

2. Battery trouble. This is totally unfounded. There IS a battery problem, but, there is a solution to the battery problem at the horrible web site (it is very difficult to find the battery driver update...but it is there). If folks would take more time combing through the bad website to find the update to the firmware, instead of complaining on amazon, they would have an answer here. For every complaint of a battery problem there is a person writing in noting that they had their problem solved through the upgraded driver. (this includes me, fixed easily)

3. Many people note that thier Rio Riot just stops playing and will not play anymore. It just sits dead. Will not respond to anything. There is some reason to suspect this story. Mine has done this three or four times, but if you read in the directions, there is a small hole in the back of the Rio Riot which will reset the machine. People have to read the directions on their machine, then they will have to find a paperclip to utilize for this simple, yet seemingly hard excersize. A very simple solution.

3a. Still other people have had their machine die, and the ugly folks at diamondmm could not fix their machine and they were stuck with it. This is a problem. It is NOT a problem that should leave someone totally out of their investment. Keep your receipt. Return it. This IS an electronic device, a hard drive. A hard drive with a user interface. Hard drives, by nature, can be easily damaged. If you drop the box with the Rio Riot in it, which could happen during shipping, this device most likely has a 50% chance of not working. Makes you wonder just how many of these devices, while EN ROUTE are dropped? I would say a fair amount are either dropped or, at the very least, shipped in a rough manner. I am in the military, and have moved several times, and even though the movers have wrapped my belongings in several layers of blankets and crated them, they still arrived broke and mangled. Why? Nature of the beast. If you buy something and it fails within your warrantee period, keep your receipt and return it. If you didn't keep your receipt, take it back anyway, most places will take it back in lieu of an exchange. You might not want this product after a bad experience, but if you don't have your receipt, and you return it for an exchange, you won't be out your money. (ask for a new receipt this time, most of the time you can get a new receipt when you exhange, or they make you sign a return paperwork, KEEP THAT)

4. People like to complain about the size of the device. This is confusing. The size is posted on the box, and on the amazon site. I can only say one thing to this: 'BUY A RULER'. This is a larger MP3 player. Not intended for jogging or athletic participation. IPOD will be good for that, they are slim and sexxy. This is fat and ugly. But it does what it says it does ON THE BOX. Rio Riot is NOT guilty of false advertising. Matter of fact, the only guilty folks are the folks buying this device without reading anything before hand, without determining what they need, or what they will be doing with the device. No help for these folks. They will be upset, and will get EVEN MORE UPSET with the cruddy website.

5. Transfer Rates. Once again, this device tells you the transfer rates RIGHT on the box. In english. If you don't know what the terms are for speed in transfers, or if you can't read english, that is NOT Rio Riots problem, it is yours. Read. Look. Decide. Or learn english, read, look and decide.

6. Price. This device is TONS cheaper than the IPOD. There should be allowances for price. Our society is based on supply and demand principles, most of the time. cheaper means, in this case, a bigger device, slower transfer rates, perhaps bad customer service. Is Diamond the same type of company as Apple? NO WAY, apple is a caddilac and this is more like an every day low budget import. BUT IT IS VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY.

I hope I helped someone that might be thinking about purchasing this device.

I waited and waited for release of the Riot. Finally bought one last weekend. It went back to retailer for a refund. iPod is no where near perfect either, but I have now decided its the best choice.

Why? Let me list a FEW of my complaints.

1) Lock ups requiring hard resets. Beta grade firmware.

2) Battery is no where near 10 hours, more like 6 hours (at half volume).

3) You must fully discharge before recharging. You cannot leave it on the charger for more than 8 hours. No monitoring circuitry to stop charging when full. This combined with poor battery life and requiring a full discharge before recharge makes it very inconvenient, to put it politely.

Manual doesn't mention this, but the unit has to be ON to take a charge. I found out the hard way.

Also, the unit looses charge even when it is turned off. What is that about?

4) Proprietary USB cable. I have to lug another cable around since I can't just use a standard USB cable. SonicBlue, Why?

5) does not charge through the USB cable so I have to lug the charger with me since the batteries won't get me even close to a full day at work, not even counting the commute time.

6) Mangles my perfectly fine MP3s. This is a known problem with Win 2K and XP. My two main OS's!! It says its compatible on the box, why isn't it? With these OS's, there are pops, screeches and sound artifacts introduced into a large number of the files after transfer. I have ripped and re-ripped the music at different bit rates to no avail. Also, many songs just stop playing after only a few seconds. These files all work fine on my PC's, Mac, and iPAQ. How can you mess up a MP3 file transfer?

7) Cannot transfer music OFF of the Rio to a PC or another player. I like to transfer music between my work and three home machines. NOT with the riot you don't.

8) Can't transfer playlists created on a PC to the riot. Creating playlists on the Riot is a joke. Remember entering your name in video games using the joypad? Its Back! Well now you have to use the jog wheel, which takes even longer and is a major pain. Almost worthless.

9) You HAVE to use Real Jukebox (not even the PLUS version mind you) to do transfers. This is in my opinion the worst jukebox software made and SonicBlue has decided to FORCE us into using it. Someone at SB cut a deal with Real here? You can't even browse the Riot using Explorer. This is just ridiculous. I already own full versions of much more capable software that I prefer to use.

I resorted to using Real Jukebox to transfer the files only.

10) The Riot is too big to carry in your pocket. Too big to comfortably carry in your hand when jogging.

11) Requires two-handed operation with the poor button placement.

12) USB 1.1 is WAY too slow for this amount of storage. It took me 10 hours to do my first transfer, then it trashed half my music (see #6 above) so I could do it again (which did not correct the problem. I have to identify the trashed songs (by listening to them ALL first) and retransfer them untill they come across clean!! Eventually they do.

13) SonicBlue's tech support has got to be the worst I have ever seen. You wait for hours while paying Long Distance charges. You got it, no toll free support. They still have not responded to my emails, but did manage to SPAM my mailbox three times already.

I had a lot of respect for the Rio product line in the past. It will be a long time before I go back to them.

This unit was not ready for production. SonicBlue has tarnished the Rio name forever in my book.

One size does NOT fit all; especially in the market for digital music players, where every available product has a matching set of disadvantages to accompany its desirable features.

Whether the RIO RIOT meets a given buyer's needs will depend on just what that buyer's needs and prejudices are. For me, the RIOT works beautifully. Other people might differ.

The RIOT's three best features are brain-dead obvious:
- Low Price (as of Feb, 2003)
- Large storage capacity thanks to its 20GB HD *and* its support for WMA files
- Very good user interface thanks to a large, clear, 3" diagonal screen, good screen layout, and simple controls

The less-desirable features are equally obvious:
- A less than pocketable size of 5"x3"x1.3"
- USB 1.1 data transfer
- A very poor choice of music management software in Real Jukebox, the most annoying piece of nagware this side of pop-up ads.

For me, the RIOT works out just fine because its pluses meet all my needs and its minuses are mostly irrelevant to my situation. For example, the size of the RIOT is a non-issue since it fits in my pants pocket just fine, the carrying case has an excellent belt clip, and I do most of my music listening either at home through my Stereo or in my car, anyway.
The USB data transfer speed? Yes, it's relatively slow, but one should remember this product was designed in 2001 and that adding either USB 2.0 and/or FIREWIRE support would've increased the cost. Notice that comparable products with higher transfer rates cost about double what the RIOT costs? Faced with the choice, I'd rather save the money.
And as for the REAL JUKEBOX, well, the less said about that the better. The good news is that you don't *have* to use it to download music to the RIOT.

The first thing to keep in mind if you buy a RIOT is to forget about the included CD; just go straight to the RIOHOME website and download three files:
- the latest drivers for the RIOT; as of Feb '03 that would be the beta drivers for windows 2000/XP, last updated April 2002 (Officially unsupported but they work flawlessly)
- the latest version of firmware for the RIOT; as of Feb '03, that is version 1.25, dated Jan, 2003
- the latest version of the MOODLOGIC application; as of Feb '03, that would be version 2.5
Once you install the three downloads, you will be able to archive your CD music using whatever tool you prefer (for me that is Windows Media Player 9) in your choice of MP3 or WMA formats (I prefer WMA 64kbps for everything except classical music). I deposit the newly-created files in a dummy directory and then I use MOODLOGIC to download them to the RIOT before moving the songs to my permanent hard drive collection. Ideally, I would prefer for Windows Media Player to support the RIOT directly, as it does most other RIO players, (its listed on the Windows Media Web site, so such support *may* be forthcoming) but the MOODLOGIC application works fine and its playlist-generation features are intriguing. Maybe I'll explore that later. For now, I'm busy enough moving my full music accumulation (500 CDs, so far) to the RIOT. Next, I'll start on my old cassettes and LPs. Right now it looks like the RIOT will hold every piece of music I own with a few hundred megabytes to spare for future purchases.

Other features of note?
The RIO DJ feature is very nice and once I teach it which music is my favorite (by playing it) I expect I'll be using it a lot.
The menu system is simple; you invoke it with a dedicated button and navigate it with a scroll-wheel, a select button, and a cancel button.
The RIOT does a very good job of sorting songs by Album or artist based on the ID3 tags, but it does *not* seem to retain the track number info, so the albums are *not* played in order. I'll have to use playlists for the few albums where this is critical. (Like I said, it is not a perfect product; maybe future firmware updates will fix this, maybe not.<shrug>)
Sound quality? It depends on the playback medium, but when I pipe the signal through my stereo it sounds as good as the original CDs. With a pair of quality headphones it sounds better than my stereo.
Oh, yes, the equalizer functions are limited to BASS and Treble. Of course, I have external equalizers both at home and in my car so, again, it is a non-issue.
Battery life? I haven't timed it but I seem to be getting about 8 hours of continuous playback time in between charges.

One thing that everybody who has seen it has remarked on is the display.
It is just plain superb.
Very readable and, with the 1.25 firmware, it displays exactly the information you need during playback.
Faced with a choice between a smaller player with a lesser screen, I'd go for the RIOT's "bulk" every time. Not that its *that* big. (Its about the size of two stacked PDAs, definitely smaller than a paperback book.)

All in all; the RIOT works for me because, first of all, it supports Windows media so I can store double the music I could on an MP3-only player (otherwise, I couldn't get all my music onto it without sacrificing quality). Second, the onboard screen and user interface are excellent. Third, the sound quality is excellent, as far as my ears can tell. And finally, the price. Gotta love that price...

Bottom line: a good quality, hard-drive based player for anybody who wants to save money and doesn't insist on shirt-pocket size.

First off, let me say that this is an extremely well built player. The buttons feel good and go what they are supposed to do. The durability is good, I already dropped it once and nothing happened.

Here are the good points I found so far:

1) large hard drive
2) fm radio
3) build quality
4) display screen
5) navigation

There are some bad things though:

1) big size
2) slow transfer, but you only have to do it once (it took me 11 hours to transfer 11.5 gig of music)
3) have to use realjukebox or realone player
4) firmware could be better (could be able to queue songs, transfer playlists from your computer to the riot, bookmarks, etc.)
5) the carrying case could be better and include a plastic cover or something to protect the screen while it is in the case. I think I am going to end up glueing a pda screen protector or plastic sheet over the opening.
6) not sure if this is a problem yet - but in the cold, the power input plug, and the USB port is left open on the bottom of the player even while it is in the traveling case

Overall, if you don't need an extremely portable player and don't mind waiting overnight to transfer files, this is a great choice. I have never had it crash once or fail to work in some way.
You have to make sure that your mp3 ID3 tags are all correct though, as that is the only thing that the RioRiot uses to sort your music. I would recommend an different program, like Tag&Rename, for updating ID3 tags though besides RealJukebox as RealJukebox does not always update the true tag information.

I am on the verge of returning this for the following reasons:
(All issues are confirmed with Sonicblue.)

1. Transfer does not work well. In Win2K I have had to disable the CD in my computer to get the transfer to complete with out blue-screen (a conflict with atapi driver). Also, (this is my favorite bug) Realjukebox will crash if you *open the cd tray during a transfer*(!). Since transfers can take days, this is a problem...

2. Transfers are painfully slow (days to fill the device, with crashes). Far slower than USB 1.1 implies. (It can take 20 minutes just to delete a range of songs, so it can't be just USB...)

3. Sorting software on the device DOES NOT WORK. Genre setting sorts quasi-randomly, useless for playing classical music in order. Album sorting does not work properly, it combines albums into one list based on similarities in the album name. This feature was the main reason I picked this device over the Archos. The device does not sort by file name, only by ID tag, and then badly. So if you have an album sorted by track number, the Riot will sort it by track name for you when it plays it (it will display it in the right order in the music browser, just to get your hopes up...). Various other bugs (too numerous to mention).

4. RealJukebox only way to transfer music. (It's awful. They use an old version, and do not support upgrade to RealOne, which has the same features, and in my experience, works just as well (poorly)).

5. Device-only playlists largely useless. You cannot transfer/create playlists on your PC. You cannot reorder them on the device. Since the sorting funtionality does not work, your only hope to listen to things in order is to go create playlists track-by-track. (Using a scroll wheel and one button. It's like entering your initials in a video game.)

On the other hand, once you get your tunes in the device, in random play, it works great. Sounds wonderful. (This is not just my opinion, this is Sonicblue techsupport's summary of the device.)

It's a little big, but I didn't buy this to jog with, so that's not an issue.

In sum, great hardware, lousy software.

As of march '03, there is absolutely no need to use either Rio Player or Moodlogic to manage the Rio Riot.

Microsoft is now offering a free Powertoy applet called the Plus! Portable Audio Device applet (PlusPAD) which, in combination with a new driver from SonicBlue, lets you you the Windows XP file manager to manage the Riot; it shows up in the MY Computer Window as a system device, much like a Hard Drive. Double-clicking on the icon pops up a directory Window where you can sort the files by any of the ID3 tag attributes and copy or delete files by the usual cut-n-paste or drag-n-drop processes.
As an extra bonus, the Riot-specific driver lets you manage the Riot from inside Windows Media player.
Hence, no pop-ups, no nagging, no attempts to take over your PC.
All you need are the latest drivers from Sonicblue and the MS-supplied applet.
That's one less gripe about the Riot, no?

I'm not yet convinced the good outweighs the bad with this product. I can't complain about the 20 GB of memory, this was the main reason for my purchase. I like the large display and I find the firmware to be pretty intuitive. It is easy to navigate and I like the playback options. I don't even mind the slow speed at which songs transfer or the relatively large size of the player itself. What I don't like are the "skips" I cannot seem to avoid on tracks during playback. The player itself is not skipping, it is inherent in the track. I've tried everything and can't seem to avoid this. I've taken a new CD, ripped it to my computer and uploaded to the Riot using the highest quality and the skips are there. The Riot also has a nasty habit of cutting off tracks midway. The countdown timer will show 3 minutes left on a song and it will abrubtly end and go to the next track. The player even froze once requiring a reboot with a paperclip. The included headphones are of the type that everyone within a 40 foot radius will hear what you are listening to. They do not seem to fit very well and tend to fall off if you lean forward. Lastly, I find SONICblue's customer support a great letdown. After receiving a confirmation that my email would be responded to in the order it was received, I have yet to hear back. I sent that email over two weeks ago. All in all, I think this player would warrant a much higher rating if even some of the problems I'm experiencing would be remedied.

This RioRiot was a bad choice.

First off, the proprietary software puts you at the mercy of
Sonic Blue for future software updates and support. If this
was a generic USB disk device, any future OS that supports
generic USB devices could support it. I should have learned
that lesson from my orphaned Rio500...

Second, the RealJukebox software will attempt to convince you
to "upgrade" to RealOne. RealOne won't create MP3s with greater
than 96 Kbit/sec, unless you pay [per] month to be a "RealOne"
member.

Third, the sound quality is [terrible]. I run WindowsXP Home, and at
least every other file that is transferred to the RioRiot
has "artifacts", glitches, pops, etc, which are *not* apparent
when playing the MP3 file on the computer. The 'Beta' driver
which is supposed to 'fix' this problem doesn't. I'm about
ready to buy the Archos instead.

Also, the first RioRiot I received was Dead on Arrival. This
ownership experience is about enough to get me to avoid Rio
products altogether.