Diamond Rio Portable MP3 Player Review

Installation and setup

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Kenn's comments in BLUE

Thresh:
I have to be honest with you guys -- installation and setup are probably my least favorite pastimes when it comes to getting new hardware. So naturally, I was ecstatic to find that the Rio was easier to setup than my first Lego toy set. I took the only cable it came with and shoved its small end into the only hole it fits into on the Rio. Next, I unplugged my printer, attached its cable to the included pass-thru adapter (Kenn calls it a dongle, but I think he's thinking of something else), then plugged that whole enchilada into the parallel port on the back of my computer, which again happens to be the only connector it fits into. (Except if you're an ol' school geezer who still has a 25-pin SCSI connector) Quick and painless, just the way I like it.

Kenn:
I have to agree with ya there Den, it was probably one of the easiest pieces of hardware I've had to install in the past month. However, I did find the lack of USB support somewhat disheartening, especially for such a cutting-edge device. And yes, the passthrough IS a dongle, and it really sucks, especially if you don't have much space between the back of your system and the wall, or worse, have printer or another dongle installed.

Thresh:
Yeah, USB could have made the process a lot smoother (and no, I'm not talking about mouse sampling rates so don't even say it). Plug and play, automatic utility 12Mbps MP3 transfers (faster than your average LAN, and much speedier than your local parallel port), AND no need for a "dongle" makes the Rio a prime candidate. Unfortunately, I imagine it was probably cheaper to go with the parallel interface than reengineer to support USB.

Kenn:
That covers hardware, what about its software setup? The Rio comes with two CDs, one of which is an installation CD, and the other is a MP3 music sampler CD. Throw in the installation CD and follow its appropriate instructions, and you're good to go. The installation CD gives you a few necessities - for one, the Rio Manager, a utility which allows you to interface with the pocket player to download, erase, or rearrange songs in the Rio's memory. Unfortunately, you can't drag songs back out of the Rio onto your hard drive, but then again that's the reason it's legal. The Rio Manager is also the only way to determine how much memory is free for additional songs. You also get the MusicMatch Jukebox, a program that lets you make MP3s out of your existing music CDs (described below).

Thresh:
The second CD comes with an MP3 sampler - a few royalty-free low bit rate recordings, and plenty of links to legitimate MP3 music sites on the Internet. I think it's about time we warned you guys - "Be careful! There are a lot if ill-eagle music sites on the net. If you see a song available for download that you've heard on the radio, it is probably illegal (like mar-i-ja-wa-na), and it is BAD to get these songs, because they will take you to jail." That done with, there are plenty of LEGAL, free songs available in MP3 format for download. In fact, if you're new to MP3s, Diamond has included over 100 songs from MP3.com and GoodNoise ready to download.

Kenn:
If you want to avoid the whole good/evil thing, encode your own MP3s. Using the included Jukebox program, you can "rip" the songs off of any music CD (don't worry, it'll still be on the CD) and encode them in MP3 format. The entire process takes about 5-20 minutes per song, depending on the speed of your computer, CD-ROM drive, and length of the CD track. If you've own the CD, there's nothing wrong with encoding it to MP3 (it's exactly the same moral principal as making a digital copy to Minidisc or an analog copy to cassette).