Rio Carbon > iPod Mini?

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: yllus

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: ElFenix
ew you like WMA? hand in your lifer card!

I have never had anyone give a good, logical reason why they dislike wma except "ew it's Microsoft, it has to be bad!"

Hey, now I remember that huge WMA thread in OT from a couple years back! Yeah, not a single person has ever justified why MP3 > WMA. Having used WMA for a long time with my Nomad II, I can at least say that on your typical portable headphones, 128 kbps WMA is equivalent to 192 kbps MP3 music (cue dramatic music).

Just to add a bit to my fairly regular rants against anti wma folks:

IMO, using WMA is no different than using AAC. There's a lossless format for both, both can be DRM'd up the wazoo, both sound fine, the processing power required to decode them is fairly equivalent (affects battery life), both are pushed by companies that like to set their own standards. WMA has the advantage of being able to be played back on lots of different devices. AAC has the advantage of the better legal music store.
/regular anti-wma rant

are both based on mpeg standard?

Just AAC. Who cares?

 

[vi edit]

I've fumbled around with the Carbon and still prefer the "wheel" of the Apple over the jog dial of the Rio. Just personal preference.

And when you combo up the Ipod with Ehphod you eliminate the need for the clunkly iTunes.

While having plug & plag/drag & drop functionality would be nice, I don't find myself lacking it much. It *can* operate as a hard drive without software. I just keep the ehphod executable on there and use that for new installs. You just can't drag and drop music that way. But general data you can.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: yllus

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: ElFenix
ew you like WMA? hand in your lifer card!

I have never had anyone give a good, logical reason why they dislike wma except "ew it's Microsoft, it has to be bad!"

Hey, now I remember that huge WMA thread in OT from a couple years back! Yeah, not a single person has ever justified why MP3 > WMA. Having used WMA for a long time with my Nomad II, I can at least say that on your typical portable headphones, 128 kbps WMA is equivalent to 192 kbps MP3 music (cue dramatic music).

Just to add a bit to my fairly regular rants against anti wma folks:

IMO, using WMA is no different than using AAC. There's a lossless format for both, both can be DRM'd up the wazoo, both sound fine, the processing power required to decode them is fairly equivalent (affects battery life), both are pushed by companies that like to set their own standards. WMA has the advantage of being able to be played back on lots of different devices. AAC has the advantage of the better legal music store.
/regular anti-wma rant

are both based on mpeg standard?

Just AAC. Who cares?

you can have aac without drm then though right? the future "lame"?

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
you can have aac without drm then though right? the future "lame"?

I'm not sure I understand your point. You can have WMA without DRM as well.

 

[RbSX]

Originally posted by: intogamer
the ipod mini are way nicer!

Nah I love my Carbon

 

[HomerSapien]

Good review...

I remember my old Diamond Rio with 64Mb of memory in it. Man was that thing junk. They had about 2 firmware updates for it, the second one litterally destroyed the battery life (9 hrs->2, on a double a). But at the time it was great.

I think the biggest factor in buying one is where do you want to get your music from. They all have either problems (selection, quality isnt high enough, drm,etc) or the legality of them is questionable (ahem, allofmp3.com) If you only buy cds, then what your choices are greater, but you pay more for the album.

 

[pclstyle]

nice post

 

[Dubb]

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: Dubb
good job.

I too tend to gravitate towards the rio products. I gotta have gapless (which the carbon doesn't have ) and the little things, like the "selective lock" feature, are just plain cool.

for me the carbon would be the A+++ small player if it had some of the karma's features, namely gapless and vorbis. but ah well, karma's still doing fine.

Check out the Chroma!
I hope the battery life figure isn't right, though, 12hrs is kind of low these days.

Once this and the next wave of Portable MediaCenters come out, I'm going to have a tough time deciding on my next mp3 player.

I've been hearing chroma speculation since jan. 04. at that time it was supposed to be released april 04...and it still aint out. I'll look into it when best buy has them in stock. untill then it's vaporware as far as I'm concerned.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Cliff Notes?

 

[Rudee]

I own both and the Rio Carbon comes out tops. More storage, superior battery life, smaller, and the Carbon can be used as a 4gb external drive for transferring files - which I do quite a bit. Girlfriend now has my mini and I keep the Carbon

By the way, under "Carrying Capacity" Carbon wins with 1gb more storage than the 4gb Mini, thus you can't say that there is "no winner" Also, if you think the mini wins the size comparison, you need to go back to school and take a math class.

 

[yllus]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
I've fumbled around with the Carbon and still prefer the "wheel" of the Apple over the jog dial of the Rio. Just personal preference.

And when you combo up the Ipod with Ehphod you eliminate the need for the clunkly iTunes.

While having plug & plag/drag & drop functionality would be nice, I don't find myself lacking it much. It *can* operate as a hard drive without software. I just keep the ehphod executable on there and use that for new installs. You just can't drag and drop music that way. But general data you can.

Not having drag and drop functionality is definitely not the end of the world - an one-time installation of whatever software suits your preference solves the issue. It's the drag and drop + no driver requirement that really sells the Rio Carbon, in my opinion. And if I can get my hands on a USB -> mini-USB retractable cable it'll be even better.

I strongly dislike iTunes. Strongly. I couldn't care less about memory requirements, who of us doesn't have gobs of memory to space. It's the badly written interface that annoys me to death. The little features like figuring out your favourite songs, genre...why? Maybe to someone with an absolutely massive amount of music that's useful, but I sort of already know what music I like the most. Blah.

Originally posted by: Rudee
I own both and the Rio Carbon comes out tops. More storage, superior battery life, smaller, and the Carbon can be used as a 4gb external drive for transferring files - which I do quite a bit. Girlfriend now has my mini and I keep the Carbon

By the way, under "Carrying Capacity" Carbon wins with 1gb more storage than the 4gb Mini, thus you can't say that there is "no winner" Also, if you think the mini wins the size comparison, you need to go back to school and take a math class.

There's a 6 GB Mini out now that makes the waters a little murkier. It just costs more.

Why doesn't the Mini win the size comparison?

 

[MustISO]

There's a nice deal on the carbon today at staples. PM to Amazon for ~$135 AR/AC (IIRC)

 

[RossMAN]

Excellent review, thank you!

Down with the iPod!

 

[LtPage1]

i actually prefer itunes and its playlist setup that syncs automatically to a drag and drop system. and the whole mini player concept just isnt worth it to me. its not that much smaller, and $100 more gets you several times the capacity.