I absolutely love my Rio Karma. It’s the best portable audio unit I’ve ever owned. Rio chose to make a pure audio (as opposed to a half-baked PDA or video player or personal storage or whatever…) player and to do it right. I have music pretty much everywhere I go, and the Karma’s pretty much the perfect gadget for me.
About a year back, Rio announced that they were doing R&D on the Karma’s successor, tenatively called the Chroma. Details were sketchy, but the few things that had been left out of the Karma, like Audible support and MSC compliance, would be part of the Chroma, as well as a larger hard-drive and a color interface. Basically, it was to be the Holy Grail for audiophiles, and the community waited with bated breath for details.
Well, it turns out that’s not gonna happen, pilgrims. Rio has closed their doors and sold assets off to Sigmatel. Continued...