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. Development on the Chroma and other players has been terminated.
#@$&*(#@$! *#$(*ing #@$*ity @#$*!
So, the Karma becomes something of an artifact. Mine’s still running strong, and the few missing features aren’t anything I can’t live without. Even 2.5 years after its release, it’s the best DAP on the planet, and its feature-set and execution eclipse anything else released since. It’s still the only player on the market with gapless playback (though the Rockbox firmware for the iRiver IHP series now supports gapless Ogg if you’re the brave sort), and it still has the best databasing and playlisting features of anything out there.
A few folks had some insider info on the Chroma, and since NDAs no longer apply, they’ve posted what they know about the prototypes Engadget and DapReview. Looks like it was to take after the Carbon design:
It’s just sad to know that this is the end of the line for Rio. If you don’t have a Karma, grab one while they’re still out there. You won’t regret it.
I’ve got a detailed review of the unit here, and DapReview has a good page of specs up as well.