The Rio Karma was better than any iPod

I owned a music player that was way ahead of its time

Image courtesy of Rio

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm looking to better connect with some of the more memorable devices of my technological past. This week I thought it would be fun to go down memory lane to appreciate a product that never really garnered the popularity it most certainly deserved.

Released way back in 2003, the Rio Karma was a digital music player that really changed the way I listened to music.

No, it wasn't the smallest, the fastest, or largest-capacity audio player but it had features that made it really stand out amongst the crowd of portable music solutions made by Apple or a host of other nascent competitors.

Image courtesy of Diamond

Rio had been one of the early names in mp3 players. They had several small flash memory based designs that garnered some buzz in nerd circles, but nothing that was a major commercial hit. Sadly, I can't really say that the Karma was a commercial hit either, but it was a major hit with yours truly.

Look at the design of this thing! The Karma had a short, squared-off footprint that just fit effortlessly in the palm of your hand. Prior to the world of touchscreens, it offered up an intuitive scroll wheel in the top corner that allowed you to quickly jog through settings menus. A press of the scroll wheel allowed you to confirm your selection. It was quirky, but it worked well. And as if one tactile feedback option wasn't enough, there was also a fun little red joystick button to quickly control music playback settings. The combination of scroll wheel and joystick made every input selection a pleasure.

And what about storage? The Karma came with 20GB of storage capacity. Obviously, this is a laughably small amount these days, but it was huge in 2003. Essentially my entire music collection could be swallowed up by its ingenious file structure system. And while I listened to 99% of my music in mp3 format, I appreciated that the Karma was able to handle the more exotic formats like WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec).

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The party trick that I always found most fun with the Karma was that it came with a cute little dock that allowed you to charge the device. Not only that, but the dock offered up an ethernet jack as well! You could essentially network the player to allow for remote access to the files on-board. This may not sound that impressive but it worked wonders when accessing music from across a vast college campus at the time. And to go even further, the dock came with a glowing LED light that could pulse in synchronization with the music. There was really no better way to listen to music than through the Karma with its glowing blue dock light connected to my Sony stereo system.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The chunky thickness of the Karma allowed for a large capacity battery that offered nearly double the playback time as the most powerful iPod at the time. I can't imagine a device these days that offers double the battery life of its competitor. This was a huge deal in the world of portable music. You could bring this thing with you all day long and never have to worry about finding a charge.

So you may be asking yourself, why happened? Why doesn't everyone wax poetically about their time with the Rio Karma? Why hasn't it entered the hall of fame of retired audio devices like the Walkman, Discman, iPod, and others?

Image courtesy of Sony

I don't know, maybe it was just too far ahead of its time? Maybe it was still a little rough around the edges? The player felt sturdy for sure, but it still had its quirks. I remember the amazing scroll wheel on mine eventually broke and lost the ability to you know...scroll. There was also one of those pin-sized reset buttons found on the bottom of the Karma. The more I used it, the more I found myself searching for a safety pin to trigger a reset when the software froze. I remember buying a cool looking zip-on fabric case for the device and started attaching a safety pin to the case for those freeze-up emergencies.

And probably the biggest death blow to the Rio Karma was iTunes, the iPod, and finally the iPhone. Even with superior hardware, the Karma didn't have the software setup of any of the Apple products. There was a bit of DIY nerdiness required if you were going to make this your primary way to listen to music. I was ok with that, but plenty of people weren't. After less than two years on the market, the Karma was quietly retired.

Image courtesy of Saab

I held onto mine for as long as I could. I even had a hook on the dashboard of my car that allowed me to attach the Karma and plug it into the stereo system of my old Saab 9000. It was the best way to ensure I had my entire music collection on every drive. It's hard to pinpoint the exact time I stopped using it and what replaced it. I think it's safe to say that once mobile phones were able to also play music, the dedicated mp3 player was doomed whether it was made by Apple or anyone else. Rio didn’t stand a chance.

I'd like to think that the spirit of the Rio Karma lived on in other discontinued products like the Microsoft Zune and even some of the early PDAs and smart phones. Scroll wheels and joysticks were soon abolished in favor of touchscreens, but I think they're poised for a comeback. My Rio Karma may still be tucked away somewhere in a drawer at my parents house and I highly doubt it would still power on. But there are absolutely days where I long for the glowing LED of the charging dock and miss the satisfaction of a well-executed hard reboot via safety pin.

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