Rio Digital Audio Receiver Review

Updated 8 Jan 2002

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Overall Rating:

3 out of 5 stars

Fun and functional network-tethered mp3 and Windows Media player.  Excellent sound.  Requires PC.  No built-in speakers.  Small unscrollable display makes it difficult to find albums and tracks.  Flawed music database doesn't scale up to large libraries.  Unit sometimes "reboots" itself but stability is very good overall.  Album track order is random unless playlists are used.  No volume level monitoring.  Headphone jack is too loud.  Computer novices may find difficult to install due to its complexity and terse documentation, but experts won't have any trouble.

The above script assumes that albums are organized in folders (one album per folder) in which the parent folder is named after the artist.

Use Tag&Rename to add the ID3 tags to your MP3 library (as long as all of your mp3 files are named in using the same format).

Hacking the Rio Receiver

Introduction

My CDs have a way of disappearing.  They get lost throughout the house.   I'm not anal (or "disciplined") enough to keep my CDs in alphabetical order, so I usually give up mid-search and settle for any CD I can find.

For this reason I ripped my entire CD collection to mp3 format.  WinAmp is great for playing music from my PC.  However, some rooms in the house, such as the kitchen and bathrooms, don't have a computer and therefore don't have access to the online music library.  Should I install computers in these rooms just for listening to music?  This is an expensive undertaking and besides, there's no room for a keyboard, monitor and mouse.

How about getting one of those massive 6 gigabyte portable players and connecting speakers to it?  Who wants to load 6 gigs of music to a player and keep it up to date when new CDs are ripped?  This works great for one room in the house but is tedious for multiple rooms.

Enter the Rio Digital Audio Receiver priced at around $169.  The Rio Receiver turned out to be better than I expected, and I use it every day.

What Is It?

The Rio Receiver is an affordable electronic "appliance" that plays mp3 and Windows Media Player files.  It's a bit smaller than two reams of 8 1/2" x 11" paper stacked on top of each other, but significantly lighter.  Overall it's a very attractive and high-tech looking box.  Unfortunately, the receiver doesn't come with built-in speakers, but it does have headphone, line-out, and stereo-out jacks.

What Isn't It?

The Rio Receiver isn't a portable mp3 player.  The device is meant to sit in a fixed location in your home or office, such as a kitchen, desk, or living room.  It relies on a network connection as well as a 110-volt electric outlet.

The receiver isn't an Internet-ready device.  It doesn't play ShoutCast, RealAudio, or Windows Media Player streams.  The receiver only plays music libraries that are accessible on the local area network (LAN).

The Rio Receiver isn't stand-alone.  You must have at least one PC on the network that can stream audio to the device.

Who Needs It?

Anyone who has a large collection of mp3 files will appreciate this unit.  The Rio Receiver makes listening to online music libraries a snap.  Computer programmers will enjoy being able to listen to their mp3 files while compiling programs and performing other CPU-intensive tasks.

How Does It Work?

The device has very little RAM and no hard disk.  None of the memory is used to store music.  Instead, a separate server on the network sends music to the receiver on demand.  Thus the receiver will never need additional memory no matter how large your music library becomes (as long as the music database can fit in memory... more on that later).

The server software runs on Windows 98SE, ME, and 2000.  You don't have to dedicate a PC to just be a server -- it can do other things.  Presumably you already have a server (or servers) on which your music is stored.  Such a server is an ideal candidate to be a server for your Rio Receivers.  The software installed without any problems whatsoever on a Windows 2000 Server machine.  The server software doesn't use very much CPU, at least while supporting one receiver.  However, it does use memory (e.g., 10 megs to support the first receiver, but I don't know how much memory is needed for each additional receiver).

The receiver talks to the server via an Ethernet network or existing telephone wires.  The Ethernet functionality runs at 10 megabits half-duplex, which is more than adequate.  I was successful plugging the receiver into my 100 megabit LAN.  The receiver is capable of getting a dynamically-assigned IP address from the server (this is a Digital Audio Receiver software setting).  All told, I was able to plug the receiver into my network and get it working in about five minutes.

The first step is to install the server software on a Windows computer.  Then decide how you're going to connect the server and the receivers (Ethernet vs HPNA).  Finally, import your song titles and play lists (.m3u files) into the server, which can take quite a while if you have a large library.  The software merely catalogs your music and doesn't convert it to another format.

When a receiver is turned on, it scans the network for a music server.   Once the server is found, the receiver downloads the music database.

Let's say you want to play the song "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones.  You search for the title using the remote control's numeric keypad and press play.  The Rio Receiver tells the server to start streaming the song "Start Me Up."  Contrary to typical streaming software, you don't control the stream from the server.  Instead, you control everything from the receiver.  This is how it should be.

Multiple receivers can be connected to a single network.  One server can stream to multiple receivers, each playing their own music.  You can also put multiple servers on the network in order to lighten the load on each server.

Features

• Plays regular and VBR (variable bit rate) mp3 files
• Plays WMA files
• Remote control
• Headphone jack
• Line out jack
• Stereo out jacks
• 10 watts per channel
• Frequency response:  20 kHz - 20 Hz
• Bass, treble, and balance controls
• 10 megabit Ethernet port
• Telephone port for HPNA network
• Includes mp3 ripping software
• Track name, artist, album, and time remaining display
• "Oscilloscope" display
• Supports VBR mp3-encoded files

Things I like:

• The sound quality is good
• The music keeps playing when I reboot my PC (finally!) - of course this means I have a dedicated PC for the server...
• The oscilloscope, if you can find it
• I use "random" mode for playing my entire music library like a radio station
• The software is easy to install and use
• The Ethernet connection worked without any hassles the first time

The Sound

The Rio Receiver sounds like a low-end receiver.  At 10 watts per channel with no equalizer, the receiver provides adequate audio for headphones and small speakers.  With the receiver's output jacks, however, you can connect the Rio Receiver to a high-end receiver.

Streaming audio has its shortcomings.  When the network becomes saturated, the receiver produces noticeable delays in the music.  Of course, this happens more often with high quality mp3 files.  I have a Rio Receiver at work where the internal 100 megabit network is used heavily and the delays can be pretty annoying, possibly because the Rio Receiver is only capable of running at 10 mbps.  I often have to pause the player so it can "catch up."

As every digital audiophile knows, music quality is highly dependent upon the encoding algorithm, bit rate, and sampling frequency.  It's best to rip your CDs using the best quality possible, so you won't have to re-rip later on.  I rip to CD-quality 128kbps, 44kHz VBR mp3 files.  This produces files that are roughly 6 megabytes per song, which is larger than other encoding schemes, but disk is cheap.  I think Easy CD-DA Extractor is the best ripper on the market for Windows.

Shortcomings

It's very disappointing that the receiver doesn't have built-in speakers.  The attractiveness of this device in my opinion is its small footprint.  External speakers make the receiver unwieldy in tight spots.  For example, the Bose Wave Radio packs excellent sound in a very compact package.  Without built-in speakers the Rio Receiver should be considerably smaller -- there's no need for all that bulk.

The headphone jacks are designed for 80 year olds.  Even at the lowest volume setting, sometimes the headphones are still too loud.  Crank it down, guys.  We're not deaf yet.

Like all other players, the Rio Receiver lacks automatic volume level monitoring.  This is similar to the phenomenon in which television commercials are louder than the other programming.  Every album is recorded at a different volume level.  Although mp3 and other encoding software does not automatically "normalize" the volume to some standard level, music players should do this.  This is especially true with the Rio Receiver because it's very likely that you won't be close to the volume controls, unlike personal players which are normally attached to your body.  For example, a Sade song could be playing at just the right volume but the Nirvana song after it could blow out your eardrums.  The worse case is when you can't hardly hear the next song at all because the volume is too low.  Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, not harder, and consumers shouldn't have to baby-sit their music players.

The display is too small and even worse, it doesn't scroll.  The unit has several display modes which are similar to "skins."  You can change the font size from "too big" to "stupidly too big."  The screen can only show about 25 characters per line with "small" fonts.  This is a colossal disaster when searching for music.  I usually can't find what I'm looking for, especially when I'm looking for titles from the "Cherry Poppin Daddies."

The big font size is handy for reading the display across the room while using the remote.  However, with big fonts turned on, you can only see about ten letters of the album name or title, which isn't nearly enough.  

Navigation is always a problem with digital music players.  The Rio Receiver attempts to organize music via genre, album title, song title, and artist name.  The database is built from the extended information (ID3 tags) that is stored in music files.  If this information is missing or incorrect for a particular track, it won't show up in any of the search screens.  Whether the files contain this information depends upon the ripping software.  Happily, most modern rippers do the right thing.  I have quite a lot of music (all of my U2 titles, for example) that do not have ID3 tags.  At first I was scratching my head -- Where did U2 go?  As a result, the receiver's search capabilities are mostly useless for me.

You can update the ID3 tags for most of your mp3 files with a shareware product called Tag&Rename.  Unfortunately, Tag&Rename fails to find the titles for most ripped albums via CDDB because most rippers alter the dead space between tracks.  However, if your files follow a particular naming convention, such as "Artist - Track Name", Tag&Rename can fill in the ID3 tags for you using the information contained in the file names.

Another thing that irks me about this player and other players in general is that the "extended information" doesn't include song order.  If you tell the receiver to play an entire album, it plays the songs in alphabetical order (not filename order either -- track name order) which is typically not the order in which the songs appear on the album.  This is completely wrong.  I wish the receiver would just play the songs in file name order instead of getting cute with the extended information which might not even exist on some tracks.

However, the receiver does obey the order that is specified in playlists.  So basically I'm stuck using playlists.  The other navigation features are essentially useless.  The player offers several search capabilities, except for "search for playlist."  Although finding a playlist is easy, it's conspicuously missing from the search functionality.

My music library is very large, comprising about 30 gigabytes.  The receiver seems to want to load the entire database of song titles, album names, etc. into RAM, which of course is a very bad idea.  When I press the search button for the first time after turning the unit on, the hourglass appears for about 45 seconds.  Sometimes the receiver "reboots" itself during navigation.  I have a feeling it's because the music database is so large.  I have no idea how large the database can get before it exceeds the receiver's available RAM.  My fear is that the music database will soon exceed the receiver's ability to store it.  In my opinion the whole point to the Rio Receiver is that music libraries inevitably grow and grow and grow, quickly exceeding the capacity of conventional players.  Alas, the Rio Receiver doesn't seem to scale up to large music libraries.

In order to overcome some of these problems, I wrote my own software that generates playlist (.m3u) files for each album.  These playlist files are named according to the artist and album name so I can find them easily.  In order to find the playlists on the receiver's tiny screen, I abbreviate the file names by stripping out unnecessary vowels.  If you want this program (it is written in Perl), it's available here.  Without this program the user experience with the receiver is very poor.  However, users can merrily create their own playlists manually, which is reasonable until they have more than three CDs ripped.

Importing music into the server software is "all or nothing" rather than additive.  When I rip a new CD I must rebuild the entire database instead of just adding the new CD titles to the existing database.  I have a very large music library and importing takes a painful half hour.  There should be an explicit option to purge the database.

I don't need the receiver to organize my music.  My music is already organized on my hard disk by genre and artist.  I would like to see the elimination of the music database and instead make navigation a real-time endeavor using existing file folders.  This would make finding music much easier and I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life importing music each time I ripped a new CD.  It's a network -- use it.  Take a look at Snowcrash -- it uses the file system for navigation and also supports playlists.

The server software should run as a service on Windows NT, 2000, and XP.  Currently you have to start the server manually.

Another annoyance is that the server software doesn't like UNC paths.  The server must be on the same machine where the music files exist.  If your music is dispersed on multiple computers, you're out of luck.  If you publish music files on the network via a shared folder, the server should map a drive letter to the shared folder.  Playlists must use the drive letter instead of UNC names.  For example, use m:\REM\losing_my_religion.mp3 instead of \\jukebox\REM\losing_my_religion.mp3

It would be nice if the server could stream other types of sources, such as RealAudio and ShoutCast.  Perhaps the receiver just needs to have conventional FM/AM reception.  It always amazes me how many audio components don't have a radio tuner.  That part must cost less than $5 by now.

The receiver occasionally gets into a mode in which no sound will come out of the headphone or speaker jacks.  The only way to resolve this problem is to turn it off and unplug it from the power outlet.  Hopefully glitches like these will be fixed in the next version.

Rio vs Other Products

New digital audio products are hitting the market every month.  The Rio Receiver's features are quite unique compared to the competition.

Stereo-link is similar to the Rio Receiver in that it plays mp3 files and other formats.   However, it plugs into PCs via USB.  Like serial cables, USB cables can only extend a foot or so.  This means that the PC must be located right next to its "server" PC, which can be very limiting.  Furthermore, one PC can only service one Stereo-link device at a time.  In contrast, one PC can stream different music to several Rio Receivers simultaneously.  If you wanted to fill your home with digital music, you would have to purchase one PC per Stereo-link.  At $169 the Rio Receiver is much more affordable.  Stereo-link purports to have superior sound quality, but so does the Rio Receiver.  At 10 watts per channel, the Rio Receiver sounds far better than a PC with a medium-end sound card.

SonicBlue has a new product, the Advanced Digital Audio Center.  At $1500, this unit is more like a computer and has its own 40 gigabyte hard disk (which is on the small side), similar to TiVo for your music collection.  The Advanced Digital Audio Receiver streams to Rio Receivers and can even burn mp3 or standard audio CDs.  The unit is much easier to install and use compared to a PC, since all of the hardware and software is already installed.  But at $1500, the product misses its target audience by at least $1000.

There are many portable personal music players on the market.  The portability is nice for enjoying music while exercising, doing chores, walking to work, etc..  The Rio Receiver isn't portable.  None of the conventional mp3 players connect directly into the network.  They have a serial or USB connection which is only used to download music.  The players aren't capable of playing streaming music over the connection, which means you have to go through the lengthy and painful download process before you can listen to music.

If you want to do chores around the house while listening to the Rio Receiver, consider buying a pair of wireless headphones.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, I use the Rio Receiver every day and I can think of no better endorsement.

The Rio Receiver is a superb version-1.0 product.  At $169 it's a no-brainer purchase.  There are flaws but the receiver does something that no other player can do:  play music from extremely large libraries without requiring hours of downloading.  The product's footprint could be smaller, and it will undoubtedly shrink as time goes on.  

I highly recommend the Rio Receiver for anyone who has converted, or is considering converting, their music collection to digital format.  If you buy the receiver, chances are very good that you will enjoy your music even more.  The receiver has many shortcomings, so unless you just have to have one NOW, you might want to wait until version 2.

The Rio Receiver is a consumer electronics product.  Once you buy it, it will never improve.  If you have the space and the money, a PC will play many more music formats and will be able to adapt to the rapidly changing digital music industry.  Plus, a PC can do a lot more than play music.  Snowcrash just might be the thing you need.

Post-Script:  Dell Digital Audio Receiver

Dell used to offer the "Dell Digital Audio Receiver" which was a repackaged version of the Rio Receiver.  As of 4 November 2001, the Dell Digital Receiver seems to be discontinued.  Dell representatives declined to comment.

(c) 2001 mp3pirate.com