Death bells ring for Rio as they're cut up and sold to SigmaTel

You may remember SigmaTel, they're the company who makes, among other things, the chipsets for Apple's iPod shuffle. Yeah, those guys. Well, guess those flash-memory and integrated-circuits lined pockets just scooped up our favorite underdog digital audio player company: Rio Audio (aka Digital Networks). Yup, they bought Rio's approved and pending early MP3 player patents (remember, Rio was among the very first out with such a device), as well as Rio's software and engineering resources from D&M Holdings. That doesn't exactly leave very much left for a company that's supposedly in the business of making and selling digital audio players (Rio technically still has access to the patents that were sold, but their entire R&D team is now gone), so it seems really unlikely that this shell of company is going to keep walking down that path. Do we dare ring the Deathwatch bell? Guess you can kiss that Rio Chroma goodbye, if nothing else.

[Thanks, Ross]

[Nate MC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

did rio actually ever make a good solid mp3 player?

the rio pmp300 was the worst mp3 player i ever owned, i spent most of my time with it repairing the battery door than listening to it. every other rio player i held felt like it would just snap or fall apart.

[Mitch @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

this is sad cause rio really was ahead of the market with there first mp3 players, in fact i still have my first rio mp3 player and remember getting it on black friday for a great price!

[jv @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

ukre is taking this positively, which i suppose is good... but bloody hell, guys.

i was, and still consider myself, a big rio fan. the karma and carbon are both wonderful players, especially given the pricepoints they're at. i don't think anyone doubts that.

i'm tired of watching rio shoot itself in the foot over and over again. you'd think they'd do this right the second time around, but i guess not. i have faith they'll be back again in some form... but i think it's safe to declare the chroma dead.

d&m, are you listening? if you guys continue to manufacture rio products, i want to see an actual marketing team. not once do i remember seeing an ad for a rio player that was directly from them.

reliability issues should be addressed when they are brought up; preferably, to not have them there at all upon product launch. you guys killed the buzz surrounding the carbon because of the headphone jack issue.

don't make promises you can't keep. to rio's credit, they've never officially announced the chroma, but you've lost fans right and left on the words of other major rio fans that have "seen" prototypes that have never seen the light of day. (where's my msc update for the karma?)

stop spending so much time with r&d and more time handling your current lineup and customers. i realize that's what makes you guys top of your game, but look at where it's brought you - four changes in ownership in the past six years. (i have no problem with your current approach, actually... it's just that you guys have nothing to show for it.)

d&m may be wondering why rio may not be the most profitable out there. the last hd player they put out was three years ago. the last flash player in the form factor similar to the shuffle/muvo was also released then.

it's not good when your fans have more faith in the company than d&m, guys. apple has gone out of their way to target rio on the launch of each ipod derivative, and it seems that they've succeeded.

good luck to the rio team and godspeed. i hope to see you guys back making players soon enough, even if not under the rio badge.

[rich @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i had the rio pmp300 also. though it was cheaply made, wasn't it the very first mp3 player? sad they missed out on such a huge market. i have the rio carbon now. though it's tiny, looks cool, and has great battery life, the interface is horrible compared to the ipod. not to mention the fact that it takes a few seconds to turn on (should consumer electronics really have to 'boot up'?) and shutdown. and when you change a setting, there's this weird 'checkmark' animation that takes about 3 seconds to go by. what were they thinkin...

[Owen Blacker @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

gah! but my lovely rio karma is so much shinier than a bloody ipod (i can't get a rio carbon easily over here, so it's not physically shinier as well, unfortunately).

gah! *sulk*

[Anon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

#4 - marketing takes lots of money. where do you want the money to go - r&d, the product itself, or marketing? i'd prefer r&d and the product myself.
msc update for karma - not only probably limited by the hardware involved (never designed for it probably), you ask for less money in r&d and ask for more features?
karma wasn't 3 years ago, it was less than 2 years ago.
just setting the record straight :)

[Rob Green @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

shiny? shiny you say? it's an unshapely blob released by a soon to be torn apart company.

we ipod suckers had forward planning, even if we ignored the mysterious worst-battery-on-earth warnings plastered all over the web.

ahhhhhh why didn't we all wait for the cowon iaudio x5

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

it's possible that rio will still sell mp3 players, buying from oem's and slapping their branding on them.

heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they bought players from sigmatel and d&m.

this could make sense from a business perspective of they use their brand name to sell some of those "cool but we'll never see em outside korea" mp3 players.

[Owen Blacker @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

yes, shiny. as in better than yours, m'dear. see http://www.google.com/search?q=shiny+firefly for the usage ;o)

and how can you say that an ipod is as shiny as a rio carbon? nasty little 1970s-looking white box that isn't even as featureful as *my* rio karma, let alone a rio carbon!

apple: think different, just make sure it's the same kind of different as everyone else *grin*

[Lee Gibson @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

owen, if you think that features solve the problem, you don't understand the problem.

good design is not the same thing as cramming in lots of features.

[Morwan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

lee: have you ever used a karma or a carbon? imho, both of them had some of the best designs at the time that they were released. it's debatable whether the scrollwheel + pad/riostick combo was as good as the scroll wheel, but everything was pretty much a breeze with them. however, it has been almost two years, and a lot has changed since then.

hopefully, this'll mean that sigmatel can incorporate some form of gapless support in some of the chipsets it sells.. maybe then we'll see it across the board.

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"yes, shiny. as in better than yours, m'dear."

we speak english around here.

"shin�y audio pronunciation of "shiny" ( p ) pronunciation key (shn)
adj. shin�i�er, shin�i�est

1. radiating light; bright.
2. bright from reflected light; glistening.
3. having a sheen from being rubbed or worn smooth."

don't blame us if we don't understand your own personal slang. i don't even think you quite understand the slang usage. it doesn't mean "better" in a qualitative sense.

"apple: think different, just make sure it's the same kind of different as everyone else *grin*"

yeah, come back and talk to me when any rio device features the click wheel interface.

btw, is it me or is this site converting all my capital letters to lowercase? wtf? it's been happening for two days now.

[[THE] @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i'm just happy they released play4sure subscription support for the carbon before this happened.

[The Jeremy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i think this is defensive on sigmatel's part. sigmatel might now be preparing an intellectual property challenge to apple pending apple dumping sigmatel for intel chips for the volume discount. or perhaps sigmatel is looking forward to selling this ip (and exiting mp3 player chipsets altogether) to apple in a few months time. makes sense to me. apple could turn around and use that ip to drive the last nails in the coffin of creative labs.

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

when you consider every other company is trying to jam their dap with extra features and apple sits back and keeps their products as simple as possible, isn't that thinking different?

when other company is working on getting video onto their devices while apple worked on getting podcasting out to the masses, isn't that thinking different?

it is much harder for a company to give a user what he needs, then give user what he thinks he wants.

with creative in the dumps, and rio now gone ... who's next? iriver? cowon?

[mr.karmalicious @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

ukre and peter say that they can still develop for rio, though less directly, because they're still making the chipsets for rio players...

[jv @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

someone clarify this for me: does sigmatel only work on processors or do they also oem players for others to rebadge?

#7 - i stand corrected. the karma *is* less than two years old. i knew it launched in either aug 2002 or 2003. in any case, it's overdue for a refresh. i understand that marketing requires cash, but without word of mouth, the products *do not* sell. apple has spend millions on marketing the ipod, and now they've become the market leader and synonymous with music in general even with the advent of better players. i'm sure we all know the concept of advertising. i have my preferences as well, but perhaps if they were selling more players, this wouldn't have happened. (the msc update was promised by rio; a simple "we found that the karma couldn't handle msc" would have been adaquate if that was the case.)

#15 - nah. this is sigmatel trying to keep up with portalplayer. i wonder how portalplayer feels about this acquisition.

my point when i wrote that post was that the "failures" of the rio brand and players were almost always the fault of the parent company for not effectively backing them up.

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

when you consider every other company is trying to jam their dap with extra features and apple sits back and keeps their products as simple as possible, isn't that thinking different?

when other company is working on getting video onto their devices while apple worked on getting podcasting out to the masses, isn't that thinking different?

it is much harder for a company to give a user what he needs, then give user what he thinks he wants.

with creative in the dumps, and rio now gone ... who's next? iriver? cowon?

[fondy44 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"Apple worked on getting Podcasting out to the masses, isn't that thinking different?"
Ah, podcasting. Yeah um, that's what I have a computer for. Apple created a digital AUDIO player without so much as a bass/treble slider. They created a flash player capable of holding ~250 songs without a display to sort said songs. That my friend, is indeed thinking different.
"It is much harder for a company to give a user what he needs, then give user what he thinks he wants."
What an iPod user 'needs' is for Apple to chip in on the electric bill, since you have to leave your computer on all night to charge your freakin' iPod just because they're too cheap to throw in a wall wart.

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"Ah, podcasting. Yeah um, that's what I have a computer for." This doesn't even make sense. Are you trying to say that podcasts don't belong on an iPod.

From Don Norman regarding the display-less iPod Shuffle:
"... sure, people prefer to know the name of the song being played, but that's a design tradeoff. Money and space. Displays add to the cost and take space. I believe that the Apple Shuffle is an excellent compromise among the conflicting requirements of simplicity, elegance, size, battery life, and function. If you think of it as a supplementary music player rather than you main one, then the tradeoffs become more clear."

Regarding the power adapter. Apple wanted to sell the iPod at a certain price point. That is basically it. If you want a USB power adapter, you can get a generic one on eBay for $5 or an Apple adapter for $30. It is a compromise, but evidently, it has only increased their sales.

EQ would be nice for some people, but it is not a make or break feature. I really doubt that the lack of and EQ was because they were lazy or stupid. I am sure they left it out for the sake of simplicity. If a group of people don't like it, they can buy something else.

Just like the group of people who can't stand 128 AAC from iTMS, go buy a CD. Apple makes compromises just like every other company out there, if you don't like it, don't buy it. But there is no sense in bad mouthing a company when they are clearly targeting the general public.

[Tony @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"... sure, people prefer to know the name of the song being played, but that's a design tradeoff. Money and space. Displays add to the cost and take space."

Do you have any clue how cheap OLED's are?
Or how easy they are on battery life?
If you ask me, Kanguru smokes the Shuffle.
http://www.kanguru.com/audioflash.html

[Paul @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

Here in the UK you can no longer get Karma's - they are discontinued

My wife's one had just broken under warranty but all Amazon can do is refund as they don't have any more.

This is a real shame - as i cannot see anything else out there that comes close to the functionality of the Karma, and Rio is now dying slowly. Does anyone have any suggestions what i can get instead?

Meantime i am looking after my one *extremely* well now i know i can't replace it...

[Paul @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

As much as the Apple products look good, they don't sound good. I bought the Karma because it could store WAV and FLAC (lossless compressed) files. I can get about 40-50 CDs on my player and listen to brilliantly reproduced audio.

Anyone who thinks MP3s/WMA/OGG/AAC files sound good ought to get their ears checked and cleaned. AIFF is a step in the right direction, but I've never seen downloads available in that format.