Diamond multimedia's Rio PMP300 MP3player - Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc

Emedia Professional, June, 1999 by Joshua McDaniel

diamond multimedia's Rio PMP300 MP3 player

synopsis: Prize of prizes, Diamond's Rio PMP300, a compact, controversial new system for encoding and playing audio tracks from the Internet and other sources in near Red Book-quality MP3, is a tiny wonder of modern industry. Downloading up to 37 minutes of MP3s from your PC to the Rio's flash memory card is about as difficult as printing a Word document, given the excellent management software and easy plug-and-play parallel port connection, and playback quality is as good as the MP3 source files allow. Given the RIAA's current pending case against the Rio as a potential copyright cheat [trial date: early 2000), here's hoping Diamond Multimedia is allotted the space to continue to innovate and improve, as they've so spectacularly done with their Rio.

Sometimes, when you're an IT Solutions Provider, several boxes full of IT solutions arrive at your office simultaneously--three, even, as it happened with me one afternoon. My car had been booted with extreme prejudice just moments prior to their arrival; assuage me, I asked of these packages, assuage me with your glorious colors and figures, and I'll drive you around later. Having laid out the panoply, I perused the following: a DSL modem that displayed on its package a gargantuan, necktied network administrator who's managed to seize hold of an RJ-45 cable that's flailing and exploding in an apocalyptic storm of data. The next box boasted "The Mainboard Leading Systems Integrators Choose!" and showed us two of these "Systems Integrators"--bespectacled men, such that we trust them--smiling over a Super Socket 7.

Then, prize of prizes, I espied Diamond's Rio PMP300, a compact, controversial new system for encoding and playing audio tracks from the Internet and other sources in near-Red Book-quality MP3. No beards or glasses adorn the Rio's package; in a highly unusual and progressive gesture, we're introduced to the Rio by a young woman. Forward-thinking, just, iconoclastic, and refreshing, I thought, that Diamond should choose a woman to welcome us to the bleeding edge of technology, rather than the trite beard or eyeglass. Certainly, some of you will say to me, "She's a young woman built to the beauty industry's specs, beckoning libidinous mall kids to come and spend." I reply, "That may be the case, but, it's a step in the right direction ..."

her name is rio and ...

From this progressive package spills a tiny wonder of modern industry, along with a slim, but comprehensive, manual, two CDs (software and an MP3 sampler), headphones, and a Duracell AA battery. The Rio proper is so, so small, and neat, it hardly seems the sort of thing that should have an existence fraught with peril and damnation as it does, given the RIAA's steadfast opposition to the product as an enabling copyright cheat. In stature, it measures up to a pager, even resembles one, to the extent that it has buttons and an LCD.

Pushing the buttons and looking at the LCD of the Rio, however, delivers infinitely more mirth than any pager could ever hope to, particularly if you're not a drug pusher. The LCD becomes stuffed with information as the Rio fills up with MP3s: track number, play time, battery power, all the way on down to the bit-rate at which the queued MP3 was encoded. The general-purpose buttons, arranged in an unusual, but striking manner, are exactly what you would find on a good Discman--random/repeat, a "hold" switch that maintains the current function, even an equalizer. The playback controls, presented as an organic unity, a kind of sonic compass, reside on a solid metal disc placed squarely on the face of the unit--if things like that are taken as the aesthetic standard of future portable MP3 players, we have a good deal to look forward to.

Downloading MP3s from your PC to the Rio's flash memory card is about as difficult as printing a Word document. One slender 15-pin cable runs from a pass-through parallel connector to a port on the side of the Rio where you may, hot or cold, literally plug and play. On the software end, your PC communicates with the Rio via the "Rio Manager," a program as slick, intuitive, and easy to get up and running as the most streamlined MP3 software out there.

Launching it, the first aspect of the Rio Manager you'll encounter is an all-purpose player that recognizes .MP3, .wav, .ra, Highway 81, what have you. It's in this interface that you'll find the MEM button that takes you straight to your Rio's memory. Prime the flash memory card with the Initialize function, hit Download, select some tracks, and there you are. In all of three minutes, the card is full--pack up and head for Bally's. When you return, plug the Rio back in, and delete and replace whatever tracks you wish, or even begin anew with a custom playlist (Rio Manager has that capability, too). And as if this weren't enough, the software bundle also contains MusicMatch JukeBox, a Brava Software, Inc. product which is, hands down, the best MP3 collection/playlist manager going, as well as an excellent MP3 encoder/decoder.