As we head closer towards the wireless lives we are destined to live, new and improved methods of doing ordinary things are popping up all over the place all throughout the years. Phones used to be large and wired, they're not micro, digital, and wireless; remote controls were once wired to the devices they controlled "remotely", and listening to digital music was reserved for the computer and the home entertainment system. As technology moves faster and scientists find simpler ways to do complicated things, they technology that once powered things are getting smaller also. Remember that old Nintendo you have in the attic? Today's Gameboy is more powerful than that clunky thing. I think you all understand by now, technology has to adapt to the people because people will not adapt to the technology they want. People want things that are light and that are portable. Look at the standard business class individual: Cell phone, pager, PDA, etc… portable and wireless is in and they can make life better for you. These technologies are made for the people just like the Rio500 is. If you've been living under Bill Clinton's shoe for the past 3 years, mp3's are the digital audio format of the future and the future is now. Mp3's are everywhere from high school dorm rooms to the offices of the RIAA (we know you like them). You can't get away from them! Would you want to get away from them? Think about it, downloading your favorite songs through Napster, listening to them a few times through your FPS2000's and taking them along with you on your Rio500 on that lousy blind date your friend fixed you up with. What better way to un-bore yourself than to listen to some ultracool techno? Now that we all agree that mp3's rule, lets go back to some history on the Rio series.

Diamond/S3/Rioport's flagship line of digital audio players (only line actually) is of course the Rio. The Rio was the first portable mp3 player to grace the market and was release via a flurry of lawsuits and outcry from those famous mp3 supporting RIAA reps =). They tried to get the player out of the market before it even hit the market and they failed. The Rio PMP300 (reviewed here) was out for the world to enjoy at around Christmas time. You know what that means. It was released and then promptly sold out everywhere. It was harder to get a Rio than it was to get a date with a Swedish chick. Looking back on the Rio300, it was a first-generation mp3 player that had tens, even hundreds of copycats that did basically the same thing. Since it was the first one out it was also the most popular and the most referred to on CNN and magazines alike. People seemed to not notice the bad earbuds, the finicky operation, and bad sound quality of the Rio300. Combine that with millions in advertising and a small memory capacity and you get a very popular product that people don't really like. It's great that it doesn't skip, it's great that it goes 10+ hours on a single AA battery, and it's great that it's digital but the sound quality sucked and there was not enough memory. Live with it. We did live with it and Diamond watched it's market share go from 100% to "only" 60% as more and more companies are jumping on the DA bandwagon. A year after the original was released, Diamond announced the Rio300 Second Edition. There was nothing special about the second edition (reviewed here) except for the fact that it was transparent teal and had twice the memory (64MB). A year after that the second-generation mp3 players started to hit the market. Second generation players as they were popularly called, had a standard of 64MB of memory (first generation standard was 32MB), superior audio quality and faster transfer speeds. That is the Rio500 summed up in one sentence. S3 announced and shipped the Rio500 to the biggest anticipation ever and they sold off the shelves like hotcakes. 2 times in a row they run out of supply because demand was so high, must be a good thing. Just like the first Rio, you had a hard time trying to find a Rio500 for sale anywhere. Its ticket price was a whopping $299. When the first reviews of the unit came out they were 2 thumbs upping the Rio500 and giving it all the praise it can receive. Without a doubt, S3 again has the market on it's knees in front of them and Diamond/S3 will always be known for their superiority when it comes to "Digital Audio Players". Wow, that was a long introduction. Today we take a look at the famous mp3 player and give you the hard stuff.

Installation was as easy as any USB device. I said it many times before and I'll say it a couple more times. USB is easy as 1-2-3. Install the RioPort software in your computer and connect it to the Rio with the USB cable that comes with the Rio. Along with the Rio came a Duracell Ultra battery, a carrying case (2 models available depending on when you buy the Rio), and earbuds. Again, if you buy the Rio now, it comes with better quality accessories. I compared my review unit to the older Rio500 and the newer one had plush cases while the older ones have fishnet cases.

As a second-generation player, the Rio500 has a lot of things to live up to (yeah right!). As a second-generation player, anything the Rio500 has is better than what the Rio300 had, at least that's what I think when I compare the two. First of all, I would like to commend the folks over at S3 for using a better sound processor than they did before. Second, it looks like the hefty price tag comes with a good reason this time when you take a look at the earbuds that come with the Rio500. You will either get a RioPort earbud that is really nice or a KOSS ear clip ear bud that clips around your ear so it wont fall off. Take a look at the specs:

The first feature named (not surprisingly) is the USB interface. I cannot stress how much better the USB interface is compared to the parallel port interface. Downloading to the Rio500 was as quick as copying a file to another hard drive. At 950Kb/s, you could easily get an mp3 into the Rio in 5 seconds. Also the dual platform capability is a blessing for all of you Mac users who have been screaming to be let into this market. Again, 64MB of memory is built into the Rio with support of up to 64MB extra in additional SmartMedia memory; the only downside is that expanding the memory can be costly with SmartMedia cards ranging from $30-100 depending on the capacity. Although the specs say that it is expandable up to 96MB, it is really expandable up to 128MB via the new firmware recently released that allows it to recognize the higher 64MB SmartMedia cards.

Another bunch of features that I don't think I really need are the built-in folders on the Rio, when you have the Rio linked to the computer, you have to put your mp3's in a folder on the Rio; this feature was designed so you can group your mp3's the way you want them such as "JAZZ" or "BRITNEY SPEARS". You can then access these folders and all of the mp3's in it through the player. Although this is a good feature built-in, I rarely found myself using this feature because of the relatively large size of my mp3's. If you had around 30 mp3's in the player it might be a good idea but if you're like me and can fit only 12 or so at the 160kbps encoding level, one folder should be fine. Now for playlists, playlists allow you to choose in which order your mp3's play and which of them play at all. Again, this is like the folder idea, good if you have a lot of mp3's stored but not really as nifty if you have only 12 or so.

When you use Discmans for a long time and then you go onto using the Rio500, you appreciate the small things like how the sound doesn't skip when you're running and the slim and small shape of the Rio itself. It can easily be slid into your shirt pocket or any pocket for that matter. While S3 says that it can go on a continuous 13 hours I found it not to be the case. A feature of the Rio that you will appreciate but notice by the battery power is the illumination feature. Backlighting it important so you can see the screen at night or in the dark but it really drains your batteries. By the way if you wanted to know, it's a really cool indiglo type of backlighting. I tested the Rio with backlighting on "NORMAL", that means that every time I press a button the backlight turns on for a couple of seconds. When it was set on normal, the batteries would go around 6-8 hours at best but when the backlighting was turned off the Rio would go around 10 hours. I've been going on about backlighting without even mentioning the LCD. The LCD screen is a multi-character 2-line display that shows the artist and title of the song and the time code along with track number and folder name. One thing I miss from the old days is the bitrate display.

As for the audible manager, basically what that is, is a spoken word format that the Rio500 supports in hardware and I'm not going into that because I don't use it and I don't think that people will buy the Rio500 just to listen to spoken words. Audible is available at the Rio portal, RioPort at http://www.rioport.com. Audible is available there and the filesizes are pretty small so you can cruise on over there and pick up some good audio and stuff a couple of hours worth on the Rio.

The software that comes with the Rio is also an mp3 ripper and a download manager so it's spiffy if you need an all-in-one program. Although I didn't use the ripping feature, it should be handy for most people that don't use or not so familiar with programs such as Audio Catalyst. Although it is handy, the feature set is not as robust as those of the external programs. A transfer to the Rio is a bit complicated and tedious. Transferring one song to the Rio means you have to make a playlist and add a song to it or add a song to an existing playlist. When you try to add a song to the playlist, a window comes up with all of the mp3's the program found on your hard drive along with every other audio file (wav, au, etc…) and you have to look through the files to find the ones you want to add to your playlist in order to transfer it to the Rio. But once you have it added to the playlist, transferring it to the Rio is as easy as clicking a checkbox and hitting transfer. Be sure to check for updates on the site as long as you own the Rio because there are a few bugs in the program that are usually fixed in a timely manner.

I cannot begin to emphasize the great quality of sound that comes from the Rio and also the different equalization settings you can choose from depending on your tastes: "JAZZ, POP", also you can set your own custom setting by changing the "BASS" and "TREBLE" from 1-10. Even with the bass at maximum, I'd have to have the volume (1-20) at 18 to begin to hear distortion and depending on your earbuds, 18 can be blaringly loud. Switching between menus on the Rio is done by a jog-dial, commonly seen on MD players and remote controls. Very low distortion rates plus great sound quality equals a great listening experience.

Every player has its flaws and the Rio500 is no exception. Being a 2nd generation mp3 player means fixing common problems with 1st generation players and adding features that keep the user busy until the 3rd generation players come out. The Rio500 has the benefits of good engineering and also trial and error research but not all of the bugs are out. The software is tedious and makes transferring to the Rio time consuming; you spend more time clicking than transferring to the Rio. In a perfect world, the Rio would come up as a hard drive in "My Computer" so you can cut and paste songs. SmartMedia onboard the Rio500 is great for speed but also an expensive feature because the cards are so overpriced and have comparable smaller capacities than its rival Compact Flash. I wouldn't say that the Rio500 is overloaded with useless features but I will say that there are features that most people and I wont be using everyday such as folders and playlists. The battery usage on the Rio500 is not as great as the specs indicate and the unit is costly for those tight budgeted people.

Pros Compact Great battery time Great Sound quality Fast transfer speeds Loads of features Backlight Low distortion

Cons Software is tedious SmartMedia is expensive Rio500 is a bit expensive Useless features to some people make it more complicated

You don't need to be a genius to figure the Rio500 out; you don't even need to be a genius to know that if you're an mp3 freak, you NEED this. The Rio500 is everything we hoped an upgrade to the Rio300 would be and more. It's a great piece of machinery and especially nice if you work out and need some tunes to listen to. Also, wouldn't you want to be seen at a coffee shop with your chic little toy impressing the ladies? Probably not but it would be cool to show it off to friends. The sound quality and transfer speeds of the Rio500 is reason enough to add it to your shopping cart but the price of $269 may drive some of you away. Also, if you're a Mac user, you might find no other alternative than the Rio500. The next time you listen to your favorite song while hiking, it may just be on the Rio500.

Rating: 8.5/10 SystemLogistics