Diamond Rio PMP300 - The 1998 MP3 Player Experience
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Catatonic
Oh man, this one takes me back big time.
My first MP3 player in about 2003 was a Rio. Can't remember the model name but it had a 5GB capacity and at the time was the only decent middle ground I could find between the super cheap ones that would only hold a couple of albums and the mega expensive 20GB original iPods.
I later upgraded to the 20GB Rio, called the Karma, and had those for years.
In 2005/06 I was working in an entry level finance job for a company in my home town and one of the higher up women in the department was married to a guy who had previously been at Rio. I remember him telling me that their plan (specifically with the Karma) had basically been to make an MP3 player for people who were really obsessive about the little details, like getting all the correct artist/album/track information in place and then doing things like just playing every track from 1999 or every track that was #3 on an album. He also got one of his friends who used to work there to fix my Karma a couple of times when it broke. They had a scroll wheel in the upper corner that was prone to breaking if the thing got dropped. I can't remember what happened to him after Rio but I'm pretty sure he and my colleague moved to California, possibly to work at Apple.
I loved my little Karmas and kept using them up until about 2011 or 2012 when I got a smart phone and having a separate MP3 player became unnecessary. For a good few years I knew a guy on the East coast USA who fixed them for me when things went wrong and made modifications like switching out for bigger hard drives, adding LED backlights and reinforcing that flimsy scroll wheel. I'm 99% sure I've still got a couple tucked away in their original boxes somewhere with all the old software and manuals. Might have to dig them out and have a look.
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Oh man, this one takes me back big time.
My first MP3 player in about 2003 was a Rio. Can't remember the model name but it had a 5GB capacity and at the time was the only decent middle ground I could find between the super cheap ones that would only hold a couple of albums and the mega expensive 20GB original iPods.
I later upgraded to the 20GB Rio, called the Karma, and had those for years.
In 2005/06 I was working in an entry level finance job for a company in my home town and one of the higher up women in the department was married to a guy who had previously been at Rio. I remember him telling me that their plan (specifically with the Karma) had basically been to make an MP3 player for people who were really obsessive about the little details, like getting all the correct artist/album/track information in place and then doing things like just playing every track from 1999 or every track that was #3 on an album. He also got one of his friends who used to work there to fix my Karma a couple of times when it broke. They had a scroll wheel in the upper corner that was prone to breaking if the thing got dropped. I can't remember what happened to him after Rio but I'm pretty sure he and my colleague moved to California, possibly to work at Apple.
I loved my little Karmas and kept using them up until about 2011 or 2012 when I got a smart phone and having a separate MP3 player became unnecessary. For a good few years I knew a guy on the East coast USA who fixed them for me when things went wrong and made modifications like switching out for bigger hard drives, adding LED backlights and reinforcing that flimsy scroll wheel. I'm 99% sure I've still got a couple tucked away in their original boxes somewhere with all the old software and manuals. Might have to dig them out and have a look.
reply
Jan
Fantastic! Yes, as you state at the end about hoping seeing this brings back memories, it sure did! It looks like I had some sort of clone or very much comparable MP3 player by LG, the -Soul S1-, with a ellipse shaped LCD display. I loved that design! It had a parallel cable to the device, the connector looks much like this one on the Diamond Rio. The Rio was well marketed and you couldn't buy any PC or Gamer magazine without seeing ads for it. It was however more expansive than this Soul S1.
The Soul S1 seems a bit of a forgotten device, I can't even find a picture of it on the internet now. It transferred mp3s using a small ugly app at a rate of 174kbps. It's amazing to see MusicMatch JukeBox, I used it back then to rip my favorite tracks from my cd collection, and downloaded mp3s of amateur producers from places like their homepages and mp3 com to get mp3s. I bought a software pirate cd with a pirated MMJB 2. 45 so I could pirate music myself. I see you have digital transfer mode working on that config, I had to use analog or something, it was slow but since I didn't knew any better then I just accepted that hahaha.
Back then I only used 64kbps mp3s because of space on that device, techno music back then really wasn't much more in quality since many producers used Amigas (tracker) to make their music, the output on 64kbps didn't sound too much off compared to 128kbps. Maybe I still have this old S1 in the box somewhere, I remember seeing it while moving a decade ago, unless it has disintegrated it should be on the attic, if it's to anyone's interest I can search it and make pictures as I really can't find a trace of this device anywhere.
reply
Fantastic! Yes, as you state at the end about hoping seeing this brings back memories, it sure did! It looks like I had some sort of clone or very much comparable MP3 player by LG, the -Soul S1-, with a ellipse shaped LCD display. I loved that design! It had a parallel cable to the device, the connector looks much like this one on the Diamond Rio. The Rio was well marketed and you couldn't buy any PC or Gamer magazine without seeing ads for it. It was however more expansive than this Soul S1.
The Soul S1 seems a bit of a forgotten device, I can't even find a picture of it on the internet now. It transferred mp3s using a small ugly app at a rate of 174kbps. It's amazing to see MusicMatch JukeBox, I used it back then to rip my favorite tracks from my cd collection, and downloaded mp3s of amateur producers from places like their homepages and mp3 com to get mp3s. I bought a software pirate cd with a pirated MMJB 2. 45 so I could pirate music myself. I see you have digital transfer mode working on that config, I had to use analog or something, it was slow but since I didn't knew any better then I just accepted that hahaha.
Back then I only used 64kbps mp3s because of space on that device, techno music back then really wasn't much more in quality since many producers used Amigas (tracker) to make their music, the output on 64kbps didn't sound too much off compared to 128kbps. Maybe I still have this old S1 in the box somewhere, I remember seeing it while moving a decade ago, unless it has disintegrated it should be on the attic, if it's to anyone's interest I can search it and make pictures as I really can't find a trace of this device anywhere.
reply
C-Shepard
I was obsessed with the Diamond Rio way back during my high school days but because they were ridiculously expensive at the time couldn't afford one. Interestingly, a friend of mine actually acquired one as a gift and was good enough trade me his for a bunch of PC games and extra cash. In those days kids would listen to their CD players during class so portable music players actually carried status appeal. I'd listen to it on the bus each day proudly showing it off garnering special elite status beyond even the Panasonic Shock Wave and the Sony Discman ESP anti-skip student groups. That Digital logo was an act of brilliant marketing appeal made from a metallic backing which would glitter across few privileged kids desks trapping all those caught in it's gaze. As low as it's 32mb capacity was, it was justified at the time as the Rio could hold a single CD's worth of music albeit with added card slot expandability. I still have my Rio today, lost my transfer cable and accessories for it decades ago but once on rare occasions will power it up and listen to it's permanently sealed in time non-erasable soundtrack that's been stored on it's embedded memory now decades old at this point. 90's rich electronic dance music. Pressing play and I'm that same high school student again, there sitting on the bus on the way to class or my then part time job downtown. What a trip down nostalgia lane.
reply
I was obsessed with the Diamond Rio way back during my high school days but because they were ridiculously expensive at the time couldn't afford one. Interestingly, a friend of mine actually acquired one as a gift and was good enough trade me his for a bunch of PC games and extra cash. In those days kids would listen to their CD players during class so portable music players actually carried status appeal. I'd listen to it on the bus each day proudly showing it off garnering special elite status beyond even the Panasonic Shock Wave and the Sony Discman ESP anti-skip student groups. That Digital logo was an act of brilliant marketing appeal made from a metallic backing which would glitter across few privileged kids desks trapping all those caught in it's gaze. As low as it's 32mb capacity was, it was justified at the time as the Rio could hold a single CD's worth of music albeit with added card slot expandability. I still have my Rio today, lost my transfer cable and accessories for it decades ago but once on rare occasions will power it up and listen to it's permanently sealed in time non-erasable soundtrack that's been stored on it's embedded memory now decades old at this point. 90's rich electronic dance music. Pressing play and I'm that same high school student again, there sitting on the bus on the way to class or my then part time job downtown. What a trip down nostalgia lane.
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boc234
My first mp3 player was a Rio 500. They were going for about 250 bucks at the time and I bought one off of eBay for about $175, which was a huge amount of money to me for a gewgaw like this. I only used it for jogging, previously I had used walkman-type cassette players. The cassette players generally only lasted about 6 months to a year-and-a-half before crapping out, and I remember the first time I went out running with it I felt a little apprehensive about using such an expensive device. It lasted several years. It had 64mb, which played about 50 minutes of music at an average of 128Kbps. You could buy an extra 64mb CF expansion card but they cost about 175 dollars at the time. The included software was dreadful so I used a simple third-party app called RioRio to load it. Used CDex or Audiograbber to rip CDs.
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My first mp3 player was a Rio 500. They were going for about 250 bucks at the time and I bought one off of eBay for about $175, which was a huge amount of money to me for a gewgaw like this. I only used it for jogging, previously I had used walkman-type cassette players. The cassette players generally only lasted about 6 months to a year-and-a-half before crapping out, and I remember the first time I went out running with it I felt a little apprehensive about using such an expensive device. It lasted several years. It had 64mb, which played about 50 minutes of music at an average of 128Kbps. You could buy an extra 64mb CF expansion card but they cost about 175 dollars at the time. The included software was dreadful so I used a simple third-party app called RioRio to load it. Used CDex or Audiograbber to rip CDs.
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Quiet
Watching this video on my phone, my little Fiio M9 DAP connected over bluetooth as a receiver to power my wired headphones, of course it plays music entirely on it's own too with over 500 gigs of storage and support for more high resolution file formats than I can name, watching a video about its progenitor in a way is way too neat.
For preffer the availability of websites like Bandcamp that let my buy nice high quality music or using foobar2000/VLC player to RIP CDs and just use the regular file browser to heap all that music in though, certainly an upgrade to the CD player and old Ipod shuffle (with less than 1 GB of memory) that I grew up with.
Long live DAPs, and great music to enjoy on them!
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Watching this video on my phone, my little Fiio M9 DAP connected over bluetooth as a receiver to power my wired headphones, of course it plays music entirely on it's own too with over 500 gigs of storage and support for more high resolution file formats than I can name, watching a video about its progenitor in a way is way too neat.
For preffer the availability of websites like Bandcamp that let my buy nice high quality music or using foobar2000/VLC player to RIP CDs and just use the regular file browser to heap all that music in though, certainly an upgrade to the CD player and old Ipod shuffle (with less than 1 GB of memory) that I grew up with.
Long live DAPs, and great music to enjoy on them!
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08nobody08
Slightly off topic but anyway, I remember working IT back when mp3s were starting to gain popularity. I visited a client complaining of slow/sluggish connectivity. The first thing I noticed on his screen was Napster with several downloads running. I suggested that he stop Napster and see if that made a difference. He refused to close Napster until after all of his downloads have completed. I told him have a nice day and to let us know if his connectivity have improved.
A couple of months later, our firewall team blocked all access to all the filesharing sites and apps. The 2 biggest back then were Napster and Limewire.
reply
Slightly off topic but anyway, I remember working IT back when mp3s were starting to gain popularity. I visited a client complaining of slow/sluggish connectivity. The first thing I noticed on his screen was Napster with several downloads running. I suggested that he stop Napster and see if that made a difference. He refused to close Napster until after all of his downloads have completed. I told him have a nice day and to let us know if his connectivity have improved.
A couple of months later, our firewall team blocked all access to all the filesharing sites and apps. The 2 biggest back then were Napster and Limewire.
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michipeka
I had this player back in the day. I was fascinated by audio compression technology. Very slow transfers indeed.
I remember the EQ was somewhat buggy: it was unstable when the playback was paused or when I skipped tracks - the sound somehow changed and it was impossible to keep a normal sound. As a workaround, I think I used to choose a particular EQ preset (disco, rock, don't remember too well) skip track then go back to get something coherent and stable (-normal- sounding) for the whole playthrough. Maybe it was just my device, I don't know but that's something that I was always a bit disappointed about this product.
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I had this player back in the day. I was fascinated by audio compression technology. Very slow transfers indeed.
I remember the EQ was somewhat buggy: it was unstable when the playback was paused or when I skipped tracks - the sound somehow changed and it was impossible to keep a normal sound. As a workaround, I think I used to choose a particular EQ preset (disco, rock, don't remember too well) skip track then go back to get something coherent and stable (-normal- sounding) for the whole playthrough. Maybe it was just my device, I don't know but that's something that I was always a bit disappointed about this product.
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Dustin
Oh hell yeah, I still have my Rio somewhere. I fully expected it to get banned once the RIAA finished their lawsuit. They kept flailing away trying to ban themselves into remaining relevant. I figured after it got banned I could sell it for a huge markup if I wanted. Ended up just using it a ton, though. Wish I had known that just regular smart media cards could be used in it, I had no idea. I kept waiting for the official memory expansion to be made available but every time I tried to buy it it was just -coming soon- and I don't think they ever actually sold it as far as I could tell at the time.
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Oh hell yeah, I still have my Rio somewhere. I fully expected it to get banned once the RIAA finished their lawsuit. They kept flailing away trying to ban themselves into remaining relevant. I figured after it got banned I could sell it for a huge markup if I wanted. Ended up just using it a ton, though. Wish I had known that just regular smart media cards could be used in it, I had no idea. I kept waiting for the official memory expansion to be made available but every time I tried to buy it it was just -coming soon- and I don't think they ever actually sold it as far as I could tell at the time.
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LordJazzly
26: 35 To be fair, there was a good reason for that wariness about sharing anything personal - a lot of the early internet was built on plaintext communication protocols, so depending on how your connection worked, anyone from your ISP to literally every node between you and the endpoint you were connecting to, plus everything directly connected to all those nodes, might have seen what you were sending. Literally just strings of ASCII text sent across the wires. It was actually built less for privacy and security back then than it is now, if you can believe that.
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26: 35 To be fair, there was a good reason for that wariness about sharing anything personal - a lot of the early internet was built on plaintext communication protocols, so depending on how your connection worked, anyone from your ISP to literally every node between you and the endpoint you were connecting to, plus everything directly connected to all those nodes, might have seen what you were sending. Literally just strings of ASCII text sent across the wires. It was actually built less for privacy and security back then than it is now, if you can believe that.
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Marc
Hi Clint,
That was a great video. I remember when I was a kid, I used to take a 3. 5mm cord from the headphone jack of my boombox and connect it to my computer-s microphone jack. Then I would turn the boom box to radio mode and when a song I liked came on the radio, I would record it to the hard drive as a wave file using a program called Audio Rack 32. Then, once I had enough songs, I would burn it from the hard drive to a CD. It worked pretty well, but the audio quality was a little staticky. Back then, everyone I knew in school was doing that.
reply
Hi Clint,
That was a great video. I remember when I was a kid, I used to take a 3. 5mm cord from the headphone jack of my boombox and connect it to my computer-s microphone jack. Then I would turn the boom box to radio mode and when a song I liked came on the radio, I would record it to the hard drive as a wave file using a program called Audio Rack 32. Then, once I had enough songs, I would burn it from the hard drive to a CD. It worked pretty well, but the audio quality was a little staticky. Back then, everyone I knew in school was doing that.
reply
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