The Rio Carbon is a line of

digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s that was produced by the now defunct

Rio Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

from 2004 to 2005. It was similar in size, capacity, and cost with Apple's iPod Mini which debuted earlier the same year. This was Rio's second player to use a miniature hard disk for storage, after the Rio Nitrus, which was first to market with a 1.5 GB drive in late 2003.

History

The Carbon was announced on August 2, 2004. The first 500 Carbons were produced as a Limited Edition with a unique serial number (1-500) that was laser engraved into the polished steel (back) side of the player. The initial Carbon was silver with a 5 GB drive and retailed US $249.99, same as the iPod Mini with 4 GB. An off-white version called the Carbon Pearl was next, with a 5GB drive at first and then a 6 GB drive later as the price of Microdrives fell. This was followed by the 2.5 GB ce2100 (black) and ce2110 (light green) which offered reduced features and cost. An 8 GB model with a colour screen was planned, code-named Avalon, but was never produced due to the demise of Rio in August 2005. Rio officially exited the portable music player market in August 2005 and is no longer providing firmware updates for the players. The last officially released version of the firmware (1.95) supports subscription-based and purchased PlaysForSure licenses. A previously unreleased version of Rio Carbon firmware, called "The Developer's Cut", was released in January 2006 by enthusiasts, and offers several new and updated features

Features

The Carbon features a microphone and a bidirectional wheel, which is used for scrolling and adjusting volume, along with a 5-way navigation pad. It is small in size (82 x 61 x 13 millimeters) and weigh 3.2

ounce The ounce () is any of several different units of mass, weight or volume and is derived almost unchanged from the , an Ancient Roman unit of measurement. The avoirdupois ounce (exactly ) is avoirdupois pound; this is the United States customa ...

s, and is powered by a non-removable rechargeable

lithium ion A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also see ...

battery that has up to 20 hours of playback time. The wheel is notched. Either the 5-way navigation pad or the scroll wheel and the menu button can be used independently to navigate through menus or they can be used together. The two have different behaviors, and are therefore complementary, not redundant. Since the wheel is used for navigation as well as volume control, one must leave the menu to adjust the volume. The Carbon can play

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

and WMA audio files as well as Audible.com

audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

files. It is

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

compatible, since it is usable as a

USB mass storage device The USB mass storage device class (also known as USB MSC or UMS) is a set of computing communications protocols, specifically a USB Device Class, defined by the USB Implementers Forum that makes a USB device accessible to a host computing device ...

. It is also

PlaysForSure Microsoft PlaysForSure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. These requirements include codec support, Digital rig ...

compatible. Other features include: * 5 GB of storage on a 1"

microdrive The Microdrive is a registered trademark for miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots. The release of similar drives by other ma ...

* 5-band equalizer with several presets * Built-in microphone for voice recording *

compatible, allowing for simple

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

ping of files * Built-in rechargeable battery offers up to 20 hours music playback * Charge from the

USB port Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

or the included power adapter * Windows and Mac compatible (the player itself is Linux compatible as well, but not the included software) * Includes Rio Music Manager software to manage the digital music library * Can carry non-audio files like a

USB flash drive Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply ( interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A bro ...

Included software

Included with the purchase of the Rio Carbon and Rio Karma is Rio Music Manager, which can be used to transfer music to the Carbon. It only allows transfer of music files that are totally compatible with the player.

Carbonising

The Carbon, at the time of its release, had the unique distinction of costing less than one of its own components, its

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...

. This distinction led to an activity known by the slang term "carbonising," whereby customers purchase a Rio Carbon, only to dismantle it and sell the disk drive for a

net profit In business and accounting, net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and amortization, interest, ...

ce2100/2110

The Rio ce2100 is a relative of the Carbon that features a 2.5 GB hard drive. The ce2100 (sometimes mistakenly referred to as the ce2500), does not have a microphone, but retains the microphone hole since it shares the same case as the Carbon. The ce2100 comes in black. The green version has model number ce2110, the only difference being the color of the plastic piece on the front and its limited retail availability (Target and FYE stores only). The ce2100 is also compatible with the "Developer's Cut" firmware update.

Firmware

*Version 3.04 supports both MTP and MSC connections.

CF Modding

The Rio Carbon, along with all of Rio's Microdrive-based players, can be modified to run on Compact Flash cards instead of hard disk. This requires a partial disassembly of the unit, removing the Microdrive, replacing it with a compatible CF card, and then formatting the memory and loading the device firmware. Compatible CF cards must be 8GB or less, and must have TrueATA/TrueIDE mode capability. This mod will increase speed and responsiveness of the player, along with making it more durable and increasing battery life. The 8GB limit is due to the 24-bit addressing in the firmware.
Some confirmed compatible cards: *Sandisk CF Ultra II 1GB/2GB *Sandisk CF Ultra 8GB *Sandisk CF Ultra II 4GB

References

{{reflist

External links

Rio's list of hard drive audio players

Rio Audio Expands its Award-Winning Lineup of MP3 Players
- press release
Forum thread about unreleased Rio firmware "3.02 and 3.04 The Developer's Cut"
via the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

3.04 Download link 1

3.04 Download link 2
Products introduced in 2004 Digital audio players