Neat features

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Thresh:
Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. The Rio stores data in flash memory, which allows you to store songs in memory even with the power off (or the batteries depleted). This scheme has its corresponding ups and downs. For one, it's completely solid state - there is no disc to spin, no cassette to rewind. Like the RAM in your computer, it can be accessed at any time and from any point, and it's fast.

Use of Flash RAM has another advantage - it's completely skip-free. Jar a CD playing from a Discman, and the laser loses its place momentarily, and has to retarget the precise track it was playing on - this causes the music to simply cease for a second or so while it looks for its place. Electronic Shock Protection (ESP) Discmans, can reduce the number of skips encountered by spinning the disc faster (like a 2x/4x/40x CD-ROM) so the head can read ahead of where it's actually playing from. How much ahead depends on the amount of RAM used - generally what's provided allows for 3 to 10 seconds of skip protection. No matter how good, though, it's never good enough to be able to take a Discman out for a quick jog.

The Rio, on the other hand, uses only RAM for playback - there are no moving parts, so there is no laser to misalign and no disc to skip. You can run with it, race off-road with it, or even strap it to a rodeo bull, and still get clean, uninterrupted, digital music.