Rio Audio Forge User Manual

Firmware is the read-only software that is installed on the player. Like software it can be updated, but unlike 

software it can never be deleted from the player.

Gain is a measurement of the amplitude of frequency ranges. Gain adjustments boost or reduce frequencies to 

provide a more desirable audio output.

The ID3 tag is the part of the encoded MP3 or WMA file that contains information about the digital music file such 

as song title, artist, album title, encoding bitrate, track time duration, and so on. ID3 tag information is displayed 

on the Album/Artist/Track title line on the player’s LCD.

Mass Storage Class (MSC) is a transfer protocol that uses USB drivers that are common to many operating 

systems and devices. No additional software needs to be installed for the MSC transfer protocol to work because 

MSC uses drivers are already on a computer's operating system. Because MSC compatible Rio players are treated 

as removable drives, any type of file can be transferred to MSC compatible Rio players using Windows Explorer. 

Although any type of file can be transferred, to assure full functionality, playlists and copy protected music using 

Digital Rights Management (DRM) should be transferred to Rio players using Rio Music Manager.

MP3 is short for Moving Pictures Experts Group Audio Layer 3. MP3 is the most well known compressed digital 

audio file format. This format allows for near “CD quality” sound, but at a fraction of the size of normal audio files. 

MP3 conversion of an audio track from CD-ROM can reduce the file size by approximately a 12:1 ratio with virtually 

no perceptible loss in quality. MP3 compression removes the redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal that 

the human ear doesn't hear. This digital sound encoding and compression process was developed by the 

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits and Thomson Multimedia.

A playlist is a custom grouping of tracks that has been saved for later use. Rather than playing every track on the 

player playlists can be used to play specific tracks in specific orders. Rio Forge supports .asx, .m3u, and .pls 

formatted playlists. Tracks that are referenced by a playlist must be present on the Rio Forge. Tracks stored on 

external memory cannot be played by a playlist. Playlists that are transferred to a Rio player by an application 

other than Rio Music Manager may not function properly on Rio players.