Customer Reviews

RCA Lyra™ 20GB MP3 Player - RD2850

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Had I not been able to resolve several issues that did come up in using the player initially, I would consider the RD2850 a below average player. As it is, I would consider it a solid audio file player with a few limitations.

As I was searching for a hard disk digital audio player, I noticed the Lyra RD2850 came with everything you need to use it universally: ear clips, rca connector for stereos, car adapter kit, and usb to connect to your computer. This and the size and weight were major motivating factors which resulted in my purchase. Some of the other hard drive MP3 players force you to purchase these items separately, and virtually all of them are larger and heavier than the Lyra.

Unfortunately, upon purchasing my Lyra and loading it with music files, I discovered a few problems.

Problem 1 - many of my WMA files wouldn't play. Apparently, the Lyra is not compatible with WMA files created by Media Player 10, which included those purchased from Microsoft's music download service.
Solution - I had to burn all those WMAs and rip them as MP3s.

Problem 2 - when jogging the player would give me a fatal error and shut down. It would then take several minutes to reload. Since my primary use of the player was for exercise this was an issue.
I called RCA, and was told to reformat the Lyra, but that didn't work, so I sent it back and received a new one within ten days. The new one was slightly better, but still gave fatal errors as I ran. I called again, explained everything, and was told that because it's a hard disk player it will have difficulty being bounced around. I wasn't excited about this explanation, but I will say that it was never difficult to reach technical support. I reached a technician within a minute on each call.
Solution - I have since found a remedy by holding the Lyra as I jog, not ideal but it works. I believe that an arm strap would probably do the trick as well.

Problems with the bundled software - MusicMatch 8.2, which comes with the Lyra, won't put any Windows Media files onto your Lyra. However, you can download Musicmatch 9 for free. My experience was that Musicmatch 9 froze up constantly when I tried to upload songs to my Lyra, besides the fact that every button I pressed seemed to give me a pop-up telling me to upgrade to MusicMatch Jukebox Plus.
Solution for me- Use the LyraSync software instead of Musicmatch.

Musicmatch is good for one thing, if you pay for the twenty-dollar upgrade. If you have old MP3s with no ID3 tag, it will find them and tag them for you very quickly. I decided it was worth it, because the Lyra groups the songs into categories from the ID3 tag.

Overall, I decided that I could handle all of these issues and I love the sound of the player.

Pros
Many accessories
Great sound
Windows treats the Lyra like an extra disk drive, so you can quickly copy any song (or other file for that matter) to it.
Decent Technical Support
Size and weight (small and light)

Cons
Shuts down with a fatal error when jogging (unless held by hand).
Not compatible with WMAs made by Media Player 10
Bundled software (MusicMatch) isn't very useful

I had spent over 3 months researching players and finally settled on the RCA2850. There isn't much bad to say about this model, although a few things kept it from getting 5 stars. My principle concern was space and having 20Gb makes the difference. I've got over 1200 songs on it already and still have over 14Gb to spare. Keep in mind however, the majority of my music is ripped 128K WMA. I've found MP3 at the same rate to be slightly more expensive spacewise, and I personally haven't noticed a sound quality difference. So obviously higher bitrates will result in more used space.

Physically, the construction is solid. Metal is the primary material (instead of cheaper plastic) and the controls don't feel flimsy. The one minus is that sometimes it takes a few times for the control to register with the player. Don't know if it's a firmware or a hardware issue, but every now and then it can become annoying. The size surprised me. It's much smaller than I would've thought and I am very happy with it.

Integration with PC. Since it's a portable HD, my PC (Windows XP) recognized as such and had no trouble dealing with it as a normal drive. Drag and drop files as you choose. Most of my music is already in folders since I've ripped my entire CD collection on it using Windows Media Player and it puts everything in self named folders. The profiling tool (either on the player itself or the software) does a GREAT job. If your tags are correct, it'll sort them all for you.

The other minus I see is that when you have so many songs and artists, navigation can slow down. Albeit, it's still easy to browse, it's just not very fast. Clearly nothing beats the iPod on physical navigation. Some pluses. The display is fantastic. It's backlit and sizable so normal sized song and artist names show entirely on the display. While playing, there is a visible progress bar that shows where you are in the song as well as time elapsed, song, artist, genre, year, format, and bitrate. All very informative. The sound quality is very good and I haven't noticed drop offs in playback versus the CD. 128K seems to be fine.

The controls. It would certainly do RCA well to include a manual as there is a bit of a learning curve. The online manual is fine, but there's something about reading a book that makes the difference. I have yet to figure out if there's a way to randomize the entire contents of the player rather than by folder (artists, genre, etc). The are some other quirks with the firmware (as probably all do). I've had it freeze up once, particularly when using the pause feature when shuffle is enabled. Again, not often enough to make you mad but sometimes enough to be annoyed.

The FM-record is a nice include. However, in practice it probably doesn't give you much considering the quality is only so-so. My primary use for it is to record songs off the radio that I want to remember to acquire. A voice recorder would do better for this purpose and another minus is no line-in functionality.

Packaging of the player is very good. RCA did well to include all of your necessary peripherals. A soft cover case, cassette adapter, audio plugs, headphones, power supply, and car power adapter, and USB cable. The cassette adapter was very cheap and did not sound good. I would recommend getting a good one. And obviously the headphones as well (as most of them are when bundled with players).

Overall, I'd highly recommend this player. If RCA could improve the navigation speed and fix some of the quirks, I would say it's right up there with the iPod (Obviously, I'm saying the iPod is the top at this point). I'd also appreciate more format support. Right now it supports WMA/Secure WMA/MP3. But if you've been agonizing over a decision, let me sway you toward this model. This choice wouldn't be good for you however if you needed line-in capability. Otherwise, go with this model.

ok I'm using this thing in an unsupported Linux environment, but basically it works. Plug it in and it appears as a USB drive, drag and drop mp3 files onto the device. They play fine.

The battery life is good, a day's play no problem, the capacity is 20Gb and it can handle any type of file so is useful for data transfers between machines etc. It's capacity actually makes audio books worthwhile though it doesn't play Audible's .aa files.

Audio quality is very good, but the earphones you get with the device are cheap, get a decent set.

The user interface on the player kind of sucks. It profiles the M3s into genre, year, artist, album etc based on the mp3 tags, so make sure they're correct or it's a mess to use. If you use Linux, get hold of easytag and set all the tags correctly or use something like Grip which will fill the tags in from freedb.

The big niggle and why it's only getting 3 stars is that you can't play music *while it's charging*. If you try to, it crashes with loud buzzing and has to be switched off/on. It's been back to the manufacturer with the problem but it still exists. This is stupid and down to poor quality control, it makes the car charger useless and it means I can't play music while transferring stuff to it. It just doesn't multitask. Otherwise, when not charging, it's actually reasonably reliable for me. The little niggle is it can't create playlists of it's own, you have to create them on the attached system and copy them with the mp3 files, again something like easytag or rhythmbox can create playlists.

It was finicky from the first day (2/05). Thought it was our inexperience...should have returned it. Now it is completely frozen, even the Off button will not respond. Called RCA customer support (580-634-0115). Even though I am willing to pay, they will do NOTHING because they don't repair them only exchange. However, they don't have any in stock to exchange. They're only advice....call back in 10 days or so and try again. Amber's supervisor would not even take the time to talk to me directly.

I purchased an RD2850 about six months ago, mainly because of its price, and the accessories that came with it (namely, a cassette adaptor and car charger). A comparable IPod with those accessories would have been around $150 more expensive. While I saved a good deal of money, and am happy with the Lyra, it has a number of problems that one should watch for:

1.) The interface and overall design is completely counter-intuitive. It took me a long time to figure out how to even learn how all the buttons worked.
2.) The device tends to freeze every now and then, and when it does, it lets out a deafening buzz. By far the most annoying aspect.
3.) The headphones that come with the player are awful. While most headphones that come with mp3 players are of poor quality, these are exceptionally bad.
4.) If you subscribe to most music download services (Napster, MSN, etc.), the music format won't play on an RD2850.

If you're looking to save money on a 20GB mp3 player, the RD2850 is a good buy. It has its problems, but it does what you need it to. If money isn't an issue, buy an IPod.

My Rio Carbon died but I bought the store protection so I went out and bought the RCA Lyra because I wanted to spend a reasonable amount of money, 20 gig was enough storage space for my tunes, and I liked the FM tuner. I am pretty familiar with MP3 players this is about the 5th one I've owned.

I charged it up and loaded up the tunes. However, it just did not work reliably. It took forever to find songs and then just froze all the time. I don't know if it was because I loaded up 14 gig of the 20 gig capacity or what but it just would not respond. I tried updating the firmware but it didn't help. It is going back to the store for a refund and I will try something else.

Too bad because it came with lots of extras including a car charger, one of those tape deck converters for the car, lots of cables, etc... It also was pretty easy to link to musicmatch which was a plus because I use that. But unreliable stuff has to go back.

Windows recognizes this as a portable hard drive, so in Windows Explorer, I drug my music files (only 1250) onto the Lyra (which took about 11 minutes). The booklet described the one simple step needed to tag them (right clicking on the Lyra logo in the active program bar and selecting "Profile Device Contents"). (I do not use MusicMatch which is bundled with it). That took about 2 1/2 minutes. In all, I had my music library categorized and complete on my Lyra in less than 20 minutes.

The only problem I see with this device that cost it the Fifth star is its size. Compared to other portable mp3 players, this is kind of bulky. But oh well, nothing is perfect.

If you have the money, go buy an iPod. If you feel like saving a couple of bucks and don't have enough music to fill 60Gigs, buy this (after my 1250 songs, I've still got 13Gigs left).

I could not be happier. Perfect size, great display, and easy to use menu. The Lyra comes with everything you need: Player, AC adapter, Car adapter, clip-on headphones, RCA cables, & software. The only thing missing is the 68 page manual which is online. Once the software was installed my compter recognized the player as a drive and I could either use MusicMatch to send MP3's to the player or drag and drop any type of file - yep it's a portable drive. The unit also has a FM radio and you can record on the fly. Great sound and the LyraDJ software is very intelligent. Highly recommended. Battery was still going strong after 12 hours.

If you are in the market for a hard drive mp3 player, avoid the Apple iPod. The reason? Great players are available for less money. This player will hold a ton of music. The menu is very intuitive and easy to use, and the navigation buttons are instinctive. The RD2850 comes with everything that you need, including a case, cassete converter, line out converter, power supply, car power supply, and headphones. Buying these seperately could easily add up to $50. The battery life is great, clocking in at about 10 hours. To boost audio quality, it includes a 5 band graphic equalizer.

Pros
-Easy navigation
-long battery life
-includes accessories
-huge capacity for the money

Cons
-Software is not very user friendly, needs improvement
-Occasional error messages

Overall, if you are looking for a cheaper alternative to the iPod, I would reccomend the RCA Lyra 20GB Jukebox (RD2850).

I listen to a lot of audio books so I suppose the RCA Lyra RD2850A 20G HDD mp3pro Player seemed like a great Christmas present for me. And I have to admit that having an mp3 player with more capacity than my PC's old D: drive was a bit of a kick. The unit is pretty large so it doesn't hide unobtrusively in my jeans pocket like my old Creative MuVo did, but that's ok, I'll clip it to my waistband and hope it stays there.
As an engineer, I don't usually RTFM. I didn't. The Lyra has a USB I/F and a FAT file system, so Windows 2000 automagically recognizes it as a Removable Disk. I proceeded to drag and drop 20G of audio books into it, almost 1500 files, into the directory called \MUSIC\. That's a lot of audio since I listen mostly to low bit rate lectures. Impressive!
A little bit of random button-pushing got the device to profile the contents. This took a while to complete, but that's fine, consider it part of the initial setup. After that, some more random button-pushing (a million monkeys, eh?) got some mp3s to play, and even captured my favorite radio show as an mp3. Nice. It was all a bit jumbled in there, though, and sorting by Artist or Artist/Album or even by track title didn't make it possible to locate a 12 lecture series, much less pick out and listen to the 6th lecture. Hmmm, seems the tags are messed up, I'll have to fix that. Ok, let's install the software and get serious.
Well, that's where the fun began. The Lyra comes with an application called Lyra DJ. Lyra DJ has a simple user interface - a big orange button labeled "Analyze Device" and a little gray button labeled "0 Sets".
"The main advantage of a simple user interface is that it prevents the user from actually doing anything." -- banth
Push the button and voila'! Wait several hours for it to analyze the device. The analysis failed several times. Ok, I'm a trained professional. I can handle it. I deleted most of my audio - a mistake, I realized, but that's what happens when you're wrestling with new hardware at 2AM. This time the analysis actually completed. In retrospect, if I had moved the files out of the \MUSIC\ file tree I would have saved myself a lot of hassle.
I decided to continue at work, and this is where I realized that having a separate USB cable with a non-standard plug is a disadvantage. My old Creative MuVo plugged right into the USB port so I didn't have to worry about forgetting the cable.
Back at home again I ran the analysis and pushed Lyra DJs little grey button. It only took a minute or so to create 15 LDJ sets. The device itself calls these playlists. Very kewl, *now* I can listen to some audio books... what the....???
According to the blurb, Lyra DJ uses "advanced acoustical analysis" to "create sets of related content". I'm sure it does, but my tiny engineering mind wasn't able to discern the relationships between the items in the plain vanilla .m3u text-based playlists created by Lyra DJ. I suspect that if you listen to music and in no particular order, this won't be an issue.
I won't bother you with the irritating misspellings on the Lyra DJ app. Most engineers can't spell anyway.
I briefly considered editing the playlists manually, but as I juggled several open files cutting and pasting I realized that I just don't have time to futz with it, especially if I want to load another 18G of audio. I was going to have to use another app to generate playlists.
I also considered modifying the ID tags to enable the RCA Lyra itself to present them in a logical manner. I don't &$^$ think so.
The RCA Lyra also comes bundled with MusicMatch software. Throw the installation CD away. Save yourself some trouble and use something already installed on your computer to create playlists. I settled on WinAmp. So here's how to do it:
Arrange your audio files in a neat, structured manner as subdirectories in the RCA Lyra \MUSIC\ directory.
In WinAmp, create a new playlist.
Also in WinAmp, Add a folder from your RCA Lyra directory structure to the playlist. Make sure the files are sorted correctly in WinAmp - if ID tags are messed up the playlist will be scrambled.
Still in WinAmp, Save the playlist to the RCA Lyra \lyra_playlists\ directory.
From the RCA Lyra menu system, profile the device.
It's important to save the playlist to the RCA Lyra so that the .m3u file has the correct paths.
Simple, eh?
I'm failing to see the benefit of carrying 20G of audio files when a 512M Creative MuVo carries an entire work day of audio.
But that's ok, the RCA Lyra RD2850A 20G HDD mp3pro Player is a serious Guy Magnet.
Update 1/28/2006:
After having used the RCA Lyra RD2850A 20G HDD mp3pro for a year I really have come to like it. I continue to generate the playlists in WinAmp, which is just fine. I don't use the Lyra software at all, though it runs just fine under Windows XP SP2.
My best estimate is that I have over 300 hours of music, lectures and audio books in my RCA Lyra RD2850A 20G HDD mp3pro Player, with a few G left over for schlepping files back and forth to work. If I were so inclined I could rip my entire CD collection into there.
And it's still a serious guy-magnet.