Customer Reviews

RCA Lyra (tm) Portable MP3 Player (RD1070)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I own a little newer version of this player, a 128MB RCA Lyra player. It looks the same as this KaZoo player, also has the same model number, but, unlike KaZoo, needs no updated software to work with Windows XP. It is available at Circuit City and hopefully will be soon available at Amazon.com. The sound is absolutely wonderful! Sometimes it may lock up and stop responding to pressing its controls, so you need to reformat its memory chip, as if you would format your Hard Drive (right click on Kazoo or Lyra icon in My Computer, click Format, etc.). A very simple and fast procedure.

On a negative note: don't call RCA Customer Service: they are totally incompetent and completely useless. Also, the Musicmatch Jukebox software comes as a shareware version with this player. You get those nag screens with persistent attempts to get your 20 bucks out of your pocket and into their pocket. That's a drawback, I think. A customer should expect a simple, functional and full version (not a shareware) software with this, as well as any other hardware, which would enable the unit, without offering you all kinds of unneeded extras, which you could download from the Internet anyway. Overall this is a great player with excellent sound and lots of memory for the money.

I have been using my new RCA RD1070 MP3 Player (128MB) for a few weeks and it is exactly what I was looking for. It is light and relatively small. Great sound quality and no skips. I've dropped it accidentally a few times and I've had no problems. It comes with MusicMatch Jukebox software which you HAVE to use to put your songs on the player. Almost all the reviews on here have been complaining about MusicMatch. I already had MusicMatch Plus on my computer (which is running XP). I've been using this program on my computer for almost two years so maybe it was easier for me knowing how to use the program, but I've never had a problem with it. The only things which could be improved are the headphones (the weird ones that wrap around the back of your head) and the display which does not tell you the track title or artist name and the fact that it is not backlit. But these are very minor and do not detract from the overall experience. I recommend it.

I've been less than thrilled with the RCA device. I had hardware problems, software problems, and support problems. Not a good user experience to say the least.

The software is less than intuitive. If MusicMatch is winning awards from PC magazine, it must be a weak field indeed. I loaded some songs from CDs I owned and found on playback that they would skip and terminate mid-song.

I emailed to MusicMatch from the form that comes with the software and got an email back saying that support was not included with this version, I had to upgrade to the paid version of the software to get support. This is BS, if MusicMatch doesn't offer support, don't include a form as a ploy to get people to upgrade!

A couple of days later the device stopped working completely. I returned it.

I found the constant barrage of messages to upsell me to the subscription version of the software to be really annoying. Having purchased a player from a legitimate brand name like RCA, I didn't expect to have it bundled with de-featured free software with continual pitches to get even more money from me.

I would recommend against purchasing this MP3 Player.

If my experience with Musicmatch is used, I will never buy another RCA mp3 player. I received it for Christmas 2002, and have used it a LOT. If you leave the batteries in, they seem to drain for some reason. The music quality is very good, and it's not too hard to use. I wasn't aware that you could play WMA files. I like sticking with good old mp3s.
Like other people, I have been very unhappy with Musicmatch. The old software works fine. You can add or remove music and see what is in the player. Now you can add music, but you can only remove music or see what is loaded by clicking on the drive icon in windows. It's VERY irritating, and Musicmatch does not seem interested in resolving the problem. With Real and Itunes supporting various players, I will try another brand in the future. Right now my eye is on the Dell jukebox.

I dont know what everybodys complaining about, i have had mine since December 2002 with no porblems. You also dont need to use Music Match Jukebox, you can just use windows explorer (The player shows up as a drive) and use WMA files (which only take up about 60% of the space of MP3's). Some converter programs for wma's dont work so try a few. No problems, and ive droped it about a dozen times.

I got one for Christmas '02 and I bought one for my son for his birthday in January '03. BOTH no longer work after only five months of gentle treatment (I used mine only a couple of times a week.) Completely dead in the water. The design is great but their life span is extremely abbreviated in my experience.

I've been tooling around with this little gadget for about a month now, and there's definitely a few points I need to make. PROS. First of all, it's quite the bang for the buck in terms of memory. Depending on size of files, I've been managing to get roughly 30 songs into the Lyra. It's also super light and compact. I actually like the earphones it came with, needs a little adjusting to, but better than the buds I've had before.

Onto the CONS. The Musicmatch software it came with (an absolute necessity in downloading the music onto the player) would not open once I had installed it onto my Windows XP. Thinking it was a fluke, I downloaded another version through Musicmatch.com - it still didn't work. At this point, I was essentially screwed and wanted to violently pull the hair off my head. I finally got a version that worked through downnload.com and had to start practice toggling the mp3's. The programs itself is very reliable (I had used the same program on the mac though the Lyra is incompatible with it). It needs a little practicing and I would definitely recommend reading every single window before pressing "OK" or whatever. When asked "Also delete the selected file(s) from your computer?", I accidentally said 'yes' and Musicmatch deleted MY ENTIRE MP3 COLLECTION OFF MY COMPUTER!! The mp3-mpy conversion is a little tricky because my computer can't play an mp3 file if it's been converted back FROM an mpy file. It's all rather confusing, leaving me to think that there MUST be an easier way for RCA to do this.

It's a really poorly designed mp3 player, it skips, stops working, it's just [poor]

You can't drag and drop MP3 files and there is no LCD to tell you what songs you can play. MusicMatch is fine but the encoding and decoding of every song takes too long even with fire-wire,

I sent mine back...

I was impressed when I fist got the Lyra, it had amazing sound and good features about it like the ability to change it to Jazz or Rock, and the behind the ear headphones.

Sadly, I parted with the Lyra becuase after 3 months of use it broke. I was trying to download a song into the memory and the next thing I know it won't even register any songs. I got the Lyra for Christmas and broke in March; it took RCA customer service over a month and a half to respond to my complaint and after 2 months of waiting all I'm getting out of it is $$$ and stress.

There are many other MP3 players on the market that are of much better quality and usage then the Lyra or any other RCA product.
I highly suggest the iRiver DataPlay or something by SonicBlue.

So unless you are in the mood for migranes don't even bother to listen to the RCA Lyra.