Customer Reviews

RCA Lyra Wireless Transmitter

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Hello All, Probably like some of you, I waffled for quite some time over whether to buy the RCA Lyra Wireless or not. Finally I plopped the dollars down and now I'm here to tell you that RCA Lyra does exactly what they say. And now, the particulars.

The setup was simple and straightforward, most of my time was spent moving my huge entertainment center from the wall so I could get to the back of my Sony receiver. I plugged the receiver into the MD/DAT slot, plugged it to a power source and every light on the signal indicator glowed green with joy. If only 802.?? were this simple. Ran the software to install the remote and musicmatch (not necessary, but I like it), checked all the audio settings per the manual and WIN XP had everything ready to go.

Went to the radio in Musicmatch and wow, the sound is outstanding, no hiss, just pure clean music. The manual stated that the Lyra could receive interference from cordless phones and recommended using position number four on both transmitter and receiver. I tried the others, turned on my cordless phone and no interference.

I subscribe to Rhapsody and Realone also. So naturally I tried each and they worked, matter of fact any and every sound that my computer makes come through the stereo. I do recommend you download the latest RCA Lyra software, it allows you to switch between players, currently Rhapsody and Musicmatch. But, like I said all the other players work as well, Media Player, MSN Radio Plus, Spinner, MoonTaxi, LaunchCast and more.

The remote control is awesome too, it does just as RCA states, I was surprised to learn that it closes whichever player you're listening to and it works through walls with no hesitation. If you're a Rhapsody user, you know that you can skip to the next song, the remote does that and more. It operates all other electronics as well, I haven't set it up for that yet, probably want, I have a nice Sony all you can control remote.

Well, I'm sure I may have missed something, but I've hit what's important to us all and that's the sound and the ease of setting it up.....PERFECTO. I'm very satisfied, actually it has exceeded my expectations. Lastly, it works, now go order yours!

I had always been disappointed with the Lyra line of MP3 players so I was a bit wary when first trying out this product. However, I have to say that this is one excellent piece of hardware.
The hardest thing about setup for me was connecting the supplied RCA cable to the inputs on my receiver as it is a bit tough to get behind it. Otherwise, everything was flawless. The software supplied is Musicmatch (Kudos to RCA for allowing one to upgrade ones own Musicmatch installation with the Lyra plug in rather than having to downgrade with a proprietary version of Musicmatch as many other companies often require).
While you pretty much need Musicmatch to take advantage of the remote control functionality, you can play your music or any PC sound through any app on your PC and have it sent to your sound system as long as you set your PC's audio (soundcard) to the Lyra (You don't have to do this if you just plan to play music/internet radio through Musicmatch only as it has its own output setting in Player Settings). Again RCA excels with documentation for all this, even giving step by step instructions for all supported operating systems!
Performance is superb, pushing out surprisingly good sound through simple analog connections on your stereo. I doubt that an optical connection, only available on a few competing products, would sound much better, especially since most people will be listening to simple stereo anyway.
You may need to fiddle with the channels on the transmitter and receiver a couple of times to get things right but this is no different from the fine tuning needed for most any wireless device. For example, I first set them to channel 4 and experienced frequent drop outs on my left speaker channel. Trying channel 1 produced some annoying buzzing interference. Finally, channel 2 has produced the best sound quality with zero interference or drop outs.
In short, I was pleasantly surprised at the results I have obtained. It does exactly what it says it will do, high praise in todays tech marketplace. I strongly recommend this unit for anyone who wants to stream high quality audio to their sound system without additional wiring. Go get it!

It's hard to believe, but true: the thing works exactly as described. My computer's in the study, my stereo's in the living room. The remote in the living room readily controls Musicmatch and the transmitter in the study. Perfectly clear sound, with no interference at all from cordless phone. (I did follow their advice and use channel 4 on the Lyra.) I downloaded the current Lyra software from the RCA Web site before the package even arrived and I already was using Musicmatch Jukebox Plus (a program of which I grow increasingly fond), so I was set to go. Now that I have an On Demand subscription, I'm wondering why I bought all those CDs. <sigh> At any rate, this is one of those rare products that's simple, that works, and that delivers exactly what it promises: absolutely clear music from your computer through you stereo in the other room. All at a VERY reasonable price.

I couldn't be more pleased with this receiver. We have a new home which has a Speakercraft sound system installed throughout the house. We have enjoyed the digital music provided by our dish service, but I have a large collection of music on my PC that I previously needed to burn to a CD if I wanted to hear it on the sound system. Now I can play it directly with this Lyra transmitter. Installation was a snap, and the sound quality is better, IMO, than the digital feed from our dish service. Much better ... stronger and clearer. I would call it CD-quality.

The only downside to the program is that you must use the included MusicMatch software if you want to use the remote. I don't need the remote, since I just program the music from my PC using the playlists I prepared using Windows Media Player. The MusicMatch software included is the basic OEM version, and it constantly prompts you to upgrade to their full, expanded version. I found it annoying, uninstalled it, and went back to using Media Player, which is more than adequate for my needs.

The transmitter also can relay the signal of any radio station that broadcasts over the internet. We enjoy this feature, as it allows us to listen to some out-of-town radio stations that we enjoy, and previously could only listen to if we sat down at the PC. Now we can roam about the house.

I highly recommend!

UPDATE: I recently installed Internet Explorer 7 on my computer, and now Musicmatch fails to run. As stated in the review, you can still use all of your other audio programs through the Lyra, but the remote control only worked with Musicmatch v.7.5. As such, the remote control is now useless, which is too bad because it was a nifty feature. Also, as stated in my review, you could have Musicmatch play through the Lyra while your other audio programs play through the computer. Unfortunately, without Musicmatch working, this can't be done. The Lyra is still a good device to connect your computer to the stereo, and the sound quality is quite good, but this is a pretty big loss of functionality.

The original review is as follows:

I've tried a number of "wireless" products in order to get music from my computer to my stereo without any wires. Unfortunately, most either have horrible sound quality or cost way too much. And I really cannot justify paying over $150 to play my MP3s on a device that runs its own music player where I must be semi-absent from my computer in order to play. So I came across this product, and I am a huge fan. Naturally, there are a few cons to this product, but they are soooo miniscule, that I just don't understand the couple of negative reviews (which actually made me reconsider purchasing this item... and it's a good thing I still bought it). So, the inevitable list of pros and cons:

Pros:
- Plays all sounds off of the computer, not just particular program sounds (i.e. I can wirelessly stream, and also use the music manager of my choice).
- The quality of the sound is equivalent (if not better) to plugging my stereo into my computer.
- Almost no interference, and the rare interference is limited to a click here and there.
- The universal remote is a very nice addition, and works very well with Musicmatch.
- The signal strength is very strong.
- Both receiver and transmitter are quite small.
- A previous reviewer said that you cannot listen to one thing on your stereo and another on your computer. Not fully true. All you have to do is set up Musicmatch to play on the Lyra, and set up your computer's audio configuration to use the soundcard, and use a different music program to play music on your computer. As such, you can play two things at once.

Cons:
- The remote control doesn't work with all music players. For instance, it does not work with Realplayer or Microsoft Media Player (not that I mind much, honestly, since the audio from any player still comes through. It's therefore quite irrelevant when I'm at my computer).
- When plugged in, all sound goes through the Lyra, and not the computer speakers. However, you can change this manually if you want to, so it's not a big deal.
- I'm not sure this is completely true, but I upgraded to a newer version of Musicmatch than came with the product, and the remote control seemed to not work with it except for skip forward/back. So I reinstalled the older version, and it worked. So I don't know if the newer version doesn't support the remote control as much, but I have to say, there's no reason to care. The newer version of Musicmatch doesn't offer anything really new.
- The remote control does not seem to do anything for Rhapsody other than turn it on. Which, naturally, isn't very helpful unless you're at your computer, and completely defeats the purpose.

Otherwise, I'm completely amazed by the quality of the audio for such a low price. I really don't understand the negative reviews of this product. All my negatives are so unimportant. Sound quality may be an issue for the extreme audiophiles, but I can't imagine that these same people would be happy with a direct wired connection between their computers and their stereos.

Update Dec/2004:

With the release of MusicMatch 10 and MS Media Player 10 the problems with remote control of the Lyra and inability to play most public radio stations has been fixed. It's still a bit tricky to set up such stations, the easiest is to get it playing in MS Media Player, then create a new stream in MM and cut and paste the Media Player URL into the newly created stream in MM.

The Lyra idea is pretty good, remote control of your computer music for wireless delivery to an amp or powered speakers elsewhere in the house. However, my estimate is that they spent close to 10 minutes on developing the manual entry on remote control of MusicMatch, so you'd better be ready to experiment. Overall, in keeping with the poor documentation, the integration between the Lyra remote control software and MusicMatch is pretty weak.

The control allows switching between saved playlists, radio (MusicMatch radio) and CD. Within these groups you can go up and down between playlists and radio stations and forward and back by entry. However you can't go to say the 5th station, just up or down one. This makes the MusicMatch radio staion option pretty useless since you can't select which ones you want to choose from. You're always going through the entire list in alphabetical order. For playlists it's much better since you can control what's in them and the order they are cycled through (alpha by filename). Within a playlist you can go forward and back by entry.

To add a bit of navigation, I record short wav files that identify the playlist and entry in the playlist and put them into the list to identify the next entry. For example, the playlist of college stations starts with me saying "College stations" then before each stream, there's a wav file of me saying "WBUR" or "WERS", etc. immediately followed by the stream for that station.

I've got 3 of these now, each with a powered speaker for use in various places around the house so you get good music with remote control in each room for not much $. If they would only enhance the software to provide more remote control, this would be an absolute must-have device. As it is it's very cool once you figure out how to make it work.

This is the only PC-to-stereo product I could find that supported listen.com's Rhapsody service. It also works with my MP3 player, MusicMatch (plus the MusicMatch Internet radio service, although I don't subscribe to that). These facts led me to buy one.

Setup was easy. Sound quality is excellent. RF remote is way nicer than it needed to be. Integration with MusicMatch for local MP3 files is pretty good, especially considering the lack of a display on your TV.

The only problem with its MusicMatch integration is if you sometimes want to listen to MusicMatch on your PC. Each time you switch between the Lyra (i.e., your home stereo) and your PC, you must manually switch MusicMatch's output audio device. A decent workaround is to only use MusicMatch when playing on the Lyra and use Microsoft Media Player or WinAmp when playing on the PC (but you must then sync your playlists).

The Rhapsody integration, sadly, isn't so good. It's actually not the fault of the Lyra; it's the current Rhapsody client from listen.com that is the limiting factor. The normal Rhapsody client runs on your PC as always and is controlled remotely by the Lyra. There are two problems caused by the Rhapsody client. 1) Since it doesn't have its own setting for the audio device like MusicMatch, in order to listen to Rhapsody on the Lyra, you must redirect ALL sounds to the Lyra, including system beeps, etc, and nothing goes to your PC speakers (until you manually switch it back). 2) If you don't interact with Rhapsody occassionally (skip a song, etc.), the service will time you out. This wouldn't be a big deal except that it puts up a modal dialog on your PC that prevents Lyra from restarting the music. You have to go to your computer, hit OK, and try again. Same deal if the connection is broken for some reason. This is no big deal for many of us geeks, but it pretty much kills the deal for my wife; she won't use it if it doesn't just work without babysitting.

Hopefully Rhapsody will fix those issues so that RCA can get the credit it deserves for the Lyra. In the meantime, I'll be waiting to see if the SMC EZ-Stream supports Rhapsody when it's released.

Bottom line: if you use Rhapsody, prepared to be annoyed (until Rhapsody gets its act together and releases an update). If you just play local MP3s or get your Internet radio via MusicMatch's MX service, you'll really like the Lyra. Yeah, it doesn't display to your TV, but products that do cost nearly twice as much.

Update: Now that the SMC Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver has been released, I see that it does NOT support Rhapsody (nor Napster, MusicMatch MX, etc.). It only supports "standard" MP3-streaming Internet radio stations. This means the Lyra is your only bet for Rhapsody on your home stereo.

Update 1/17/2004: Looks like the latest Rhapsody client supports better integration with devices that support its Universal Plug-n-Play interface. Omnifi and simplefi are already available, and the less-expensive MP101 from Netgear is to be released in February 2004. The Netgear should retail for about 50% more than the Lyra, but looks worth it, IMHO.

Out of the box, the RCA RD900W Lyra Wireless is incompatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7, but there is a software fix available. Search Google with keywords "rd900w" and "vista" and look for the Microsoft TechNet thread. The solution is posted later in the thread.

Another cool tip: you can easily hack this product to add a mini TOSLINK optical digital output to the receiver. This gives you a fully digital path from the computer to your stereo for perfect sound. Google "rd900w toslink" for details.

Overview - The Lyra wireless unit works as a substitute soundcard. Do not mess around with the Musicmatch software, which only locked up my XP machine. Instead, install only the RCA wireless remote software.
Installation - First, connect the Lyra wireless unit to your USB port, and let XP find the drivers. To get music to come out of your stereo, go to Start, then Settings, then Control Panel, then Sound and Audio Devices. Under the Audio tab, change the top line ("Default Device") to the Lyra unit, instead of your soundcard.
When you make this change, all sound output from your computer (using any program - Winamp, Rhapsody, you name it) will play through the stereo that is connected to your Lyra receiver.
Upsides - Very easy to use, if you follow these instructions. Sound quality is fully acceptable; I can't say it's audiophile, but the Lyra delivers a clear and strong signal.
Downside - You can't change sound output on the fly. If you are listening to Winamp on your computer and want to switch output from your soundcard to Lyra, you need to close Winamp (or Rhapsody, or whatever), change the audio device on your PC, then restart the software. Also, you can't listen to both your computer soundcard and Lyra at the same time - only one sound output at one time.
Conclusion - These complaints are very small grievances. The Lyra wireless unit is very easy to install, very inexpensive, and performs exactly as advertised. Considering the total cost and performance, this unit has to be rated 5 stars.
Note - I consider myself to be reasonably savvy with computers. Follow my instructions, and your installation will be a snap.

I scoured web reviews for a while, looking for a good system which would allow me to play the internet radio stations I get on my computer (which is in my office) on my stereo system (in my living room). After much deliberation, I chose RCA's product over Motorola's SimpleFi (and others).

The reason? I wanted as high quality of sound as I could reasonably get, which typically meant streaming through USB and staying away from those FM-transmitter cheapos. It couldn't be too expensive, either. So, this narrowed it down to the SimpleFi and Lyra. And I chose the Lyra because a) I wasn't limited to certain software or internet radio stations (give me my KEXP!), b) I could simply add additional transmitters to other stereos in the apartment, and c) it was cheaper. I had no need for Motorola's display or TagIt features.

So, the Lyra is good, but has its faults. The first is interference problems (which can be overcome). When I first got it, I temporarily plugged it into the front of my stereo to test it out. The sound was great, and I was happy. After a day or two, I moved all the wires, etc., behind my entertainment center, and started noticing choppiness. I thought I imagined the first day or two of great sound until I moved everything back to the front of the stereo (and the plug in its own socket), and I got great sound again. I'm going to try and narrow down the problem in the next few days.

Second, the MusicMatch software supplied is buggy as well. The most annoying fault is the fact that switching sound output between the USB port and the sound card doesn't work -- it's always being outputted to USB, so my computer's speakers get nothing. I'm playing around with that, too, to try and fix it.

Those quirks aside, the Lyra Wireless is doing its job. It's *almost* a great system.