1 Not worth consideration
This is not a product worth a first look . Despite it's novelty of size (which is no longer a novelty), the Lyra is not a good buy. Cheap plastic construction made for a damaged player with a single drop on low pile carpet.
There are plenty of better products out there.
2 IT WILL DIE
Had this for a few months with a lot of strange bugs in it then it finally died. The battery is built in and after a while won't hold a charge for long. WASTE OF MONEY!!!
3 Extremely dissapointing!
At first, I was thrilled to find an mp3 player for the RCA Lyra's price and capacity, and it worked great when I began using it. However, only a few weeks afterwards, almost all of the songs began to skip, and about a month after that, I had difficulty just trying to turn it on! Now, just FIVE MONTHS after buying it, the harddrive has completely crashed! Now I can't use this player at all, and I've lost $150! Apparently, I am NOT the only one who has suffered these problems, as most everyone who has held onto this player for an extended period of time has been confronted with harddrive problems.
My advice: STAY CLEAR! While it's a good bargain, you'll end up wasting your time and (if you didn't fill out the warranty info, like me.) your money.
4 Bunk!
It would change modes while transfering and creat an error. After a system restore it is possible music files changed and would not play and froz MP3 Player. After battery drain it worked but computer would not connect to it. Check on two other computers at parents house and same thing. Right on time before warranty. Lucky!
5 Very good for the money
Lots of features. Works as advertised. Excellent menu lets you find your song in the 1.5 GB of storage by Artist, Album, Song title, Genre, and even Year. A visit to the RCA website added more features with a software update, including a program that creates playlists for your Lyra by grouping songs together based on acoustic analysis. This feature works great, creating seven playlists for the 150 songs I have loaded so far (with room for another 200 or so songs.) Overall great unit.
6 Fantastic, Lightweight & Compact Personal MP3 Player!
I am amazed by the number of people that have given negative reviews to the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player. I purchased mine a few months ago and absolutely love it! I currently have about 20 CD's worth of music in MP3 format copied onto mine, with a lot of room left to store even more. (I prefer MP3 files storing music at 96 or 128 kbps instead of 64 kbps.) The best thing about the player is its size: it's compact and weighs next to nothing. I used to carry a slim, portable CD player along with a case of just over 20 CD's that all together weighed at least 5 pounds that I would fumble through while commuting to & from work. That doesn't sound like much, but day after day and week after week of carrying that (along with other things) all adds up to getting a stiff shoulder. Also, having to deal with carefully not scratching CD's while transferring them between the case and the CD player on the go becomes tiresome and frustrating, and discouraged me from bothering to use it in the first place, in spite of the fact that I was carrying the stuff around with me. (Essentially just a lot of dead weight.)
Not so with the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player! At home, I have recorded a bunch of CD's onto my personal PC into MP3 format that I have then effortlessly copied onto the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player. On the go, I just whip out the earphones, open the soft case so that I can select from my stored music and press 'play'! It's so easy and takes so little time to set up on the fly (or change to a different CD altogether) that I am now almost always listening to some great music on almost every commute! My only real complaint about the player is the earphones that came with it. They are the type that rest over each earlobe, but aren't physically connected to one another. They would sometimes pinch my ears and in a noisy environment they wouldn't blot out enough of the interfering outside noise. I instead purchased separately a set of earphones designed to connect to one another behind the neck when worn. These don't pinch my earlobes and press more firmly against my ears so that the music can drown out unwanted outside noise.
The only other downside to the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player is that only a trained technician is qualified to replace the battery, similar to the overpriced Apple iPod. I don't know how long the battery will last in mine, but as far as I'm concerned, what I have spent on mine has been well worth it to allow me to effortlessly listen to whatever I want to listen to in any environment. All in all, I highly recommend the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player to anyone who enjoys listening to their personal favorite music while commuting, not being bothered by uncontrollable outside noise, not bothering anyone else who might be in close proximity and not having to fumble with a much heavier portable CD player and a collection of CD's. Consequently, I rate the RCA Lyra 1.5 GB MP3 Player with a resounding 4.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up to 5 stars. It may not be a perfect personal MP3 player, but it sure does make listening to music on the go extremely lightweight and easy!
7 Died after 4 months!!!
Steer clear of this one. I bought mine new off of eBay (I think I got for around $125 including shipping and insurance) and it died about four months later. Unfortuantely, I blew off submitting the warranty paperwork so I don't have recourse with RCA. Plus, I can't find a place to service it locally-- even though RCA's lame website said there was an electronics repair place that could service it. That shop said they don't work on mp3 player. Even if they were capable, it'd probably be more cost effective just to buy an new one.
I think i'm going to go for the more expensive but more reliable ?? Ipod or similarly highly ranked hard-disk based player.
8 High hopes fall FLAT!
Received this as a gift.
DOESN'T WORK AT ALL WITH MY MAC OS X 10.3
It knows it's there but is unwritable and won't mount. If I unplug it and turn it on, it turns off after a few seconds and it's fully charged.
Do yourself a favor, buy an iPod!
9 Don't waste your $
I bought this player ($160 at my local Costco) for my husband for Father's Day. We spent many hours trying to get the software to work, and I never did get songs transfered to the player. Also I couldn't find a way to delete files from the player (it comes preloaded with some music--most of which was not our taste). The users manual is terrible, there are no support phone numbers, and the RCA website just refers you to the manual. I will be returning this player and buying another brand.
10 Worst mp3 player on the market
I purchased the RCA lyra mini-jukebox six months ago for $200 and it has entirely and completely died on me. I contacted RCA about a replacement and they were unhelpful and unfriendly in addressing my problem. Their only solution was to pay $60 to have the unit replaced, with no guarantee of how long the unit would last after that. I would never purchase this product again, as it was slow, had terrible sound quality, was difficult to use while doing anything active, and came with terrible software. I will never purchase anything RCA made again, and I hope readers of this will never purchase this product.
11 Disappointing
I'll admit that the storage capacity is nice and the price fits my budget, but the product is inferior in every meaning of the word.
1. The audio driver (ie: sound quality) is cheap. Infact the volume doesn't even go very loud. And at the very top range of the volume, music becomes slightly distorted. In addition, the bass and depth of the sound is poor. For a technology that should excell past the quality of CD players, my old Sony CD walkman does a better job than the RCA. Much better.
2. I own a Mac and this thing is NOT mac compatable, dispite the "mac compatable" label and the mac logo on the side of the box. You can drag and drop songs onto the player with a mac, but you cannot update the firmware, you cannot organize the songs, and mac's "sync" program does not reconize it as a device; even though this program is compatable with cell phones, mp3 players, iPods, PDA's, etc. Not only that, but there is NO mac support online....NONE.
All I can say is that I am disappointed with my purchase and I wish i had an iPod right now (even though they are more expensive, at this point I think it would have been worth it).
12 I love it - but it has to go
This is the 2nd RCA lyra jukebox that I will be returning to the store today - within a two week span. The first one I had - the hard drive crashed within 3 days and could not be reset (only had 20 - 30 songs on it). I went to the store and exchanged it for the same player thinking that it had been damaged during shipping, but here it is less than a week later and this one has done the same thing. So I think I will try a different brand this time around. I wish it wouldn't keep crashing because I really liked the sound of it, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
13 Disappointing and unreliable
Purchased this MP3 player because it utilizes MusicMatch (which I use) and has a 1.5 g hard drive.
- instructions provided are vague and terrible
- impossible to get tech support
- sounds awesome (when it works)
- great carrying case
- built in battery is nice
- easy to transfer music (once you figure it out)
- no FM tuner
- I've returned 2 within the past month (hard drive crashed and couldn't be reset)
The first failure I attributed to a fluke but the same thing happened to the second one. Couldn't be reset. Received a full refund. Can anyone recommend an MP3 that has a decent sized hard drive, reliable, MusicMatch software and a proper carrying case for working out?
14 Great Potential, Great Disappointment
I purchased the Lyra 1.5 GB player as a replacement for my recently defunct iPod. I wasn't expecting it to be as wonderful as iPod, but it did offer the storage capacity I wanted, and the price was right. The RCA site specified that the player was Mac compatible, an important feature for me. The player has a nice look and feel, and my Mac recognized the Lyra hard drive as soon as I connected it. I was even able to drag MP3 files from iTunes to the Lyra drive. What I was NOT able to do was organize the songs in any meaningful way. The instruction manual that comes with the product is very poor. The word "Mac" does not even appear in it. The online support did not provide any Mac assistance either. Eventually, I gave up and took the player with the included software over to a PC. The installation and setup was a bit more complicated than I thought it would be, but once it was complete, the PC running XP recognized the player. According to the manual, using MusicMatch on a PC is the way to go. Again, I could easily transfer songs, but no matter what I tried, I could not organize songs on the player. The manual says there are a couple of ways to create playlists--either before or after you transfer tunes. Again, no online support; the RCA website just parroted the manual, which really is awful. I even downloaded the newest Lyra fixes from the RCA site, but nothing worked. It's nice to know that the player will hold 375 songs, but it would be much nicer if you could organize those songs in some way. I purchased my Lyra player locally (they matched the amazon/jandr.com price), and I will be returning it shortly.
15 Simply Awesome
This little magic box is almost perfect. I wish it had a FM tuner, but other than that is is pretty mcuh flawless. The bass could use some help, but you can't have everything. The people who said it crashes....If you profile it (MusicMatch 8.0 will profile it after every transfer) you shouldn't have a problem. Alot of people I work with ask a million questions everytimne they see me in the gym with it attached to my arm. I love it!!!!!
16 Good first attempt, but with major flaws
RCA must be given credit for inventing a new category of MP3 players: the mini jukebox with a 1.5GB hard disk. (Now other companies are also coming out with similar products, including Rio.) The 1.5gb Lyra looks nice and has a lot of features. Unfortunately, the designers are probably total nerds in every sense of the word, because, ugh, they lack common sense when it comes to designing a consumer product.
The 1.5gb (=1.4GB) player supports both MP3 and WMA, so if you encode songs at 64bps in WMA, you can fit about 50 hours of music, at 2 minutes per MB. The controls are pretty straightforward, with the stop button doubling up as power. The screen is backlit and large, with block characters that are easy to read. It also displays all the MP3 tags, so you know exactly what you are playing. An included program called ID3man can label MP3 files without tags; however its success rate was rather disappointing with my files ripped years ago when I had no idea about the tags.
Anyway, sound quality is good, if not at the Nomad level. What's really annoying is the 3-4 second pause between songs. And the fact that sometimes when you skip ahead, the Lyra seems to have hung. It's not really a crash; if you wait 5 seconds or more, it will come back to life, so take with a grain of salt some other reviewers' claim of "constant crashes." They really don't know what they are talking about. Also, you should *always* profile the Lyra's hard drive after downloading files. The profiling process identifies the music files and builds a database for them. If you don't profile, the Lyra can really crash. As long as you profile diligently, you'll be fine.
Yes, this also works as an external drive. And the USB 2.0 connection supports High-Speed, so you get fast transfers.
17 ideal physical size and storage
Before settling for this, tried two others, but ever since got this, it has just stayed with me. I can easily tuck it into any pocket, file transfer is trivial, it feels light yet not cheap piece of plastic/metal. Bettery life is excellent, sound quality is good and the buttons are well laid out. The only problem was making playlists which I have yet to figure out!
18 Very Disappointed!
I was very excited for this product and purchased it the very day it was released. At first glance, the size of the player and the clarity of the screen was impressive...and the menu is quite loaded with features (comparable to the iPOD). To my dismay however, the product crashed constantly and I had to use a paper clip to reset the system at least 20x within the first few days of using the product. When the Lyra *did* work, my music skipped or would erratically play my mp3s really fast (as if chipmunks were singing). Also, there was a lag time of at least 5 seconds between tracks which really got irritating after a while as I like my music to flow smoothly. Dead air just ruins the mood. I reckon the tiny 1.5 harddrive is working too hard. Oh, and the controls are not very ergonomic. You have to fiddle with the buttons a bit in order to get in the swing of things. Lastly, RCA lacks a technical support forum or knowledgebase about these issues. Needless to say, I do not recommend this player. I returned it after 10 days.
19 Bad Bad Quality!!!
Myself and two of my closest friends brought this player from [retail store]. I noticed that that it sometimes skipped, and would sometime turn off on its own, I compared notes with my friends and skipping was common to all 3 of us, personally I feel that it is due to inferior quality components. Well RCA never was known for great quality and but I felt like giving them a shot but never again.
20 Perfect companion for my iPOD!
Love my iPOD. Wouldn't trade it for the world. The iPOD is my "RV", the RCA Lyra is my "Bike". This thing is so tiny, it's amazing. I use it every morning with my run, my iPOD is a wee bit big for my run. I take the RCA, tuck it in the waistband of my jogging shorts and run till i can't run anymore, and still have plenty of songs to get me back home. Completely easy to use, on a Mac that is. Tried it on my pc, the software was confusing and strange. But on my mac, i plugged in the unit with the supplied usb cord, the RCA icon appeared on my desktop, opened iTunes, and just drug the songs i wanted onto the white RCA icon on my desktop. That easy.
i was worried about the "ok for mac" on the description, but like just about everything else, it was far easier on a Mac.
Buy it, enjoy it. It's great if you don't need a lot of music at one time.
21 Not Flash Based!
Just a word of caution- this device does not have flash-based memory, but rather a micro hard drive. Think of it more as a small-capacity Ipod.
22 iPOD Killer
I have an iPOD which is an expensive brick compared to this beauty. This is small, lightweight, great interface, and holds more songs than I could possibly want to hear. No need for writing to Flash cards...the USB 2.0 i/f loaded this baby fast.
Finally the right functionality at the right price. It will be the last MP3 player I'll buy. Sounds great with my Sony headphones too.
23 Great Product
This is a great product with a fantastic amount of storage for such a small device. To get this amount of storage with a flash based system would cost a fortune. The big hard drive based MP3 players are BIG.
This is the right storage at the right physical size. Store a whole CD collection in something about the size of a pager.
Cool!!
24 Amazing storage in small package
This is an amazing amount of storage in a tiny package. You can store an entire music collection on this little MP3 player.
Amazing
25 BEST MP3 PLAYER AVAILABLE
This is the MP3 player we've all been wating for. The 1.5gig drive allows you max storage for the normal use. Who really fills one of those 20Gig players. I mean really! This is it all the storage you need and ease of use.
