1 Very Slow
This thing is very slow and it constantly freezes (at least the one I had). Also, it is too expensive to be such a piece of crap. (...)
2 Don't recommend it.
My Lyra Jukebox stopped working at 3 months, just after the warranty expired. There is NOTHING I can do about it and now I'm approximately $300 in the hole with no way to listen to my music, and I can't afford to lose that kind of money again.
If I ever have enough, I'm buying an iPod and sticking with it instead. The Lyra had problems even before the hard drive just stopped working one day out of the blue- it wouldn't load certain songs, even when they were re-uploaded and the files were checked for errors. It froze up on a regular basis. Some of the keys even stuck.
Personally I am never buying RCA again, and would definitely not recommend the product.
3 Great for the money - no need for iPod
I got a 20GB iPod for Christmas the year they came out, but I returned it when I realized that - like all Apple products - it came with bupkus. I exchanged it for the 40GB Lyra - more space, decent headphones, car adaptor, case, charger,the whole shooting match. And I got it for substantially less than a comparably sized iPod. Songs are drag-and-drop easy, plays songs from all music subscription sites, easy interface, easy sync.
I use it for an external drive as well, for all kinds of files.
Small snags with power freezes when unplugged from external power source, but updated drivers fixed. Very happy overall.
4 Horrible MP3 player, good price.
If you are looking for a good MP3 player, this IS NOT the one for you. It is the worst MP3 player ever, it freezes on you, mine even stopped working. The downloads for this player don't even work, it can't detect my MP3 player, DO NOT BUY!
5 40GB = 6GB With a Cushion
When I recieved this product this last Christmas, I was happy with it-- happy that I had an mp3 player with 40GB as opposed to the average 20GB on the standard iPod and happy that it didn't cost an arm and a leg. Then the honeymoon ended.
Apart from the sometimes unresponsive buttons (a real pain if I'm driving), the annoying page-scrolling, and its apparent inability to drop the "the" in front of a name, creating, in effect, two lists of music within the player, my main problem is it's propensity to lock up on me when I try to turn it off or switch songs. RCA was thoughtful enough to include the little reset button on the side, a design attribute improved by keeping a paperclip readily available for when it locks up (average, about twice a day). Reading other reviews, I seem to have it easy since other people have had theirs stop working all together.
I have maybe 1600 songs on the thing which is using only a fraction of the memory. However, when I try to load more songs, it either freezes both the player and my computer, or the songs don't show up after I've profiled them. In a sense, I have a lot of unused space padding my 6GB of music. This wouldn't bother me if I had wanted a 6GB player but, since I really had my heart set on those 40GB, I'm a little annoyed.
6 Good Bargin
I wanted an I-Pod but couldn't justify the cash and I also read too many web sites that complained about horrible battery experiences. So I purchased a Lyra RD2840 in October, 2003 and have been using it constantly since then. I share some of the complaints about the user interface and form factor that others have but overall I have been satisfied with this unit. What I like the best about the unit is the external hard feature. I have used it to transfer entire hard drives form 1 computer to another and it works great! I dumped the Music Match software that came with the unit and now I just use Media Player and/or WinAmp to create play lists on the device. Just create an MP3 play list on any software and copy the play lit file to the Lyra's lyrahdd_playlists folder and you are ready to rock. I have over 20 GB of songs on it and it works great all ay long. I use it at work and while riding my bike and have never had an issue with the internal drive. I have had some problems with mp3 files obtained fro questionable sources, they can hang the unit and a reset is required. Overall I would recommend this product for someone who wants a large-capacity player without the high price of an I-Pod.
7 Mine just stopped working
Around 9 months after purchase, my Lyra Jukebox RD2840 just stopped working. Resetting it did nothing. Doesn't turn on, nothing. Just sits there dead. And judging by some of the other reviews, I'm probably not even going to bother with RCA support since it looks like that's useless. I'm gonna rip the thing apart, and see if I can fix it (or completely destroy it). Good thing I backed up all 20GB of songs before it died, but I'm still pretty angry over it dying.
8 This is in No Way Mac Compatable
I am running a Mac OS 10.3 and I bought this because the store was out of iPods and I needed an MP3 player quick. On the box it says that this is a Mac Compatable MP3 player. First of all, there is absolutely no support for Macs on the printed manual or the CD disc that comes with it. There is also no support on the web page, everything is PC geared so any updates for your player will be unavailable to you. Second of all, if you've been using iTunes then this player will not recognize any of the tags except for "song"; everything else comes up "unknown". If you're buying the 40gig player, that is a lot of songs you're going to have to manually change for this player. I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't try to gear this to Mac users since they should know that the iPod is far superior (and it is). Even if you're not a Mac user you should shell out the extra $100 for the Ipod; you won't regret it. My Roommate has a PC and an iPod and he loves Itunes over "media player" and he loves his iPod too.
9 Buyer Beware
This is by far the worst MP3 player on the market. Do not buy. I had mine less than a year and it completely stopped working! RCA refused to repair it or replace it. You are better off with the IPOD!!
10 A great price but...
I received this player as a gift 8 months ago. Since then I've used it basically all day every day at work both as a music player and as an external hard drive.
When the player was new, the only problem I had with it was the awful Musicmatch software that it came with. Once I had all my music on it (4000+ songs), I profiled it, which took around 30 minutes. After profiling, I turned on the player and noticed that most of the albums I had transferred contained only every other song or every third song. I profiled again, and then again before all the songs showed up. I have to do this every time I add music to the player, so I end up saving up a bunch of music and then adding it all at the same time because I don't want to wait around to profile and then re-profile every time I buy a new CD.
As the player gets older, I'm having more problems. It locked up for the first time just the other day, the screen was frozen and the unit wouldn't even power off. I waited about 12 hours for the battery to die, then it worked again when I plugged it in. Now during periods of extended music play, I'll have to turn it off and then back on every 30 minutes or so because the music will suddenly become distorted like a radio station that isn't quite tuned in.
I also have problems with the fit and finish of the unit. The display is a little crooked inside the screen (I've never dropped or abused the player in any way). The play and select buttons on the front are OK, but the volume buttons on the side are way too small and are partially covered by the carrying case. The unit also becomes very hot during long file transfers, I've found that removing the carrying case during transfers will partially alleviate this.
My friends with ipods have never reported any of these probems. Overall, with its large capacity and low price I'd say that this is worth the money, but if you can afford an Ipod I'd get that because this is not a very high quality product.
11 My experiences with the RCA Lyra...
We bought this MP3 player around Christmas 2003. We did this at the "spur-of-the-moment", dropped $300 for it. We loaded the player with a lot of songs on it--and about two to three weeks later, we started having problems with it. The buttons came defective--they were hard to press, and didn't always function like they should have. The player often froze in the middle of a song--it just sat there, screen frozen, no button would do anything, nothing we could do except to let the battery run down and recharge.
[...]The new one (the second one we had) works MUCH better than the one that replaced it, but still occasionally freezes in the middle of a song (but not as much as the old one did). We found that we could reset with a paperclip--but still somewhat annoying. This player is currently hooked up to our home stereo system, where it suits us fine--but the next thing we're buying will be an iPod!
12 Great Christmas Present, one year later!
I have been using my RD2840 for a year now and enjoy it! The firmware was problematic but a new release in August 2004 came out that fixes all the problems. I leave my RD2840 on 24/7 in my truck connected with the cigrarette and tape adapter.
Transfer speeds are also excellent.
13 Still a beta product!
This product is still in beta stage with respect to reading labels of WMA files (as of August 2004 firmware). The device interface and PC software are poorly designed. The device does not read labels of WMA files translated from other formats (e.g., translating from MP3 into WMA). I own other portable devices that have no problem in reading those same labels. The device does not have a "Genre" browsing option; instead, the programmed option is "Genre/Artist," but mislabeled. If you want to play files within a genre, you have to create a playlist on the fly and then play your playlist.
The RD2840 offered the option of adding files to a "Like" and "Dislike" playlists. The idea is great, if it was well designed. The limitation is that you cannot classify a file as "Like" or "Dislike" if already within a playlist. This is not a smart design.
The random play is poorly designed as well. Every time the Lyra is turned on, files are played in identical order. So much for random play ... I even experience two songs bouncing back and forth, for ever.
With the new August 2004 firmare, it took too many seconds to highlight and genre and go to the next one. This is not acceptable.
The device offered an excellent possibility by doubling as an external hard drive. To load music files, you only need to drag and drop within windows explorer. The idea is great; however, the PC software is also poorly designed. To have such drag/drop flexibility, additional software is obviously needed to "profile" the device contents to create the artist/album/genre playlists. However, you are forced to profile ALL device contents whenever you add a single audio file. The PC profiling took several minutes with my 15 GB music collection. I wonder how long it will take when the collection tops the 40 GB. Why did not the sofwtare allowed the user to profile only the new added files?
The Lyra software puts an icon in the software tray and no option is given to the user to not load at startup. I get annoyed by software designed under the assumption that all users are non experienced.
I was initially impressed by the potential of the device. For example, you can program your own MS-DOS batch files to copy only the files that you want and keep synchronized the device with your PC at your own taste. However, the Lyra RD2840 has too many glitches to enjoy this potential. It does not matter that it is inexpensive, loaded with a car adapter and tape adapter, with an extra line out, and huge hard drive ... the design is too brute to be enjoyable.
I own a RCA Lyra kazoo, 32 MB, that I enjoy a lot but has been ready for firmware update since a long time ago. The update never showed up. I would not hold my breath with this Lyra RD2840. I sent it back to the store and purchased a Zen Xtra of lower capacity but much, much superior, and greatly enjoyable, design.
14 I smashed mine to pieces out of frustration... Good Luck!!!
I don't recall when I've had such a frustrating and disappointing experience with a piece of equipment before! I downloaded about two dozen albums and a few zillion old time radio shows, in hopes of being able to listen to them on my long drives. I'd push the buttons and it would take forever for anything to happen. Then it would tell me there was an error, but of course, no explanation for why or how to correct it. Why can't people learn how to simply communicate? Sure, I lost money on it, but I can't tell you how much I enjoyed smashing it to pieces and ripping the guts out of it! I guess I'd have to say, it was well worth it... 40 GB's is worthless if it won't play anything! It's heavy and the buttons are designed for some delicate flower... You can have it!!!
15 okay product, could be much better
I had no problems with my Lyra until I upgraded the firmware. When I downloaded the August 13th upgrade though, it started freezing every 5 minutes or so. Rendering it useless. A week later though they put up a new upgrade, and since I've had no problems and my Lyra is running better than ever.
I don't find the Lyra that difficult to use, I had my 100+ CD collection on it and ready to use within several hours. Most of that time was spent transferring the files from my computer to the Lyra though. Someone who is not used to dealing with this type of device may have problems though.
Now the downsides, it's kind of bulky and I'm still annoyed about the firmware upgrade that caused mine to freeze up so much.
To be honest, I was almost glad when I thought it broke because then I could justify buying an ipod. Well, it's working again and I'm happy because it turned out to not be such a waste of money. So, obviously I'm happy enough with my Lyra to keep using it but, if you can afford a 40 GB ipod get it instead.
The lyra is just a mediocre MP3 jukebox, but for the price it's okay. I would like to give it 3.5 stars rather four, because it is so mediocre, but the price almost makes up for that (and you can't give half star ratings).
16 Very disappointing
The documentation is weak with this product and it is very confusing to figure out. Worse,I recieved a player where the enter button does not work, making it impossible to use the player. Amazon informs me that this item is not eligible for return so now I am stuck with a $250 paper weight. A terrible choice, don't do it!
17 Defective and Draining
This product was a huge dissapointment. I've received two defective products. The first one had buttons sticking so that I couldn't operate that machine, and once I was able to un-stick the button, I discovered that the battery was leaking from my machine and that it would there for not hold a charge. I assumed I just received a lemon, however once I returned the product and got a replacement I face a similar problem. The product will only function when it is plugged in despite the fact that it says the batter is fully charged. It's rediculous.
Beyond the above problems, the player is much too bulky to use for much more than sitting around with head phones on. The controls are akward and set up in a confusing/annoying manner. Forcing you to use one button to scroll and another to select. This isn't a huge problem but if you're trying to use it with one hand while you're doing something, working out for example, it's virtually impossible.
Also, if you want to have your personal Playlists on the player, be prepared for lots of tediousness in attempting to get it on the player.You have to have computer knowledge in order to get them onto the machine and even then, it's difficult. Once they are on there, it's selective about when the playlists are actually read.
The pluses? Good sound quality...but I'm sure you can find an MP3 player that has good sound quality without all the above problems for a lot less money. I'm trying the Archos Gmini, hopefully that will be more useful than this expensive paperweight.
18 dont bother buying it
I bought this 4 months ago b/c i couldnt wait to buy a regular ipod that wasnt in stock.the worse think i ever done.the player doesnt work,i call custumer serv. they give me the run around. it is terrible and now it gets worse i tried to exchange it at the store i got it and they said it was to late b/c i was missing sum papers that came with it all i say is stick with teh ipod.the reason y its more money than teh RCA b/c u pay for the Name of Apple and theyr great service ( i have a ipod mini and im loving it) buy the real thing.. not a knock off
19 Can't really expect anything better!!!!
I bought the RD2840 after careful research because it seemed to have every feature I needed and wanted:
-- USB 2.0
-- Large hard drive capacity!!!
-- Looks like a hard drive to computer, stores files, drag&drop
I am very pleased with the unit. Some misc observations:
I can transfer my .M3U playlists to it, unmodified, and play them no problem (I'm assuming it thinks of itself as the C: drive, so it finds the songs no problem. I don't know how it would work if my M3U's referred to "D:\My Music\..." Maybe it becomes ANY drive letter? Not sure.)
Once I figured out about the on-the-fly playlist capability (it's called MySelections, and you select whatever you want, and then play it!), that satisfies me just fine. I don't care that it plays them alphabetically, because I always set the thing to shuffle.
Somebody else wanted the MySelections to be REALLY on-the-fly, i.e. make new selections while songs are playing. True, you can't do that, but who really cares? The main thing is they provide you a way to build a playlist without having to build it on your PC and download it (unlike TiVo Home Media Option, which doesn't, and it sucks).
And yes, it is annoying that you cannot select a CD and play it in CD order (only alphabetical), that is minor but appalling. But that would be an easy software fix, hopefully they'll do it.
What else DON'T I like? Not much. I have no idea why they can't set up a cross-fade functionality between songs. Also, it has the annoying habit of cutting off the first fraction of a second of just about every song (unless there's already dead space there), but I've observed this on several other MP3 players (cars, portables, software players, TiVo HMO) and it's really not that big a deal. Another thing they could easily fix in software if they wanted, and maybe they will.
And yes, the menu interface is a bit kludgy. And I sure wish the volume control was easier to operate. Apparently they are expecting everyone to buy headphones with a volume control in-line, because otherwise it's nigh on impossible to get to, without dedicating two hands, two eyes, and a fair amount of attention (at least while it's all snug in its cool padded travel case/belt clip, included).
But I like the separate headphone and line outs, and the standard USB 2.0 interface is a joy -- very, very fast (if your computer is 2.0 as well: I bought an add-in card to upgrade my PC to 2.0 and haven't regretted that $30 one bit.)
Oh yeah, and it's not the smallest unit. I don't jog with it on my body, but I strap it to my treadmill and have my whole music library with me while I work out -- very cool!
I like it a lot and don't regret the purchase at all. Highly recommended! I'm sure I could find something to bitch about with any MP3 player, but don't get me wrong, this one rocks!
RE
20 I Pod sucks!!
Man the I Pod it crappy I mean first off its more then the Lyra and you can only store mp3 files on an I Pod when Lyra or any other mp3 can store wma or wav or also mp3 and wma you can store more then if it was formatted at an mp3 so hmmm let me think go with a player that won't let you sotre different file types or buy one that rocks!!I give lyra two thumbs and it is very affortable
21 Some good, some bad, okay for a techie like me...
I've had this unit for over a year now and I have to say that I genuinely like it. I'm not going to say it's excellent as it definately has some quirks, bugs and a few niggles but over all it's not bad.
I like that fact that it's recognised almost immediately by any computer I hook it up to as an external hard drive, also that I don't need to install any special software what so ever in order to get the unit to read/write/play files once their on the device.
The USB2 interface on the unit is pretty darn fast and I can copy of few gigs of files without worrying. The volume goes more than high enough for use with headphones or my FM transmitter. I especially like the fact that it has a dedicate line out that bypasses the volume control and the equaliser settings, it's ideal for hooking up to a stereo.
It takes a standard 5.5v charger and as I travel a lot I can walk into any electronics store and purchase a generic multi-voltage transformer and it works fine. Oh, and yes you CAN play music on it whilst charging. It's also a standard micro-d USB cable so if you lose the original you don't have to pay for a 'special' lead, and lastly, if you leave it hooked up to your PCs USB then it will trickle charger the MP3 player automatically and the battery life is pretty good too.
Now for the bad.
The user interface really does suck a lot, it's not too bad if your a techie and are used to dealing with bad UIs, but I certainly wouldn't be awarding it any prizes.
It's bulky, this certainly isn't a slim model.
The older firmwares were attrocious, completely and utterley appaling (the latest firmware as of 8th July 2004 fixes most niggles other people have reported).
The reset pin is a git to get to and you never have anything thin enough to hand when you need it.
The finish on the unit tarnishes quite easily.
Over all though, I love this device, I use about 2 gig of it for storing personal files and data and the rest for music. Haven't yet filled it but it's getting pretty close. I'll be keeping it till it dies.
22 I LOVE it!
The RCA 2840 Lyra is my 1st MP3 player. I went for the large hard drive and the RCA name. It holds LOTS of tunes. I have 250+ songs on it and LOTS more and it's only 10% full. I loaded songs from my CD collection onto it easily. It takes about 1 minute per song to convert to MP3 format, then only a second or two to transfer to the Lyra.
I also use it for a backup drive to my PC using Windows XP. I can just drag&drop 100's of files in seconds. A great additional use for this product -- peace of mind!
The battery life is about 10 hours as advertised. It has a sturdy belt clip; I use mine often while riding my bicycle at the park.
Other reviews mention problems with the device locking up...NOT ONCE has it done this to me.
Other mention slowness in changing songs...NOT AT ALL on mine.
I've had it 2 months and I LOVE it.
23 I must have got a good one.
I've been using a 256 MB flash player which has worked well except that capacity had become an issue. When I saw the Lyra on sale for not much more than what I had paid for the flash player I bought one. So far I've had the unit for ten days and have put about 100 CDs/1900 tracks on the unit. This is my experience so far. (With firmware 1.5)
Setup was easy (XP Home system). I had all the software installed and was listening to tracks on the player within an hour without ever referring to the manual. The player ships with Musicmatch 7.5 which I upgraded to 8.2 pro for 20 dollars. It's ok for ripping and labelling tracks but using MM to sync the libraries is incredibly slow. Use the LyraSync tool or drag and drop instead. Also use your computer to profile - it's much faster than the internal profiler. Syncing 20 CDs took about 3 minutes with LyraSync and USB 2.0. Drag and drop would be even faster. A plus is that the Lyra can store other files as an external hard drive.
I've never had the unit freeze up. It has never taken more than a second or two to complete any operation. Startup does take 3 or 4 seconds - so what?
Navigation features are adequate, especially if you are smart about setting up the folders. There is one thing I consider a bug. If you are scanning titles and select one to view it's information, when you go back to the title list you jump back to the top of the list. Annoying, but I usually scan by album anyway.
The controls on the top of the player (menu button, select/scroll button and play button) are good enough that I can use the buttons by feel in the dark. Again you have to let the unit catch up when you try to do something. I would imagine that frantically pushing buttons trying to get an instantaneous response would tend to lock up the player. The side buttons (volume +/-, power) are not so good. There simply isn't enough tactile feed back from them so that you can tell what button your on by feel. I've been able to kind of use the buttons by feel using a fingernail, but it's still hit or miss.
The display window does seem to be very soft and scratchable. A piece of mylar and some tape fixed that. This is invisible when the player is in it's case.
The battery is a plus. Charging in a couple of hours, it will get me through the day. I can't say exactly how much playing time is available but it's at least six hours.
The shuffle function is not important to me as I listen mostly to classical music, either by album or playlists. I use MM to create the playlist and then edit the text file to point to the directories on the Lyra. A little clumsy but not brain surgery. The graphic equalizer on the Lyra is a nice touch.
Capacity wise the thing is freaky. It's mind boggling to think that you can have three weeks of continuous CD quality playback from something that fits in your hand. It may be just a tad bulky for your pocket however (unless you wear those geek electronics pants), but the belt clip gets you around that.
There's a lot of stuff that comes with the player, adapters, headphones and so on. I've got some earbuds that I prefer to the supplied headphones but this is really very subjective. A good option for playback is the Tivoli Audio PAL radio.
The bottom line is that with the Lyra and the PAL I can carry my entire (500+) CD collection around and get high fidelity playback with a system that takes up as much volume as a quart of milk. To me it's a dream come true.
Of course the dream may die if there are durability issues. To head that one off I bought the extended in-store warranty for $50 from the dealer. Even with that I am still well below Amazon's listed price.
I would have rated 5 stars except for the volume buttons, soft display and title search bug. Overall I am quite happy with the player.
24 Garbage
I got my Lyra a few months ago and I regret having purchased it.
Good:
- Large capacity
- Easy connectivity - the computer recognizes it as a portable drive without trouble
Bad:
- Terrible user interface. The only options you can change are screen contrast and backlight duration.
- Unresponsive buttons. Seriously, did anybody at RCA actually try using one of these before they started selling them? I shouldn't have to press a button 5 or 6 times before something happens.
- The unit crashes often (3-4 times a week) and can't be reset without carrying a tiny pin around with me.
- !!! Unacceptable seek times. It shouldn't take the player 45 seconds to advance to the next song. Sometimes, even when I have the backlight set to stay on for 1 minute after the last button press, the light goes out before i get to hear the next song. Also, the player freezes while it is changing songs, so you can't adjust the volume or anything for that time.
- The included headphones are terrible. Mine sound like crackling cellophane if i turn the volume past 50%
- Heavy and bulky
Summary: even if you are trying to save some coin by going with the RCA Lyra over the Ipod or Iriver or something similar, it isn't worth the hassle. Avoid this one!
25 defective!
I bought a 40gb lyra and after 3 weeks I sold it. Why? It hangs.(you have to reset it using a pin-its really a hassle. so if you dont have a paperclip in your pocket, you can't use it) Uploading takes more than a minute. Its so bulky and heavy. Then one day it just broke---it just wont turn on. I had to return it and have it exchanged for a new unit. I bought an ipod. Now I'm contented
26 Customer Service Woes
I bought this unit shortly before christmas, and it was working beautifully until this week. It had an error message that I needed to reset it, in which it wouldn't. I called customer service and they were unable to get it started. They stated that I needed to send 60 bucks to oklahoma, the unit to texas, in which they would replace it with a Refurbished model. This is only 4 months old and barely used. MY whole MP3 collection is gone, and I didn't get an apology from the cust service rep. My time that I spent loading my music into itis wasted, MY money is wasted. I should have bought an IPOD.
27 A great buy - but read this first!
So, I read all of the mp3 player reviews and finally settled on the Lyra. I got the player, and had no problem plugging and playing (I have Windows XP and use iTunes for my music software).
So several things to keep in mind -- I transferred all of my music using the drag and drop option, but noted that I couldn't find a number of my songs, until I looked under the artist name "Unknown". Evidently, iTunes (which is the program I use to rip my CDs to computer) doesn't save tracks with ID3v1 or v2 information and this is what Lyra uses to store music.
So... I wound up downloading shareware (two good examples include Tag & Rename and Taggin' MP3s) to retag these files. Now that I know, this is a cinch. All of my files are organized well (they are in folders by artist and then by album) which means that they can be found when I browse very easily. (DO NOT make the mistake of using MusicMatch Jukebox to sync your files with the device -- if you do, looking for a song will take upwards of 15 seconds).
Also make sure to update the operating software. Many of the bugs listed below have been fixed in the new release. I updated first thing before I ever used the player.
Anyway, I love my player. I take it with me everywhere -- my kids now ask to listen to it in the car, and not the radio.
Just be sure to pick up a MP3 tagging program along the way.
Enjoy!
28 I lost EVERYTHING! DONT BUY
I've had the Lyra for about five months. Today I lost everything. The player told me there was an error and that I had to profile the drive, so I did. When I tried to play a song, nothing. I opened the E:/ drive and found nothing still. To sum up, I lost 650 songs and every one of my essays, short stories, poems, recipes, pictures, videos, etc. EVERYTHING, Im still in disbelief... This doesnt need to happen to anyone else, dont buy this player and whatever player you choose back up your drive.
29 HELP!
I hate to make this into a "help me" page but this is kinda an emergency. After two months of good usage, I keep getting a "Failed to load files! Reset unit to resume operation.Update lyrahd system files if problem persists" after it stays on the "RCA Lyra" boot screen for about 10 seconds.
I can't update the system files b/c the lyra can't boot fully, meaning the computer can't recognize it when its connected. Also, resetting it using the little hole doesn't help either--it just turns it back on/off. A dumb girl needs help, if you could take 10 seconds to email the response at alexpais@yahoo.com . thanks in advance.
30 RCA Vs. Creative...
I've only had my RCA for about a week and a day, and it works great! I'm mean way better than my Creative Nomad thing I had. I haven't had any troubles at all yet, and i have over 1,000 songs already on it. I love it! and it holds more songs, plus data. Witch is good for me because i'm writing poems and songs and stuff so i can save it on here. I recomend you buy this product, It's well worth the money.
31 if there was an option of negative stars i would give it
this is one of the worst player on the market. after using this product, which i used it only to avoid the cost of ipod, but i learned the hard way that its better to pay a bit more for a working player. the button/navi stick in the middle is ridiculous. ive read others complaining about it, i have to use my nails to lift the button to go the opposite way. any body praising this player has to be one of the following 1. employee of rca paid to rig the reviews 2. technologically deficient people that cannot tell between volume bttons to a power button. when navigating in the folders and songs, this brick responds so slowly. it really does take 5 min to move between songs. any normal human being would not be able to succeed testing one's patience with this junk. when going through the songs under "all songs" option, it does not remember the place where you lastly left off, so after playing a song, has to go back up to the list. this may be fine when you have 2 songs, but not when you have more than that. lastly, the size of this thing is enormous. who ever said that they can put this thing in their pocket must wear those ridiculous pants with pockets down to their ankles. instat you get this brick, you will be ostrized about its size. my friend who also has this thing got a hand bag just for this monster. heavy as hell, battery sucks, and nothing good can be written about this product. if the world was run by me, i would bankrupt RCA, take back every single one of their product and burn them. im sure there will be agonized demonic souls coming out from these things as they are burned.
NEVER BUYING ANY PRODUCT FROM RCA EVER AGAIN.
update: i bought an ipod, and there is a reason that it is much more expensive. it works. oh and the lyra...? i chucked it against the brick wall which it belongs. and i took a hammer to it afterwards... dun follow my foot steps of buying one in the first place. but let me assure you, smashing it to pieces was the best part of the purchasing the lyra. i hope no one buys lyra or any other rca product so that the company can be bankrupt so that no one has to suffer from their products ever again.
32 Far too many bugs to be worth your time.
When I first received my RD2840 I spent nearly one week configuring it and loading all 37 gigs of mp3's, only to find out it was defective. It took roughly 5 weeks to receive a replacement, which, now "plays" mp3's, but not without it's problems. Luckily, the freezing mentioned in many of the other reviews has been corrected by RCA's firmware updates. It is one of the few positives (or neutrals) I have about this player.
My main complaint is the random feature, which is absolute garbage. My friends could have coded a routine with Pascal back in junior high better than this. Here is the situation: I have over 37 gigs of mp3's on my player. (6798 mp3's for example) Every three or four "truly random" songs, the player will revert to the same songs (Starting with either song 1 or 6798, if it "chooses" 1 it will repeat it until you stop the player.) in the same order for no reason. (This bug is signalled by a large burst of noise in one of the channels.) At this point you must stop the player reload the "All songs" playlist and choose something else. If they can't find, or won't allow, anyone on staff to code something better than this, it merely illuminates the rest of the problems in an even more pitiful light.
(Speaking of noise, quite often one of the channels will distort slightly, but enough to notice. It is not the mp3 or the headphones as I have tested them both on many other sources.)
The screen and display are positive features which barely redeem the atrocious buttons, which happen to feel as though they will last about one more month. Whatever engineer made the decision to use them must be either fired or a relative of one of the RCA management team.
One other problem is if you have in ear plug phones,(Shure's for example) there is a large difference in volume: 0 = off, 1 (Out of about 25) = to what level 8 was on my previous player. (the e.digital Treo 15.) In a sense, the volume is either off or on if you are using this style of phones.
If you don't need the extra 20 gigs, track down a Gateway DMP-X20. (Made by e.digital) These are reported to be far more stable. Besides a few minor bugs their early model the treo 15 was a fantastic purchase. In fact, I spent nearly 6 months calling warehouses and the manufacturer looking, to no avail, for an odyssey 40 gig (e.digital), before settling on this paperweight (RCA RD2840).
If you need the extra space and can't afford an I-Pod, (Which are not that great either.) my recommendation would be to wait with your discman, and see what is released next year.
33 Lyra vs. Zen vs. iPod: A 40GB MP3 Player Guide
I've owned all three 40GB players available today: Creative Zen, RCA Lyra, Apple iPod. This is the review I wish I had read before I started shopping. It was a originally more comprehensive but I had to trim it to 1000 words.
For the most part, the Creative Zen has the best features of the three, as well as the best price. It sounds like a no brainer except for the fact that these things break like crazy! If you read some of the other reviews on here, you'll see a few people mention that their headphone jack shorted out when they dropped the player....well mine shorted out while the player was sitting on my desk not moving at all. I don't know a single person who bought one of these players and didn't have their headphone jack malfunction! Many reviewers suggest buying an extended warranty because of this problem. I would most definitely agree with them on that one, but personally I don't have the patience to wait a few weeks every time the player decides to stop working. Those warrantees are supposed to be purchased just in case something goes wrong; not because something most likely will! The Lyra from the moment it came out of the box to the moment it stopped working for no apparent reason, four hours later, was on the whole a piece of junk. That said...on to the comparisons.
PRICE: As just about every anti-iPod reviewer mentions, THE IPOD IS MORE EXPENSIVE AND DOES PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING. The iPod is basically the BMW of mp3 players...the other mp3 player work like, and cost about as much as a Kia. They all do basically the same thing, but the cheaper ones are cheaper for a reason!
SIZE: All three players are smaller than a walkman, so it's kind of silly to even discuss this, but it seems to be a hot topic in the other reviews. From largest to smallest the players are ranked as follows: Lyra, Zen, iPod. The Lyra is the only one of the three which will not fit easily in your pocket. It is the widest /longest /heaviest of the bunch, and personally, I hated the way it felt in my hand. The Zen and the iPod were both a pleasure to hold.
CONTROLS/NAVIGATION: iPod gets first place here simple because it's touch sensitive navigation wheel allows you to get from the first album in your collection to the last in seconds and it stops on a dime anywhere in between. The Zen's controls are very good however it takes longer to scroll through your entire collection and when it really starts moving fast, it continues scrolling after you release the button sometimes skipping past another 50-75 albums! The Lyra had decent navigation, but the buttons had to be pushed more than once before they responded almost half of the time! The Zen and the iPod can be operated easily with one hand.
PLAYLISTS/SONG RATING: The Zen wins here without a doubt. It is the only one of the three where you can create, edit (even while it's playing) and SAVE multiple play lists on the player itself without connecting it to a computer. The iPod allows you to make ONE play list on the fly, which cannot be edited or saved.
The Lyra allows you to tag songs you like or don't like and it makes play lists of each...yes, it makes a playlist of songs that you tell it you DO NOT LIKE...if that doesn't explain what's wrong with this product, nothing will! The iPod allows you to rate songs 1-5 stars on the player, and then make a play list automatically based on those ratings when connected to a computer.
BATTERY: Again, Zen is the winner here. Not only does it offer a battery that lasts 14 hours instead of iPod and Lyra's 8 hour batt. it is also the only player of the three where you can remove and replace the battery when it deteriorates with age as all rechargeables do. It should be noted that the battery times I listed are the official times given by the manufacturers. The Zen actually lasts about 10 hours the other two go between 5 and 6 before needing a charge.
SCREEN: The Zen not only has the biggest screen of the bunch, it also scrolls the album title in the directory screen allowing you to see the whole thing instead of just the first few words.
TRANSFER TO PLAYER: All three units use USB 2.0, the iPod also can be used with Firewire.
TRANSFER FROM PLAYER: The Zen allows you to transfer music freely from your player to any computer loaded with it's software. The iPod does not allow this however third party software that can be purchased and used to pull songs from the iPod. In all honest, the Lyra broke before I could find out if you can pull songs off of it.
SOFTWARE: iTunes is easy to use and offers tons of ways to organize your music. Creative Media Manager takes a lot of getting used to but is decent once you figure it out. Musicmatch, which comes with the Lyra is garbage. It`s slow, difficult to figure out at times, and constantly badgers you to buy the upgrade to its premium version.
EXTRAS: The only one that actually has extra features is the iPod which comes loaded with 4 different games, the ability to read text documents that are stored on the hard drive on the player's screen, a date book, and an address book. The Lyra's ONLY advantage over the other players is the fact that it comes with a complete car kit (charger/tape adapter)....which is pretty nice, but useless when the player turns itself into a paperweight after just a few hours. All three players come with a case....iPod's is the only one which does not give you access to the player's controls when it's in the case.
Hope this helped.
34 RCA normal junk
This rca was bought in late December and after charging the unit for 1 day and it never indicated that it was charged. The next week the case started to swell and would only operate for 2 to 3 hours between charges. At 60 days the hard drive started to fail and at 93 days it quit. RCA customer service does not have 800 number to use for service help. This item was returned to store we purchased it at and it is our last RCA we will purchase.
35 Nice, but has some rather sad flaws
Okay, I've had this for a little over a month now. It's a nice & good-looking device, and feels solid within its case. It does fit plenty of music in it, and all that others said, for a nice price.
The sound quality is really good, even with the thick looking earphones included, and it plays well both in the home stereo and in the car.
File transfer is indeed fast, and it profiles (sorts itself out) in less than 5 minutes. The battery has been behaving okay so far.
It does what you expect from it... sort of.
It's somewhat slow. It sometimes takes almost 5 seconds to start a new song if you try to skip one, and ~15 seconds to go to the music list if you're using the "all songs" menu. I guess that's how it works. But the main disappointing feature of it is the "smart shuffle" thing... Since it won't remember where it stopped, it'll bother you by playing the songs in the very same order once you re-start it. If you start it from another song, it'll go back to the first or last songs in the list (which turn out to be its obvious favorites, playing every 8 songs or so), then maybe go through the same old sequence again for another couple of songs, even though there's another thousand songs for it to choose from.
This annoys me because I don't really listen to music for hours in a row, so when I am confronted with the same sequence every morning in the car... it can be pretty frustrating.
This is my first jukebox, but I've kept it updated with their website. I wonder it any other devices behave this way as well.
ps. Be careful with it, even when it is in its case. The screen still gets scratched easily.
36 Last brand "I" would buy.
I didn't buy this player. My friend at work did. He asked me before he bought a hard drive MP3 player which one to buy. I'm still on the MP3 CD player bandwagon (hard drive MP3 players still cost too much for me). So I did some research and recommended to him the Rio Karma, as it had decent reviews and my MP3 CD player is the Rio SP100; with which I've had no problems in 3 years.
However, the clerk at the store he went to talked him into the Lyra. He brought it into work and showed it off. So the first day at work he managed to get the player locked up twice, and I locked it up once. The reset button on this is just about impossible to reset. We had to find the smallest pin to reset it.
I told him, "Don't worry, we'll go online and I'm sure there's a firmware update to take care of the errors." Not only was there no firmware update (as his player had the most recent version), but the RCA website was just one webpage of all their MP3 players bundled on one page; very confusing.
On top of that, I noticed that after one day of use the paint on the buttons had already chipped off in two places. He was rather upset. I convinced him to return it and he got the Rio Karma. We got it back to his place, hooked it up, and he was ecstatic about all the cool features. As was I. The only thing I didn't like about the Rio Karma was the smaller capacity (20GB). That won't hold all my music (35GB) but holds his just fine.
The last negative is that you cannot play music while charging the battery, HUGE letdown!
My rating is only 1 star and that's for the high capacity. I have owned two other RCA products (a 20" TV, and a CD boombox) that broke within one year of use. Definitely NOT recommended.
37 RCA Lyra 40GB
This is a very good jukebox with sufficient features. The only set-back is that it is impossible to take songs from a cd because it does not support the wave format. None the less, it is still a keeper and I will have it until it breaks.
38 RCA, Good.
I like the ability to hold a large amount of music for less than the competitor, and still have good quality. The RCA brings it.
Many people experience that it will pause, and they have to wait a long time for the battery to die before they can have any function out of the player.
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, is get a needle, and on the left side of your MP3 player, there is a small hole, insert the needle, and it will reset itself. Very easy.
Other than that, no problems what so ever. Great product!
39 I have problems with it
Ok, so the interface isn't great and the buttons don't work all that well (not that I had significant problems with them). My real problem came when I actually tried to listen to music on it. The player has frozen on me twice now. Once it is frozen, short of voiding the warranty, opening the case and removing the battery, there is no way to turn it off and get it working again. you have to wait 10 hours or so for the battery to die and then recharge it. Obviously this is unacceptable. When it is working, i don't have any real problems with it.
40 Expensive Paperweight
I would have rated this item 0 stars, but that wasn't an option. This jukebox blows. I should have realized there was a reason why 40G was so affordable. I have only owned the hunk of junk for 5 days. It is going back this weekend and I do NOT want an exchange. I have spent hours downloading the latest software, copying my music to the jukebox, resetting it at least 10 times after it freezes up. I have never been so frustrated. I have owned 3 RCA mp3 players in the past and I loved them. My suggestion for RCA is to stick with the mini mp3 players and get out of the jukebox business. I ordered a Nomad online yesterday. I can't wait to try out a REAL jukebox.
41 not worth keeping
The navigation button is so poorly designed that I could not give this product the type of testing it probably deserves.
The navigation button (up,down,left,right) is works just fine as long as you never want to navigate down. The button does not make a good contact with the switch that actually moves the curser down the menu. I have to actually pull up on the top of the button to navigate down the menus. This, in my opinion, was reason enough to turn right back around to the store and exchange it. This time, I was smart and tried it in the car (fortunately, it comes with a car charger). To my despair, the new one had the same problem. Sorry RCA. If you can't get something like a simple button right, you're not going to get MY business. A flaw like this makes everything else about the player (sound quality, capacity, price, features) irrelevent. Better luck next time.
42 But it doesn't know the alphabet...
Overall, this product is okay, the big problem is what other people have mentioned: the customer support (or lack thereof) on RCA's part. You have to make a long-distance call and wait anywhere from 10 minutes (my shortest time) to 38 minutes (the longest). My complaint is that it doesn't list files alphabetically in the "All Files" folder. It will sort your songs based on genre, band name, or album name, but to do that you have to enter all of that information in the MusicMatch software for each and every song. I'd think that for most people who buy a 40 gig player, they probably have a lot of music and going through each song just may not be possible. Being that I'm an organization freak, I spent a couple hours a day for a week doing it. However there's still nearly a thousand titles, so I started using the "All Files" option, which lays out the folders as they are on the drive. Except this feature doesn't know the alphabet, so you just have to scan and scan and scan and scan... you get the point. I called customer service, and after all that, the customer service guy was totally flippant with me and told me the product wasn't perfect. Don't release it until it is, that's just basic market strategy! He said maybe they'll fix it in a firmware upgrade, but he didn't know. I asked who I had to talk to so I could register a complaint, and he said, "Me, and I already heard you." So I got the address for the legal department, not like they'll do anything. So the problem is, if you have enough music to justify paying for 40 gigs, you may not be able to find it on the Lyra. If you only have a little music, well you'll be able to find it on the Lyra, but if that's the case you don't need it anyway. So I guess decide your priorities before buying. Hope this helps you guys!
43 Resume does not work in shuffle mode
In response to Eric Righter: the new firmware adds resume, but as the previous reviewer stated, the resume does NOT work properly in shuffle mode. Shuffle mode itself is very buggy and inconsistent, often playing the same sequence of songs every time you start up. Just wanted to clear that up.
44 Resume Problem has been fixed
I just got my RD2840 yesterday and it rocks! The problem previously mentioned regarding lack of resume has been fixed. If you already have the unit you can upgrade the firmware on the RCA website.
You can turn it off and when it comes back on it remembers where it was. Since I have huge mix directories on the drive this is essential.
Battery life is great. It lasts an entire 8 hour work day for me.
45 TWO IN A ROW DID THE SAME THING- FROZE TILL IT DIED
so i purchased this product based on rca's rep for being a good quality and the fact that it seemed like a killer deal... which is where i went wrong- turns out the rca rd2840 lyra doesn't always turn off when the on/off button is pushed, it instead freezes up until the battery runs out- kind of a bummer on a long flight or drive.. or just considering the investment. i exchanged it for another one that did the same thing again. i've built computers, run websites, and delt with electronics of all kinds and this is one of the most poorly designed products. Oh, and about the 10 hours battery life... within 10 minutes of using it the battery indicator already started dying- i'd say on a good day you might get 6 hours life...
46 Lack of resume makes player worthless
This player does everything right, except for one minor detail which would probably take 10 minutes for a programmer to fix! The resume is HORRIBLE. First of all, it does not correctly work when shuffling (and sometimes not at all). Say you are listening to one of your folders, like classical in shuffle mode. Everytime you turn off the player, you have to navigate through the godd*mn menus to get back to the folder you want to resume. I wanted to use this player in the car, but the lack of resume makes this pretty much a pain ... I can't believe something this basic is missing in this player. I would love it if not for this huge failure. ...
47 Problems with no resolution yet
I have the RD2840 for 5 days now, loaded almost 3200 files in MP3 and WMA format and thought it was great, until I created a playlist mixing formats.
I can play MP3's or WMA ok, but when I go from a WMA file to an MP3 file, the MP3 becomes totally distorted. The only way to stop the distortion is to turn the unit on and off. The funny thing is that if I switch to another WMA from the distorted MP3, it's clear and sounds great.
I thought it was a software problem, so I went to the RCA.COM/AUDIODOWNLOADS site and got the latest firmware and loaded it (V1.42) and that didn't help.
I then CALLED RCA support and they asked me to reinstall the upgrade and then had me reformat the drive from a FAT32 to a FAT16. No help. Called support again and this time they told me to go get it exchanged at the retailer. Guess what... SAME FREAKIN' PROBLEM ON THE SECOND UNIT !!!
Other than this, I like the RD2840, but not sure about quality after having 2 of them with the same problem.
I'm off to call support AGAIN.
48 Better then iPod
I got the RCA to replace an old MTV Evolution 128mb player I had lost, and figured if I'm going to upgrade, I'm going to UPGRADE. The day I got it I had 1000 tracks on it and took it to work with me to play with on my downtime, and show it to a coworker. He could not believe that it held 40GB. He said he had to have one and went out to the electronics store in town and ended up getting an iPod instead, (the salesman told him iPod was MUCH better.) Now we both have 40GB jukeboxes, and it was time to compare.
Song Navigation:
iPod remembers where you left off; RCA does not
RCA controls are much easier to use, iPod is touchy, too much for my taste and you had to remove it from the case.
Winner- RCA
Size:
RCA is a bit bigger then the iPod and harder to slip in a pocket.
Winner- iPod
Extras:
With my RCA, I got a carrying case, cheep-o headphones, tape deck adapter, audio input cables, usb cable, ac adapter, and a cigarette lighter adapter. With his iPod he got, even cheaper ear buds, and an usb cable.
Winner- RCA
Price:
Take a look for yourself. (And he had to buy all the extras)
Winner:
RCA
Overall:
The RCA has done everything I wanted it to do, yea it would be nice if it remembered where you were, (not good for audio books,) but my coworker told me he wished he had got the RCA. I am glad I got the RCA and do not want the iPod.
Winner -RCA
49 Great !!!!!!! but need software improvement......
I would be great if all the functions that are added to the playlists (artist-album etc.) work2 the same way with the ALL FILES MENU :
1-The folders are not sorted correctly
2-You cannot add songs to likes/dislikes.
3-If you play your songs from the ALL FILES menu it wont remember the last song played after you turn off the device, even with the new software (december 9)
4-If you go back/up from a folder it doesnt remember in wich folder you were , so you have to go from the first folder to the one you were in (imagine if you have a lot of folders )
5-If you are listening to the last song of a folder i doesnt continue with next folder.
I mention this because i have 300+ discs and i already have my collection organized in folders
Artist > Album(s) format
thats why i like to use the ALL FILES OPTIONS, i use this format with other devices so im very familiar with that.
50 Bang for the buck
To summarize: About $250, 40gb, it plays your tracks and sounds good. Not as small and sleek as an i-Pod, but cool in its own way. Battery life is good but drops when the unit is filled to capacity with music. It occasionally freezes up but sorts itself out without need for a reset. Many issues resolved by recent firmware update.
Included car kit is thoughtful, but the car lighter power adapter is not shielded properly, resulting in a lot of noise. You will end up buying a proper adapter because of this, so RCA needn't have bothered (and perhaps could have cut the price further). That said, running on battery through the car stereo, it sounds fantastic.
A big selling point is MP3Pro capabilities. This extends the storage capacity of the Lyra, because a 96k MP3Pro file sounds at least as good as a 128k MP3, but takes up 20-25 percent less space. However, RCA have only included trial software for encoding MP3Pro, so if you want to retain the capability expect to pony up some extra cash to do so. This is RCA/Thomson proprietary technology, they should include the full package when you buy their products.
If you have just a small music library and want something to fit in your shirt pocket, go with a 10gb i-Pod in the similar price range, you will be happy with it. If you have 400+ CDs and want your digital music library at your finger tips, go with the Lyra.
51 Excellent, well engineered product
I was replacing an Archos Jukebox recorder 20, which has a cracked display (I guess it got squished in my luggage?) but otherwise works perfectly. After reading ALL of the reviews for all of the hard drive MP3 players I reached a conclusion that this is a great option for PC users. I like Music Match Pro, especially the utitlites for file naming and tagging options and was able to drag and drop my entire 10G music collection from the Archos to the Lyra without a glitch, without installing any drivers or software on my windows XP machine or having to store the files on the PC in between.
After "profiling" (a menu command you run to index the files from the id3 tags for the excellent user interface) it all works perfectly!!
The tiny Archos display, even before cracked was a almost worthless and the ridiculous user interface on the Archos is a cruel joke. I was almost glad for an excuse to replace it with an iPod until I checked out the Lyra.
The Lyra RD2840 is not quite the IPOD - but a 40G Ipod with a car kit and a USB cable is going to be TWICE the price. Believe me I can afford it but I don't spend money foolishly.
I would have to agree with all of the other reviews with respect to the sound quality etc. It is excellent and I am pleased with this purchase.
52 Great Reliable Player
The Profiling Error occurs when you do not have all the stats filled in like genre and titles and such. It goes away if you press cancel and use it without profiling. It does go away after shutting it off then. I have never heard of any bad things going wrong with this player. I do thing it is a bit large. It is the size of a walkman. The picture makes it look thinner, but it is thicker then that.
The Controls work great, but the software might need a few tweaks. Hopefully, RCA will comeout with an update to download to fix more things. I also love the capacity, the built in battery, and the speed of transfer.
I do wish it was thinner like the iPod, but it is so much cheaper. There is also a cheaper version of this player. It is the RD2825. It holds 20GB and it is sold in some stores, but you can find it on Ebay. Both are great items.
I really wish someone to come out with a third party software for the player, to give it more funtionality or games.
This thing is WELL BUILT and worth the $$$
53 A lot of power, but you need to study it carefully
Originally, I was considering purchasing the Creative Labs 40-Gig MP3 player. However, the RCA Lyra came in about $50 less expensive and bundled with a car kit.
Please keep in mind that, in essence, these MP3 players are hard drives and you should have a knowledge of how to do file management on the hard drive. You will want to organize your music files in folders and, perhaps, delete files from time to time.
You can use Windows Media Player to convert your CD's to one of the compressed formats needed. Once converted, you can drag and drop the files to the RCA, which uses a USB connection, as you would any other files on a hard drive. If you are not computer savvy, the bundled MusicMatch software will do a nice job in helping you out.
MusicMatch offers one other great feature. I listen to classical and jazz. I was shocked to see how many of my CD's have wrong information (or no information) encoded for tracks and such. MusicMatch offers some nice label editing and classification tools. I invested an extra $20 and purchased the "Pro" version of the software which will look up CD track information online although this feature is a bit hit and miss.
There is one slight possible bug I found in this MP3 player. Right after transfering files to the player, you need to run a profiling procedure. Essentially, this does all the necessary classifications to a built in database. Right after I disconnect the USB cable, the MP3 player shows an error in profiling and there is an annoying buzz in one channel. However, if I shut it off for a couple of minutes, both problems seem to go away. This might be a memory management problem.
With the MusicMatch software, compression and transfer takes about 5-minutes per CD. You will have a lot of room to fillup here.
Overall, I am overwhelming pleased with this technology. I am sure that as this technology progresses, it will be easier to use. RCA seems to offer periodic updates of the software on its site.
Highly recommended
54 DO NOT BUY THIS
It was good for like 2 months but then it just quits working. It's too good of a deal, come on man 40 gigs for $300 the controls start to where out. The car kit that comes with it bleaps out every 2 minutes. Trust me if you want a good buy don't get this.
55 Switched to Lyra AV jukebox
*Third Edit*
The RD2840 offers massive storage and is recognized by Windows as an external drive, which is a very important feature for me. Installing third party software to store non-music files or to have a large jukebox not even offer file storage was not an option.
I posted about a random glitch in the 2840 where songs became distorted at random times. It appears the problem lies with having both WMA and mp3 files. When it plays a WMA file and then switches over to a mp3 the player distorts and garbles the playback. This is a known problem.
This problem also exists on the Lyra 20GB AV device and that is where I found the information for this bug. While researching the problem I started to think about the AV jukebox and how $100 for a TFT screen, picture/video playback, and the ability to record both audio and video files made the AV jukebox highly attractive, even with shorter battery life and a smaller hard drive.
I made the switch and totally love the Lyra AV, however I also believe the 40GB jukebox is a wonderful device because of the ease of use, large storage, price, and overall value.
As a pure mp3 device the IPod is sleeker, smaller, and the software functionality is better, however you pay a large increase in price for these benefits.
If RCA/Thomson can fix the glitches in their software/firmware I believe they have real winners and are giving consumers the best bang for their buck.
56 Very easy to use, incredible amount of space
I've owned this for over a week. Here are my comments:
Cons:
Not a real "con" but the packaging for this thing was amazing. It was sealed so tightly they clearly didn't want anything bumping it. The plastic it came in was very hard to cut through and once cut, it was sharp. I sliced myself in my eagerness to get the Lyra out of its packaging so beware! Another "con" is the lack of documentation. While I was impressed that what was included came in multiple languages, it was not much. You have to print off the User's Guide at http://www.rca.com/documents/RD2825_2840UsersGuideENGLISH_702125_25.pdf. It would have been nice if there were some preliminary instructions included. I know that some electronic devices must charge for a full 24 hours before you use them. In any case, I think the first charge took 3 hours or less, which is not long to wait. It's also too bad that the software included was MusicMatch rather than just some simple editor for editing your own playlists. Lastly, the "thumbstick" on it takes some getting used to. Instead of pushing down on it left or right, you learn to sway the thumbstick left or right and then once you get the hang of it you're set.
Pros:
The price is great considering what you get for it. The box contained: the Lyra (40GB!), a USB cable, headphones, an AC charger, a power adaptor for the car, a cassette adaptor for the car, a case for the Lyra, and stereo cables for connecting it to a stereo. And, the AC adaptor that plugs into your wall socket is horizontal rather than the typical bulky charger that takes up a lot of wall socket space. That was smart thinking. The real pro for this is that you install the drivers off the disk in a couple of minutes and then plug in your device and it is recognized as another drive on your system. Copying via the USB cable is extremely fast, I can transfer a CD of average length in 15-20 seconds.
In short, for under $300, you get an immense amount of power at your fingertips. The device supports many audio formats and even it it doesn't, it also serves as a portable hard drive that you can put anything on and take it with you!
57 Rca Lyra 40gb player (awesome)
This Mp3player is awesome besides it having 40gb to hold a lifetime for most people of music music it is really easy to use with great features.Its great it includes graphic eQ great big blue display, chromeed out heavy duty body.The size is perfect it's not to big not too small fits anywhere.It can hold
3000 40 minute cds on it or 50 days of music.This is your best bang for the buck don't go out and buy an Ipod 40gb that cost 400.00 this is a much better value. The headphones are excellent nice and small earclip phones.The player pumps out tons of juice it is totally capable of runing studio headphones or any headphones with out using a headphone amp.Comes with easy to use instructions make sure you do the tuteral.Comes with car kit too and car ac adapter.If your thinkin of buying it, buy it,i strongly recommend it . Enjoy
58 Call me understanding.....
I bought this as an xmas present to myself. The "first" one i received had a HUGE scratch across the screen. I thought i would be able to put up with it, but it was just ridiculous so i setup a exchange thru amazon (which i must say was the best part of my experience thus far.) the UPS guy was there the next morning to pick it up, and my replacement was there the following day. so far, i was ok with the situation, these things happened, and I hadnt ever had a problem with Amazon in the past so i figured, what the hay. Then the second one came and it ALSO had a scratch on the screen. much smaller, but still obviously scratched. I had just chosen to "deal with it". Then it started having the same problem another person mentioned in their review, it would not power up. I charged it till it was full, but it wouldn't power back up. I had to plug it in to get ANY power and then after about 20 minutes or so, if i would turn it off, it would not turn back on. "SCREW IT" i said. and i setup another return for a refund this time, not a replacement. I still think this is a good product and from all the other reviews i've read, it looks like my issues were just flukes. But im gonna take out the only variable in question and just go buy it at a retail store. That way i will be sure to avoid any cosmetic defects and i suppose i'll take my chances with the whole battery issue. wish me luck!
59 I-Pod My A**
I had been thinking about buying a portable mp3 player for quite some time and had narrowed my possible selections down to the I-Pod, the iRiver iHP 120 and the Lyra. After fully weighing my options, i chose the Lyra and i haven't looked back. The i-pod is $200 more with half the storage space and half the features, so what the hell is the point? Apple has alot of nerve charging what they charge for a product that is inferior to many others out there. the Lyra transfers files FAST (via USB2.0), creates on the fly playlists, has insane sound quality, stores EVERY file type (as a portable hard drive), comes with all the accesories you can ask for and has HUGE capacity (40GB). to all you i-pod shoppers, STOP, forget about being flashy, the RCA Lyra is the be-all, end-all mp3 player on the market
60 an excellent jukebox
Originally I was looking for an Ipod, but since people were going nuts for them and paying outrageous prices (I saw 5 Gb Ipods going for $200) I decided I should find a cheap alternative. I found the 40 Gb Lyra for $200 and decided to go for it. I've had it for two weeks now and I'm quite impressed. First of all, 40 Gb for $200 is an unbeatable price. Aesthetically, the player is nice. There is very little mirrored chrome (a little on the border) to be scratched, most of it has a nice matte or frost finish. It is the largest of the harddrive jukeboxes, but I haven't found it to be bulky--It fits nicely in my pocket. The LCD screen is large and backlit with a nice shade of blue which is easy on the eyes in the dark and attractive to the whole appearance of the player. I've read complaints about the joystick controls. If your basic faculties are intact you'll have no problem operating the joysticks, and may even find them optimal for browsing through hundreds of directories. As for what really matters, the playback, this is where the Lyra really shines. The playback is flawless--I've yet to see it freeze or skip. It is crisp, loud, and has an excellent graphic eq to bring out the desired sound of any song, along with several genre presets. The software package is okay, MusicMatch may be fine for the average user, but audiophiles and techies know its junky software. The package is great. It came with the 12v car charger, cassette adapter, RCA cables, usb cable, wall charger, decent headphones, an adapter for the line out jack, and a sleek protective case. Being usb 2.0 its pretty quick on the file transfers, it took about 10 minutes to transfer 23 Gb. It was advertised that the lyra gets 12 hours on a charge, however I usually get about 10 hours, not much to complain of. My only complaint with this player is the short pause time allowed until it backs out to the directory and its inability to save its place after turned off. The pros definately outweigh the cons. The Lyra 2840 is the best bang for the buck, even aside from the value, it is a top of the line mp3 jukebox
61 Amazing value, more than adequate functionality
I was hestitant to delve into the world of MP3 jukeboxes, as the technology is relatively new. However, I am a music fanatic and cannot live without it. I'm listening to it 24/7, in my car, at the gym, at work, etc. You can appreciate my frustration then when it comes to swapping CDs at the gym or in my car. Enter the RCA lyra.
I have over 300 CDs and 6,500 songs on my harddrive. Moving them over was as quick and as easy as drag-and-drop from windows explorer. I personally hate Musicmatch Jukebox software and didn't even bother to install it. It's really unecessary in my eyes. Most other jukeboxes require special software to get you going, and to get a windows explorer interface for the Creative Nomad Zen you have to shell out 25 bucks for third-party software.
Pros: Huge storage capacity, wicked 5-band graphic equalizer, line-out jack (most jukeboxes lack this!), large, bright display, comes with a plethora of accessories, top-notch volume level and sound quality, cool-ass case!
Cons: Buttons can be a bit small and hard to find without looking, much bigger and bulkier than the Apple Ipod, internal battery only (crappy!)
To be honest, I don't have enough good to say about this player. Taking your music with you is as easy as selecting the proper audio device - for portable use a set of good headphones is all you need (those RCA clip-on headphones are retarded - get a set of sony streetstyles: cheap, comfy and sound great!) For PC use, all you need is a USB cable - just connect and play your music through Winamp or another mp3 software device. The best part?
I own a JVC MP3 car CD player with a stereo minijack input on the front of it. All you have to do is connect the Lyra to that jack with a line-out cable (not supplied, but easy to find) and you have all your music at the touch of a button! No more toting around bulky, expensive CDs!
Size is the only advantage Ipod has over this thing. Sure, the Ipod's smaller, but the lyra has better sound, a better interface, more connectivity options, more accessories, 10gb more of storage capacity, more more more. I bought my Lyra brand new on Ebay for 200 bucks - that's almost 300 less than an Ipod. Give me one reason why I should've shelled out that much more for an arguably inferior product.
Word of advice: Your Lyra will function much better and faster if you organize the HD with as many folders and subfolders as possible. The first time I fired it up I had all 6,000 songs in one folder and it took almost a minute to switch from song to song. Then I made 24 subfolders, one for each letter of the alphabet, and switch time was almost instantaneous. You don't have to worry about navigating through those folders on the lyra interface - regardless of the organization of the files, it still groups them by artist, genre, etc.
In short, this is easily the best jukebox on the market for the money. Ipod doesn't even come close. As if all this wasn't enough, it functions as a removeable 40gb harddrive.... You can move anything with it, not just music.
HIGHLY recommended.
62 Seems nice but it SUCKS!
If I could give it a zero I would. I got it for Christmas and tried to charge it, after 5 minutes of charging it said "Battery Full". So, I unplug it and try to turn it on and nothing happens. I repeat this process for hours. Finally it works and I unplug it and turn it on, and it bursts open the case just comes off. I am now trying to fix the situation. What I am trying to say is buyer beware.
Frustrated Consumer
63 Recommended, nice alternative to ipod
Simple, easy to use, and a good alternative to the i-pod.
This was my 3rd mp3 player I've purchased, and probably the last one I will purchase for some time. No significant problems. Easy to start-up and download songs. Great (40 gb) memory, at an affordable price. I had a chance to compare it to my brother-in-laws i-pod, and the RCA held its own. The only real differnce is the i-pod is smaller, and quite a bit lighter. Fair enough, but that doesn't warrant the price differential. The Lyra is not unduly bulky, although it is somewhat heavy. Nonetheless, I have taken it on long plane rides and have had no problems.
Sound quality is comparable to the i-pod (I'm starting to believe the i-pod is the standard for mp3 players). Downloading is easy. My only real complaint is the confusing "playlist" feature. I still don't know exactly how to create a playlist, although to be fair, I haven't had the time to figure it out. Finally, you cannot erase a song from the player itself ; this is problematic because I have one song that always crashes the player.
Don't let this dissuade you, however. My complaints are minimal. And having compared it directly to the i-pod, I can tell you (unless price means nothing to you) that dollar for dollar, this beats the i-pod. And that says a lot.
64 Great Buy - Still a bit dim-witted though.
It's hard to go wrong with these capabilities at this price, and it is a good sign that a recent firmware upgrade fixes the Lyra's dumbest oversight (not remembering what song was being played before the unit was shut off).
Now it is time for RCA to deal with the second big issue. You should be able to (but cannot) create playlists on the fly - in other words you should be able to cue the next song or songs as you go. As the Lyra currently functions, you cannot select your next song without terminating the song you are playing. If you want to create a playlist, you need to stop playback and select all of the songs you want to play before starting. Then *WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA???* it will play them in alphabetical order rather than the order you selected them in.
I can only imagine that fixing these deficiencies will not be difficult for RCA, and that they will do so in the next firmware upgrade! (HINT! HINT!)
When this is done I will gladly lift my rating to 5-stars. If nothing else - this thing is a great portable back up device for any and all files you need to store (plug-n-play, drag-n-drop bliss).
65 a monster drive, with some minor drawbacks
This is my very first MP3 player. Overall it is a fantastic product. I would instist that the first thing you do is download and install the latest updates from the RCA website. They fix most of the little complaints that people have said about it elsewhere.
Why I bought it. I was looking for a product that was affordable and I could take anywhere. I'm a pastor, so I can take the thing from my house, to my car and then plug it directly into my sound board for ministry stuff. Very cool. Here was my just1. size of storage. 40 gb is a monster amount of storage. 2. Accesories. This thing came loaded with everything from good software to a car kit to a rechargeable battery. 3. Ease of use. Love the fact that on USB 2.0 I can get a charge and download with one cord... awesome. 4. Price. So much cheaper than the other 40 gb MP3 players... and with more freebies. 5. Packaging. It was in a very nice package... rarely think about that but it was a nice touch.
Critiques - 1. hate the headphones that came with it. 2. I wish that I could add more categories easier... such as Christmas music or whatever, I'd like to be able to do that easier. 3. Would like to be able to create playlists without using my PC.
On a huge plus side... RCA seems to be listening to criticism of its products and make changes that can be updated via their website.
Overall, a great product and worth my $$$.
66 Why not sold by Amazon?
I want to get this as a gift, because iPod is too expensive and my friends all use Windows. But why doesn't Amazon carry this any more? I don't want to go through the third-party stores. Amazon, are you listening?
67 Outstanding price, great features
I would wholeheartedly concur with the comments in other positive reviews of the Lyra Jukebox. For the money, no other portable MP3 player even comes close.
My only suggestions for improvements:
1) Support for 'secure' formats that are being used on the pay per track music download services.
2) Ability to 'cue' multiple albums on the device. The current software allows you to select multiple albums and then play "my selections", but it plays the tracks in - I'm not joking here - alphabetical order across all the albums, as opposed to by album in the order you selected them.
68 Man, oh Man!!
After reading several reviews of this product - some good and some not so good, I was a little reluctant. I bit the bullet and shelled out $300 or so and was very glad I did. Now, I've only had this for 2 weeks, but this thing has brought me immense joy.
I must say that many of the "complaints" I've read have some truth to them, but the way I look at life is this: If I stay at a beautiful hotel with an indoor swimming pool, king size down beds, free room service and a gorgeous ocean side view - I'm not going to complain because I don't like the color of the shower curtain. Get it?
The biggest competition, of course, is Apple's IPOD. Yes, it's better, but it's about twice the price. My friend has an IPOD and he tried to talk me into saving for one but he failed. He then conceded that my RCA Lyra was "pretty nice" after I showed it to him. For those who have never seen/held this unit, many complaints are that it's "big and bulky". Horse Hockey. O.K. - compared to the IPOD it is, but that's like saying compared to a Rolls Royce, a Mercedes is a crappy car. This thing fits very snuggly in my shirt pocket, yet this is unnecessary since it comes with a carrying case that allows me to wear it on my belt. Oh, did someone say accessories?? In addition to the carrying case, you get all the equipment to hook it up to your home stereo system and your car stereo (provided you have a cassette deck). The ac adaptor/charger is very lightweight and you can listen via AC power while the unit is recharging. You can also use the thing as a spare hard drive.
As far as ease of setup/transfer, I found it to be incredibly easy. If you can transfer a file to a floppy on your computer, you can transfer music easily to this thing. So far I've played MP3, MP3PRO and WMA files - I'm not sure exactly what it will and will not play but the above are good enough for me.
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but to quicken the time it takes the player to get from song to song (rarely longer than 2 seconds for me), you should put your music in as many folders and subfolders as possible - rather than putting your whole collection under one folder.
I also like the shuffle feature - mainly because you can shuffle by artist, or folder. So if I'm in a Classical mood, the shuffle will only shuffle music in my classical folder and skip stuff like Aerosmith.
The buttons can be a little tricky, and the transfer rate can be slow (at least that's what a lot of people think), but these are very minor in my judgement. My unit freezes about once per day, but a paper clip fixes that very easily (that's the one accessory I had to buy myself! Darn! :-) )
The latest firmware fixes the problem of the unit not remembering where it was when it shut off (another big complaint from people).
I did find making the playlists a little tricky, but I found a support group on Yahoo's web site, and I was able to figure it out.
If you have tons of cds and want to get them out of your living room and have tons of music at your fingertips, this is the unit for you (I have about 23gb filled - about 7,000 songs).
Kudos to RCA!!!!
69 Read and Think B4U Buy
This is my first mp3 player. My last music machine was a Sony Mini disk player/recorder (which I thought was the cat's meow cause 1 disk holds 5 hours of music.)
I did a lot of research and reading and mind changing before I settled on the Lyra2840. It's a sleek, pretty machine, not too big or bulky. The headphones aren't great but they don't suck either, you always replace stock headphones anyway.
What I do like:
-It's handy. Not tiny but anything smaller and lighter than a cd player is good.
-All my music at my fingertips
-Very easy to use
What I don't like:
-Unlike a MD player, you CANNOT edit songs. ex. with a md, you can combine 2 songs into 1, split one song into 2, change the name or move the song wherever you want on the disk.
-You cannot create playlists on the go. I have 2800 songs on mine and I basically just listen to one artist at a time, I have too much to play on shuffle
-One way i try to create a playlist is to pick a genre and shuffle within that Ex. I'll choose funk and wanna hear everything but the machine will only play 1 artist at a time so if you have 5 Parliament albums you'll hear them all b4 you get to Prince.
-I have a genre I created called Brain Music which is baroque as well as language instruction on the lyra. There is no way, if you're in shuffle mode, to exclude these categories. If you shuffle all playable music, everything will play, which stinks.
-Freezing is a problem. I tried to be patient, to give the unit one command at a time but still it freezes at odd times and I've taken to carrying a paper clip with me for fast resetting.
-I loved the idea os iTunes but the Lyra doesn't play mpeg4's which is the format iTunes are in (maybe i'm just a tech retard cause there's a way to convert I just don't know about)
I think some more reasearch and evolution need to happen for me to buy and appreciate an mp3 player (I don't know anyone with another system so I have no hands-on basis for comparison)
Basically, the best reason to buy this machine is to have an entire library at hand but if you're looking for flexibility, a MD player is the way to go.
70 Recent software update fixed problems!
In late October RCA released a software update for the RD2840 that fixed two problems: 1. the RD2840 can remember where it left off before shutdown, so when you turn it on, it goes right back to the last song played -- and the start-up time has been significantly shortened. 2. it no longer crashes when playing certain (ill-ripped?) MP3 songs. I maintain my "5-star" rating because it's been such a joy to use. I still envy iPod's nice form factor a bit, but for my money, I got a player that gives very good sound, plays MP3/MP3Pro/WMA, the most popular compressed audio formats in the world, and doubles as a USB 2.0 High Speed external hard drive with plug-and-play when you use it with Windows XP and Windows 2000. Dude, you can't beat this deal! The software update now makes the player "perfect" in function.
71 Great piece of equipment!
I just purchased this and I absolutely love it. After having read various other reviews on how it freezes up or how it doesnt go to the last song played, I was a little skeptical on buying it, but I went ahead and bought it and I don't regret it at all. Adding files is as simple as clicking and dragging from Windows Explorer, I didn't have much music on my desktop so I added bits and pieces at a time and I feel that it transfers pretty quick. It has many ways of viewing the music, and through MusicMatch Jukebox you can create playlists and add those playlists to the device with no problem. Also, the like and dislike option on the device add ways to create mini playlists on the device itself. As for the complaints of it not remembering the last song played, I have found that the scroll buttons are pretty quick and the only time I like to hear the last song played is when I have a playlist going and the playlists are easy to get to quickly.
I had looked into the IPOD and while this is a bit bigger, it offers the same capabilities and is just as easy to use, and for the price, it is worth it!
Complaints about the headphones can be easily solved by buying a new pair, I happen to like them, so that was not a problem. The carrying case is also great, it has quite a bit of padding, so for clumsy people like me you don't need to worry about it getting scratched up unless you drop it without the case on. Even with the case on, you have access to all the buttons, with the exception of the reset button, which is good, because I probably would hit it on accident somehow.
Overall, I recommend this to music lovers, especially those who cannot afford to shell out the extra $200 for an IPOD.
72 Not Ready for Prime Time
I am a pretty avid music listener (22GB CD library) but not an audio snob so my comments are from a practical side only. This player is a piece of crap. I constantly had problems with it locking up. It is also very sensitive to the initializing process when you make any changes. Never did get it to work with MMJB. Manuvering through the menu's was not intuititive. I took it back after 3 days and got the iPod. Now there's a fine piece of equipment. Face it.. this is a luxury item. If you can't afford $500 for and iPod, you probably can't affort $300 for the Lyra. Put out the extra $200 and get the iPOD. I promise you won't regret it.
73 One of your best bets for a hard drive mp3 player
The RD2840 has a lot going for it. First of all, the size/price ratio is outstanding. 40gb for this price is likely the best you'll find, by far.
Secondly, and a huge benefit, is the fact that this player is plug-and-play, it shows up on your desktop as a portable hard drive, and you can transfer music (and files) through windows explorer. You don't need to use buggy proprietary software to transfer music. Not only does this make it easy to transfer music, but it's a cinch to connect it to multiple computers to play and move around music. Most other players of this sort make you use software and many have DRM limitations. Not here. If you want to bring it to work or to a friends, no problem. The player does include a handy tray app which you can install to sync your player or add firmware updates, but it's not necessary.
The included case fits perfectly, is sturdy, and lets you access all buttons on the machine (except the reset button). It's not as small as the Ipod, but not huge either.
The user interface is OK but has some problems. You can navigate by the usual title/artist/album/genre/year. It reads all your tags and plays songs in album order. You can also choose to navigate by folder structure, which is a nice touch. The main problem I have is with the "shuffle" feature. It tends to play songs in the same order of "shuffle" every time, unless you repeatedly restart the feature, and plays the first song in the playlist far too often. The new "resume" feature added to the firmware somewhat addresses this problem. However, the resume feature is buggy also and does not remember where in the song you were. I wish there was a better-implemented shuffle/random and resume function. There are relatively few options for playback modes and backlight options also.
All in all, I think the combination of price, size, the no-software-no-DRM factor, and decent usability makes this a winner in the current crop. The new iRiver models show promise also, and their firmware tends to be fantastic, but they're far pricier and not yet available in more than 20gb. In a couple of years we'll probably have the perfect iRiver player...until then this is the best choice. That the players from Napster, Creative et al are getting so much press while this is all but ignored is a bit baffling. Recommended.
74 Some problems
First of all, I had trouble installing the player on my desktop, which has Windows ME. It was easier on the laptop, with Windows XP. This requires an extra step for transferring files, since all my music is on the desktop.
Second, while some people are complaining that it doesn't remember the last song played, I don't care about that. The RealOne player on my computer doesn't even do that. But the RealOne player does have a variety of options for listing songs, including by file name. I sometimes put numbers into file names, so they'll play in the order I want without making a playlist. I would like it if the Lyra player could list files this way.
Otherwise, it's working well for me so far. It's only been three days, and I have nothing to compare it to. But I am mostly satisfied.
75 The size does count...
I bought this instead of the iPod because I couldn't bare the price Apple wanted. I brought it home and opened the box. I was amazed at its girth and probable ability to beat me in a fight, but liked the look of it nevertheless. I enjoyed the accessories that came with it, and most importantly appreciated the price. The headphones took some getting used to and I never really like them but I learned to deal with it. I plugged it into an open USB port on my PC (real easy) and suffered through perhaps an hour or two while it transfered my miniscule 5GB of mp3s. I then remembered I had forgotten an album, and started up the process again. I rejoiced to see that instead of taking two hours this time, it only took around 30 or 45 min. I brought it to the gym the next day, where I made the mistake of trying to run with it. It not only fell off, but weighed down my pants enough to give those around me that good old locker-room feeling. I found it to be too slow to be convenient, and too large to fit in my pocket. Also, I had some problems when the Lyra deemed it necessary to display unintelligable characters for a few mp3s with valid ID3 tags and later freeze. This became so frequent that I had to bring a safety pin (to hit the convenient reset button) with me whenever I wanted to listen to music. My main point is that there is a good reason that this piece is such a good deal... I traded it back in a few weeks later for the iPod 15GB and have enjoyed it very much since.
76 Various playback problems
In a nutshell: I will be returning this player to the store soon. I have found many problems with this unit.
Long version:
After reading many reviews online, I decided to buy this RCA Lyra. It charged up fast. Installing the software under XP was easy (although not essential; WinXP SP1 is sufficient). Lyra was recognized as a hard drive. I had USB 1.1 so transfer was slow, then bought USB 2.0 and it worked much better. Interestingly enough, the player seems to rely only on ID3v2 tags, not ID3v1 tags - I wish I had not spent that much time fixing up my ID3v1 tags. Some programs let you copy v1 to v2 tags - so not a huge deal.
However, the unit soon showed some problems. Some files seem to produce a nasty burr-buzz sound and sometimes play slower than normal speed - truly bizzare. There is no pattern in this - files are usually regular constant-rate MP3s (mine are 160+ kbps) and if you "reboot" the player, they'll usually play just fine, and some other file will eventially start this behavior. In addition, the player would freeze after a number of songs - it shows the song it is "playing" on the screen, but no sound comes out. Clicking "next" does not help - just shows the name of a different song. In addition, the shuffle + repeat function seems to cycle some songs more than others (before the whole thing freezes that is).
I realize that I may have gotten a bad unit and most of them are good. However, the freezing problem has been reported on other sites by people who've had the Lyra for a while. I am glad mine showed it in the first 24 hrs so I can get rid of it fast.
Most people in my situation go and buy an iPod - they seem better made (and you pay for it). However, I have quite a few WMA's and an MP3-only player would be a last resort. I'll try something else. However, I had bad experiences with the Creative Zen Nomad, and the Archos is MP3 only. I guess you need to do VERY careful research before you buy, or you could end up with a lemon. Maybe the portable MP3 player jukebox as a device category is not ready for prime time yet?
One good thing about this device: wonderful external hard drive, esp if you have USB 2.0
77 Way better than Creative or Archos.....
I have owned the Archos Jukebox as well as the Creative Jukebox and this RCA Lyra 40GB is the best. I can't comment on the infamous iPod as I simply refuse to put down $500 (I'm cheap)! I am completely happy with this purchase and the only additional comment I would ad is this: buy a pair of Sennheiser PXC 250 Noise Cancelling headphones to go with! Together, you will achieve Nirvana!
78 RCA stomps the competition!
Once again RCA has proven that they are still in the High-Quality Audio Business. The RD2840 is compact, sleek, shiny, and powerful! Although it's larger than the ipod, it still fits nicely into the palm of your hand while delivering exceptional sound quality (even through the included "ear-clips" earphones). RCA puts both the zen (creative) and the ipod (apple) to shame with it's ingenuous idea to allow transferring of files using it like an external hard drive (no cumbersome software to install on every computer you need to use it with! *That was the selling point for me). And, while zen includes generic earbuds, RCA included some amazing headphones which simply clip over your ears comfortably, while delivering crystal clear, premium quality sound. And just look at the price! Almost half the price of a 40GB ipod! The accessories also prevail against the rivals; everything you need to make your audio experience totally portable and every part is high-quality! Bravo RCA!
79 it rocks
dude this is a killer deal. it's better than an ipod. Ihad an ipod and it wasn't worth it I returned it and got this RCA, way better, and it is a better deal, price sound, quality, and plus i hate macs or anything that has to do with them.
80 Recommended
Who says the French can't make decent products? OK, maybe their low-cost engineers in China designed this thing, and the product has some design flaws. Like the other guys mentioned, it does not remember which song you played last before shuting it down. I called tech support and they promised to look into adding it in a firm upgrade. Hope the geeks in France/China get some common sense!
40 gigabytes is a lot, yes! That's about 1200 CDs if you use wma format (64 bps?), according to RCA. Whew! No way any average joe has that many CDs. Or even if you got lots from file sharing networks before RIAA scared you away, that's still a lot of space to fill. USB 2.0 "high-speed" is great, and works right away on windows xp home edition. Setup takes probably just 5 minutes: install the system tray software, and then just plug and copy!
One previous reviewer had it right: make sure you profile the player. It's really fast. With 500 songs it took just a few seconds, not minutes. So don't be afraid and profile the jukebox often.
What else... External hard drive function... Backlighted LCD with blue background... Sound tracks switch fast without delay... Hey, this is pretty much a winner save for that "can't-remember-last-song" problem.
Get it.
81 It works well when you follow these tips
I bought the RD2840 40GB Lyra jukebox when it first went out sale as exclusive at Circuit City. I've been quite happy with it.
Pros: huge capacity (Windows reports 37.2GB total); low price; USB 2.0 High-Speed (=fast transfers!); drag-and-drop file transfers for both music and non-music; recognized by Windows as an external hard disk; graphic EQ plus a few presets; iPod-like interface; includes carrying case and car adapter; backlit LCD screen with adjustable backlight and contrast; good sound quality (after you replace the stock headphones); easy system software set-up (no reboot needed in XP); key lock via Menu button; line-out for hi-fi systems; ability to tag a song "Like" or "Dislike"; ability to import MusicMatch play lists; cute packaging box with handle.
Cons: bulky (but surprisingly lighter than I'd expected); too thick; buttons can be unresponsive at times; cannot remember last song played after power down (really stupid! Who designed this thing?); quality seems ok but not as solid-feel as electronics from Sony or other Japanese brands; not much of a printed manual; web support almost non-existent (although you can download the latest firmware update).
Overall I like the RD2840, a lot. I had iPod-envy but not any more. Sure it's bulkier and heavier than the iPod, but it's not really too heavy at under 10 oz., and comes with a decent carrying case, plus the value factor is just enormous. I'm not rich by any measure so I couldn't justify shelling out the iPod kind of money. Also, I wanted to use whatever jukebox I'd buy as an external hard drive, and the RCA products are the only ones that can function this way. (Nope, even the new Creative Labs Nomad NX can't double as an external drive. Besides, that product has a really brain-dead desktop program, and its internal drive breaks when you just walk. Avoid the Nomad NX!)
Software installation was fast and required no restart, a rarity these days. I skipped installing MusicMatch, since I encode mostly in WMA using Windows Media Player. With native drag-and-drop support via USB 2.0 High-Speed, it's so easy and fast to transfer all sorts of files between your PC and the RD2840. You can use the RD2840 as a back-up hard disk. What happens is after you transfer the files, you *must* do a profiling via the system tray. This is VERY IMPORTANT to keep the RD2840 happy. The profiling process is actually quite fast if you do it after you transfer the files, before you unplug it from the PC. (You can also do it from the RD2840 itself, but it takes longer and consumes battery power.) The profiling basically recognizes all the MP3, MP3Pro and WMA files on the RD2840's hard disk and builds a database. If you don't profile each time after you transfer files, you get unpredictable behavior, which eventually will require a soft reset. (Yep, it has a reset whole, on the left side.)
The player supports all MP3 tags, and the blue blacklit LCD screen shows you all the information about each music file. WMA support is flawless. (I don't have any MP3Pro files so I don't know how that works.) I encode all my music in bitrates from 64 kbps (for WMA) up to 192 kbps (for MP3), and the first time I set up the player, I transfered about 2GB of songs. The transfer process took about 5 minutes (I have USB 2.0 High-Speed ports on my laptop), and the profiling took less than a minute. I also copied some documents just to confirm that I could use the RD2840 as an external drive; again the transfer was fast over USB 2.0 High-Speed.
So that was tip #1: always profile the RD2840 after downloading files to it. Tip #2 is, be sure to download the latest firmware from RCA's website. There's some confusion as to whether the current update actually does anything for this particular model. You should still download and install it anyway.
Tip #3, to maximize battery life, you should always top off the charge by an hour or so. That's just the way LiIon batteries work. If you don't charge it fully, over time its performance will degrade. RCA says you can get 10 hours of play time out of this; I guess the actual battery life depends on how often you press the buttons, the encoding format and rate of your music, and other factors. I found that I get anywhere between 6 and 8 hours, more on the low end, though. Luckily, the AC adpater is pretty compact, and you get a car adapter in the package.
The biggest annoyance is that the player can't remember where you were before you shut it off. That's really stupid. On the other hand, the scroll button would scroll slowly first, but if you keep holding it down for 2 seconds, it starts scrolling by page, pausing a bit between pages, which is really nice. The overall interface reminds me of the iPod's, although slightly less refined, but still usable even if you don't read the electronic manual.
In summary, the RD2840 is a very capable MP3/WMA jukebox player as well as an external hard drive for Windows PCs. Mac support is rather limited, but Windows users will be happy especially if they heed my aforementioned suggestions.
82 Not bad, needs some firmware upgrades.
This is my second harddrive mp3 player, first was the archos, which I found difficult to control and too slow to transfer files. I have been waiting for the RD2840 for some time and was very excited to find it. I like the case on the RD2840 and the controls are ok, maybe a bit confusing at first. The controls are set in a little bit, so they should not get pressed accidently too much. Really holds around 38Gigs of music.
Sounds great, and shows the information from the id3 tags.
Problems:
File transfer from an XP box with USB 2.0 using a program called Filesync, was approximately 7MS, seems you could do that with USB 1.0. Still not too bad, took maybe three hours or so.
Playlist created from Music Match do not work. I found the workaround, edit the playlist with a text editor and replace the drive descriptor, like 'E:' with '..'. Maybe I left out a step, but I did not see any more instructions in the manual.
No Resume!! ok, a playlist with 8000 songs. go figure how much work it is to get back to where you were playing music when you have to start at the top menu, select 'user playlist', find the playlist, and then cursor down to the song you were playing... If someone found a way to resume playback, please post.
If rca will get back with me and promise new firmware to resume playback, then I will keep the unit, else it goes back where it came from. May have to fork out the cash for an ipod..
83 Outstanding!
I had been looking for an MP3 Jukebox player for my cd collection and this one fits the bill. My collection is about 28gb worth, stored on an external Maxtor hard drive. I had previously used the Rio Riot and at 20gb was impressed with it's size for the price, but not the sound quality. When looking for a player with more capacity I came across the new Lyra 40gb and I highly recommend it! It's heavier than an iPod, but with the belt clip, I never noticed the difference. Only downside is no Firewire support. It took a LONG time to transfer nearly 30gb of songs via USB, but once the transfer is complete, that's no longer an issue. Sound quality is outstanding. The headphones that come with it are not. I don't like the clip-on headphones. If you do, then you'll enjoy them. But I prefer earbuds or something larger yet more comfortable. Despite the headphones, sound quality is outstanding, controls are easy to use, the carry case is secure and works well during a commute or while at the gym. For a 40gb player, you can't beat this for the price! Enjoy!
84 Outstanding!
I had been looking for an MP3 Jukebox player for my cd collection and this one fits the bill. My collection is about 28gb worth, stored on an external Maxtor hard drive. I had previously used the Rio Riot and at 20gb was impressed with it's size for the price, but not the sound quality. When looking for a player with more capacity I came across the new Lyra 40gb and I highly recommend it! It's heavier than an iPod, but with the belt clip, I never noticed the difference. Only downside is no Firewire support. It took a LONG time to transfer nearly 30gb of songs via USB, but once the transfer is complete, that's no longer an issue. Sound quality is outstanding. The headphones that come with it are not. I don't like the clip-on headphones. If you do, then you'll enjoy them. But I prefer earbuds or something larger yet more comfortable. Despite the headphones, sound quality is outstanding, controls are easy to use, the carry case is secure and works well during a commute or while at the gym. For a 40gb player, you can't beat this for the price! Enjoy!
85 Bulky, difficult controls, cheap headphones
This is my first MP3 player, so I have nothing to compare it to but my PC.
With that said:
LIKES:
1: It's only $300 for 40gigs
2: USB 2.0
3: Plug and play with XP
4: Comes with Musicmatch driver that makes Syncing with your PC super easy
DISLIKES:
1: It's bulky & heavy
2: The main control used is very difficult to make go "down", especially with the case on
3: Not very loud
4: The headphones do not sound high quality (but fit me just fine)
I'm returning it and will probably go for an iPOD
