A perfect MP3 player for those who want the space to store more songs than they possibly could. The 20 GB hard disc drive guarantees the ability to hold thousands of song. Works with MP3s and WMAs. Includes a digital FM tuner when you're tired of your old music. Compact dimensions of 3.25" x 2.8" x 0.9" so you can take it with you anywhere. 12 hours of battery life (battery not included). Model #RD2850. One-year warranty.
Take your music collection with you anywhere with the RCA Lyra RD2850 hard-drive digital audio player, which can store 5,000 CD-quality songs (MP3 files encoded at 128 kbps) on its 20 GB hard drive. Amazingly slim at just 1 inch thick, it also weighs only 3.4 ounces. It plays both MP3 and WMA formats, as well as Secure WMA files offered by online download services. It also features an FM tuner with the capability of recording programming with the touch of a single button. Recorded audio files are saved and stored in MP3 format for uploading to a PC. It has a large, easily readable 2.1-inch LCD.
The Lyra DJ feature creates an automatic smart playlist that contains related types of music. It uses the PC to analyze your music collection based on mathematical audio analysis and neural network learning to create groups of musically-related playlists that can easily be transferred to the RD2850. With the SmartTrax navigation feature, you can easily browse audio files according to artist, album, genre, year or song title. Songs can be tagged as "dislike" during playback for editing or deleting later. The player has several EQ presets, including bass boost, rock, pop, and jazz, as well as a user-configurable equalizer setting.
The RD2010 is designed to be PlaysForSure-verified out of the box and works seamlessly with Windows Media Player 10, including support for Auto Sync to sync your music, photos and playlists. You can choose from a growing number of PlaysForSure download and subscription stores, such as F.Y.E (For Your Entertainment), MSN Music, Musicmatch, MusicNow, Napster, and Wal-Mart Music Downloads.
What's in the Box
RCA Lyra RD2850 player, AC adapter, USB cable, line-out cable, car adapter kit, clip earphones, and CD-ROM with Lyra Jukebox and MusicMatch Jukebox software.
Choose your music. Choose your device. Know it's going to work.
Look for the PlaysForSure logo if you're shopping for a portable music or video device and you want to make sure the digital music and video you purchase will play back on it every time. Match the PlaysForSure logo on a large selection of leading devices and online music stores. If you see the logo, you'll know your digital music will play for sure. The PlaysForSure logo makes it easy to find digital media stores and devices that work together. Choose from a large number of digital music and video stores, including CinemaNow, MSN Music, MusicMatch, MusicNow, Napster, Wal-Mart Music Downloads, and many more. Look for the PlaysForSure logo on a wide variety of devices including portable music devices, portable video devices, digital audio receivers, Pocket PC's and Smartphones.
The checkmarks indicate if the device is capable of playing back audio and/or video that's been downloaded from an online store. Additionally some devices will be able to play back media that has been purchase through an online store that offers subscription or rentals. |  |
1 Did not work reliably
My Rio Carbon died but I bought the store protection so I went out and bought the RCA Lyra because I wanted to spend a reasonable amount of money, 20 gig was enough storage space for my tunes, and I liked the FM tuner. I am pretty familiar with MP3 players this is about the 5th one I've owned.
I charged it up and loaded up the tunes. However, it just did not work reliably. It took forever to find songs and then just froze all the time. I don't know if it was because I loaded up 14 gig of the 20 gig capacity or what but it just would not respond. I tried updating the firmware but it didn't help. It is going back to the store for a refund and I will try something else.
Too bad because it came with lots of extras including a car charger, one of those tape deck converters for the car, lots of cables, etc... It also was pretty easy to link to musicmatch which was a plus because I use that. But unreliable stuff has to go back.
2 I don't see what the big problem is...
Windows recognizes this as a portable hard drive, so in Windows Explorer, I drug my music files (only 1250) onto the Lyra (which took about 11 minutes). The booklet described the one simple step needed to tag them (right clicking on the Lyra logo in the active program bar and selecting "Profile Device Contents"). (I do not use MusicMatch which is bundled with it). That took about 2 1/2 minutes. In all, I had my music library categorized and complete on my Lyra in less than 20 minutes.
The only problem I see with this device that cost it the Fifth star is its size. Compared to other portable mp3 players, this is kind of bulky. But oh well, nothing is perfect.
If you have the money, go buy an iPod. If you feel like saving a couple of bucks and don't have enough music to fill 60Gigs, buy this (after my 1250 songs, I've still got 13Gigs left).
3 Not user friendly!
I received this MP3 player as a gift for Christmas and spent about 20 hours trying to figure it out. I installed everything with no problem but trying use it was extremely difficult. The user guide and quick start guide are both pretty skimpy so they were no help. Trying to get information from RCA's website was difficult as the pages wouldn't load and I kept getting errors. MusicMatch is their recommended music management tool and whenever I loaded music onto the player from there it wouldn't profile the songs so I ended up accessing only the demo tracks on the player. I profiled the music using Lyra DJ and that didn't help either. It was extremely frustrating especially because I was following the directions to a T - I wasn't winging it and making it up as I went along. This was my first MP3 player so maybe I was making rookie mistakes but I exchanged it for an iPod (20 GB) last night and already have it up and running today - it took about 30 minutes. The difference in cost was about $60 and, to me, was well worth the cost.
4 Where the heck did my audio book go???
I listen to a lot of audio books so I suppose the RCA Lyra RD2850A 29G HDD mp3pro Player seemed like a great Christmas present for me. And I have to admit that having an mp3 player with more capacity than my PC's old D: drive was a bit of a kick. The unit is pretty large so it doesn't hide unobtrusively in my jeans pocket like my old Creative MuVo did, but that's ok, I'll clip it to my waistband and hope it stays there.
As an engineer, I don't usually RTFM. I didn't. The Lyra has a USB I/F and a FAT file system, so Windows 2000 automagically recognizes it as a Removable Disk. I proceeded to drag and drop 20G of audio books into it, almost 1500 files, into the directory called \MUSIC\. That's a lot of audio since I listen mostly to low bit rate lectures. Impressive!
A little bit of random button-pushing got the device to profile the contents. This took a while to complete, but that's fine, consider it part of the initial setup. After that, some more random button-pushing (a million monkeys, eh?) got some mp3s to play, and even captured my favorite radio show as an mp3. Nice. It was all a bit jumbled in there, though, and sorting by Artist or Artist/Album or even by track title didn't make it possible to locate a 12 lecture series, much less pick out and listen to the 6th lecture. Hmmm, seems the tags are messed up, I'll have to fix that. Ok, let's install the software and get serious.
Well, that's where the fun began. The Lyra comes with an application called Lyra DJ. Lyra DJ has a simple user interface - a big orange button labeled "Analyze Device" and a little gray button labeled "0 Sets".
"The main advantage of a simple user interface is that it prevents the user from actually doing anything." -- banth
Push the button and voila'! Wait several hours for it to analyze the device. The analysis failed several times. Ok, I'm a trained professional. I can handle it. I deleted most of my audio - a mistake, I realized, but that's what happens when you're wrestling with new hardware at 2AM. This time the analysis actually completed. In retrospect, if I had moved the files out of the \MUSIC\ file tree I would have saved myself a lot of hassle.
I decided to continue at work, and this is where I realized that having a separate USB cable with a non-standard plug is a disadvantage. My old Creative MuVo plugged right into the USB port so I didn't have to worry about forgetting the cable.
Back at home again I ran the analysis and pushed Lyra DJs little grey button. It only took a minute or so to create 15 LDJ sets. The device itself calls these playlists. Very kewl, *now* I can listen to some audio books... what the....???
According to the blurb, Lyra DJ uses "advanced acoustical analysis" to "create sets of related content". I'm sure it does, but my tiny engineering mind wasn't able to discern the relationships between the items in the plain vanilla .m3u text-based playlists created by Lyra DJ. I suspect that if you listen to music and in no particular order, this won't be an issue.
I won't bother you with the irritating misspellings on the Lyra DJ app. Most engineers can't spell anyway.
I briefly considered editing the playlists manually, but as I juggled several open files cutting and pasting I realized that I just don't have time to futz with it, especially if I want to load another 18G of audio. I was going to have to use another app to generate playlists.
I also considered modifying the ID tags to enable the RCA Lyra itself to present them in a logical manner. I don't &$^$ think so.
The RCA Lyra also comes bundled with MusicMatch software. Throw the installation CD away. Save yourself some trouble and use something already installed on your computer to create playlists. I settled on WinAmp. So here's how to do it:
Arrange your audio files in a neat, structured manner as subdirectories in the RCA Lyra \MUSIC\ directory.
In WinAmp, create a new playlist.
Also in WinAmp, Add a folder from your RCA Lyra directory structure to the playlist. Make sure the files are sorted correctly in WinAmp - if ID tags are messed up the playlist will be scrambled.
Still in WinAmp, Save the playlist to the RCA Lyra \lyra_playlists\ directory.
From the RCA Lyra menu system, profile the device.
It's important to save the playlist to the RCA Lyra so that the .m3u file has the correct paths.
Simple, eh?
I'm failing to see the benefit of carrying 20G of audio files when a 512M Creative MuVo carries an entire work day of audio.
But that's ok, the RCA Lyra RD2850A 29G HDD mp3pro Player is a serious Guy Magnet.
5 i'd rather have an ipod
okay, ipods are more expensive, that's true. but from my exposure to ipods and this player, now i know why. i received my lyra as a Christmas present, and i was excited about having all of my music on this little thing. of course, i'm a big playlist user. i create lots of playlists and enjoy doing it. it's one of my favorite things. well, after having this player for a couple of weeks and spending an estimated forty hours trying to figure it all out, i have still not found a way to have user-created playlist on the lyra that works without having the same song on the lyra twice. it seems that you have to add all of your music, then the plalists that you add re-add those songs. well, that's ridiculous.
another thing. i have tested software for a publishing company for over four years, and i have seen some bad programming. but the user interface for the pc software that comes with this product is terrible. it's not intuitive (though the lyra itself is), and more importantly, it doesn't work. and music match is a disgrace to all pc media players.
all together, i'm trying to salvage what i can. i'm probably just going to end up putting select playlists on it instead of my entire library, which means copying songs manually to a folder on the lyra and then just playing it that way.
i played with my friend's ipod, and it worked great. you can click and drag, that's it. everything's done.
the one thing i like on the lyra that the ipod doesn't have is the radio record feature. i record sermons off of the local radio that i could not get otherwise, so that is a great feature. however, that's about it.
basically, if you're going to use playlists at all, spend the extra dough and get an ipod. if you're not, best of luck to ya.
6 Great player for the money
If you are in the market for a hard drive mp3 player, avoid the Apple iPod. The reason? Great players are available for less money. This player will hold a ton of music. The menu is very intuitive and easy to use, and the navigation buttons are instinctive. The RD2850 comes with everything that you need, including a case, cassete converter, line out converter, power supply, car power supply, and headphones. Buying these seperately could easily add up to $50. The battery life is great, clocking in at about 10 hours. To boost audio quality, it includes a 5 band graphic equalizer.
Pros
-Easy navigation
-long battery life
-includes accessories
-huge capacity for the money
Cons
-Software is not very user friendly, needs improvement
-Occasional error messages
Overall, if you are looking for a cheaper alternative to the iPod, I would reccomend the RCA Lyra 20GB Jukebox (RD2850).
7 A solid HDD Audio player
Had I not been able to resolve several issues that did come up in using the player initially, I would consider the RD2850 a below average player. As it is, I would consider it a solid audio file player with a few limitations.
As I was searching for a hard disk digital audio player, I noticed the Lyra RD2850 came with everything you need to use it universally: ear clips, rca connector for stereos, car adapter kit, and usb to connect to your computer. This and the size and weight were major motivating factors which resulted in my purchase. Some of the other hard drive MP3 players force you to purchase these items separately, and virtually all of them are larger and heavier than the Lyra.
Unfortunately, upon purchasing my Lyra and loading it with music files, I discovered a few problems.
Problem 1 - many of my WMA files wouldn't play. Apparently, the Lyra is not compatible with WMA files created by Media Player 10, which included those purchased from Microsoft's music download service.
Solution - I had to burn all those WMAs and rip them as MP3s.
Problem 2 - when jogging the player would give me a fatal error and shut down. It would then take several minutes to reload. Since my primary use of the player was for exercise this was an issue.
I called RCA, and was told to reformat the Lyra, but that didn't work, so I sent it back and received a new one within ten days. The new one was slightly better, but still gave fatal errors as I ran. I called again, explained everything, and was told that because it's a hard disk player it will have difficulty being bounced around. I wasn't excited about this explanation, but I will say that it was never difficult to reach technical support. I reached a technician within a minute on each call.
Solution - I have since found a remedy by holding the Lyra as I jog, not ideal but it works. I believe that an arm strap would probably do the trick as well.
Problems with the bundled software - MusicMatch 8.2, which comes with the Lyra, won't put any Windows Media files onto your Lyra. However, you can download Musicmatch 9 for free. My experience was that Musicmatch 9 froze up constantly when I tried to upload songs to my Lyra, besides the fact that every button I pressed seemed to give me a pop-up telling me to upgrade to MusicMatch Jukebox Plus.
Solution for me- Use the LyraSync software instead of Musicmatch.
Musicmatch is good for one thing, if you pay for the twenty-dollar upgrade. If you have old MP3s with no ID3 tag, it will find them and tag them for you very quickly. I decided it was worth it, because the Lyra groups the songs into categories from the ID3 tag.
Overall, I decided that I could handle all of these issues and I love the sound of the player.
Pros
Many accessories
Great sound
Windows treats the Lyra like an extra disk drive, so you can quickly copy any song (or other file for that matter) to it.
Decent Technical Support
Size and weight (small and light)
Cons
Shuts down with a fatal error when jogging (unless held by hand).
Not compatible with WMAs made by Media Player 10
Bundled software (MusicMatch) isn't very useful
8 Space, Size, and Solid
I had spent over 3 months researching players and finally settled on the RCA2850. There isn't much bad to say about this model, although a few things kept it from getting 5 stars. My principle concern was space and having 20Gb makes the difference. I've got over 1200 songs on it already and still have over 14Gb to spare. Keep in mind however, the majority of my music is ripped 128K WMA. I've found MP3 at the same rate to be slightly more expensive spacewise, and I personally haven't noticed a sound quality difference. So obviously higher bitrates will result in more used space.
Physically, the construction is solid. Metal is the primary material (instead of cheaper plastic) and the controls don't feel flimsy. The one minus is that sometimes it takes a few times for the control to register with the player. Don't know if it's a firmware or a hardware issue, but every now and then it can become annoying. The size surprised me. It's much smaller than I would've thought and I am very happy with it.
Integration with PC. Since it's a portable HD, my PC (Windows XP) recognized as such and had no trouble dealing with it as a normal drive. Drag and drop files as you choose. Most of my music is already in folders since I've ripped my entire CD collection on it using Windows Media Player and it puts everything in self named folders. The profiling tool (either on the player itself or the software) does a GREAT job. If your tags are correct, it'll sort them all for you.
The other minus I see is that when you have so many songs and artists, navigation can slow down. Albeit, it's still easy to browse, it's just not very fast. Clearly nothing beats the iPod on physical navigation. Some pluses. The display is fantastic. It's backlit and sizable so normal sized song and artist names show entirely on the display. While playing, there is a visible progress bar that shows where you are in the song as well as time elapsed, song, artist, genre, year, format, and bitrate. All very informative. The sound quality is very good and I haven't noticed drop offs in playback versus the CD. 128K seems to be fine.
The controls. It would certainly do RCA well to include a manual as there is a bit of a learning curve. The online manual is fine, but there's something about reading a book that makes the difference. I have yet to figure out if there's a way to randomize the entire contents of the player rather than by folder (artists, genre, etc). The are some other quirks with the firmware (as probably all do). I've had it freeze up once, particularly when using the pause feature when shuffle is enabled. Again, not often enough to make you mad but sometimes enough to be annoyed.
The FM-record is a nice include. However, in practice it probably doesn't give you much considering the quality is only so-so. My primary use for it is to record songs off the radio that I want to remember to acquire. A voice recorder would do better for this purpose and another minus is no line-in functionality.
Packaging of the player is very good. RCA did well to include all of your necessary peripherals. A soft cover case, cassette adapter, audio plugs, headphones, power supply, and car power adapter, and USB cable. The cassette adapter was very cheap and did not sound good. I would recommend getting a good one. And obviously the headphones as well (as most of them are when bundled with players).
Overall, I'd highly recommend this player. If RCA could improve the navigation speed and fix some of the quirks, I would say it's right up there with the iPod (Obviously, I'm saying the iPod is the top at this point). I'd also appreciate more format support. Right now it supports WMA/Secure WMA/MP3. But if you've been agonizing over a decision, let me sway you toward this model. This choice wouldn't be good for you however if you needed line-in capability. Otherwise, go with this model.
9 Great Player
I could not be happier. Perfect size, great display, and easy to use menu. The Lyra comes with everything you need: Player, AC adapter, Car adapter, clip-on headphones, RCA cables, & software. The only thing missing is the 68 page manual which is online. Once the software was installed my compter recognized the player as a drive and I could either use MusicMatch to send MP3's to the player or drag and drop any type of file - yep it's a portable drive. The unit also has a FM radio and you can record on the fly. Great sound and the LyraDJ software is very intelligent. Highly recommended. Battery was still going strong after 12 hours.
