Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I received the Lyra 2 as a gift and I can't beleive how lucky I was to get THE BEST MP3 player out there. Easy setup and installation. It comes with a 64 meg Compact flash card. I already have Compact flash cards for my digital camera and camcorder so if I need more space I don't have to buy expensive proprietary memory.I can't beleive all the features this brings. It comes with nice 'street style' headphones, an in the cord remote, 64 meg Compact flash card and a complete car kit. Sound quality and battery life are A+. It has 6 preset EQ settings and a manual EQ. It has 7 different play modes (repeat, shuffle, etc.). It also includes an FM tuner with 15 presets. By far, the best out there for the money!!!
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: I thought that setting up the player would be hard, and would take a while, but i was listening to songs on my MP3 player in less than 45 minutes. Great for someone who has never had a MP3 player.
Rating: 
Summary: Good player for the price, but has its problems
Review: I'm a bit of an MP3 old timer, having been around the block with a Rio 500 and a Nomad Jukebox, two of the most popular MP3 players out there. I decided to sell my Rio because it used SmartMedia while my digital camera uses CompactFlash and I wanted to consolodate to one memory card format. I perfer CF for a number of reasons, but I'll save that for another review. I'll use the Rio 500 as the basis for comparison, because it is very similar to the Lyra in many ways. The Lyra comes with a great accessories kit, including a car adapter and an external USB CompactFlash reader. These components alone are worth around $50. The headphones aren't great, but they do include a removable inline remote control and are much better than the earbud type headphones that come with the Rio. The FM tuner is a great feature if you like to listen to the news occasionally (as I do). The Lyra is playback only, which is to be expected, but it would have been nice if you could record a voice memo or from FM broadcasts. What is a little unusual about the Lyra is that it has no internal memory -- everything is stored on the CompactFlash card. In theory, this should make downloading music to the Lyra easier, because you don't have connect the player itself to your PC, you just place the CF card in it's USB reader. If you have multiple CF cards, you can store different playlists on each and easily switch between them, unlike players with internal memory. Unfortunately, because of SDMI (digital rights management) restrictions built-in to the Lyra, you can't just drag and drop music from your hard drive to the CF card for playback. This is where it gets a little weird. The Lyra doesn't actually play MP3s at all -- you have to run your MP3s through a converter (a driver for MusicMatch, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player), which outputs them to 128 bit "mpx" files, which only your Lyra can read. This cumbersome routine is to prevent you from sharing your MP3s with others. Now you know why people hate SDMI. I believe you can dump WMA files directly to the Lyra, but who besides Bill Gates uses the WMA format? The Rio 500 had none of this SMDI nonesense. But then it gets a little weirder still. The software to actually play the "mpx" files on the Lyra is also stored on the CF card, instead of in ROM! This is kind of cool in that it makes updates to the software very easy and allows the possibility that someone will be able to hack it to play regular MP3 files. The downside is that it takes a few seconds for the player to "boot up" every time. The Lyra weighs substatially more than the Rio 500 because it requires two AA batteries instead of one. Oddly, the additional battery doesn't seem to increase play time much over the Rio, however. A few ounces may not seem like much, but it makes a big difference when you're jogging with it clipped to your shorts. The Lyra is a good player for the money, particularly if you need a CompactFlash compatible unit, but the SMDI "feature" really degrades convenience and usability. Be forewarned that most players are SMDI compliant these days and will have similar problems (the Rio 500 being the notable exception). In other words, if CompactFlash vs SmartMedia memory isn't a concern and you don't need an FM radio, get a Rio 500 before they discontinue them!
Rating: 
Summary: Not a huge improvement over the origional LYRA.
Review: I've used the origional LYRA for as long as I can remember. It's been dropped, stepped on, thrown across the room, and kicked by cows. It still runs and runs great. I just received my LYRA 2 last night and it was broken. (Not too broken though, just a crack next to the f.skip button) Anyway it just feels flimsy compared to the origional. The FM stereo really (...) and the only equalizer setting that works for it is the plain bass boost. The best part about this is the lock function. It's really not worth upgrading to Lyra 2 if you have a Lyra. I think Thompson and RCA are making a Lyra with a built in 10 GB internal memory but I havn't seen it anywhere. If you don't already have a MP3 player this or the origional lyra would be the ones to get.
Rating:
Summary: Good value for an MP3 player with FM radio.
Review: If you want a small, lightweight MP3 player at a reasonable price, consider this RD2211 Lyra2 from RCA. On the plus side, this unit can fit in a shirt pocket and is quite lightweight with just 2 AA batteries. It's LCD screen can be lighted (with the push of a button) and the "behind the head" headphones were very comfortable with good sound. Volume was sufficent and the unit comes complete with car kit, USM adapter for the 64MB compact flash memory card and complete software. Some things to be aware of with this unit: If you already have a compact flash card adapter (maybe for a digital camera you already own), the software for the Lyra2 won't see it. So you may HAVE to use the CF unit that comes with the RCA unit instead of the one you already have. Also be aware that the Lyra2 requires certain system files on the compact flash card to play the songs back, these files eat up a small amount of the card's storage space, and you'll have to copy them to any other CF card you buy. You can't drag MP3 files to the Compact Flash card; the RCA unit uses a copyright protection mode that is applied to all music files (it's coverted automatically when you use the supplied version of MusicMatch softawre). Once a file is copied to the compact flash card, it cannot be copied from the card to any other source because it isn't a standard MP3 anymore. A little annoying to some of us that would just prefer to copy the music to the card quickly. The Lyra2 uses the compact flash card as it's only memory source; there is no internal memory. More songs means buying more cards or erasing the one they supply. The radio, with its digital tuner, worked well. You can also memorize a few of your favorite stations for quick recall.
Rating:
Summary: willy
Review: It's a gem. Worked great right out of the box. Software is easy to use also. Came with two compactflash cards total of 96MB. Came with flash card writer, car ac adapter, car cassette so you can play through the car stereo and very good and comfortable headset. It is also a FM radio. I was happy with the price. I would have paid more as it is such a complete package. Battery life is good on two AA batteries. Sound quality is great and it has an equalizer to set personnel preference or opt for one of the many pre sets, jazz, pop, rock, bass ... No skips as it has no moving parts. A true go anywhere portable sound machine. You will love it.
Rating:
Summary: So much for so little
Review: Man I can't believe that this mp3 player is so cheap in price. My best friend has one and the preformance is unbelievable especally if you buy it at Amazon.com, like he did. You get so much for less. I have have a lot of friends who have all diffrent kinds mp3 players and I have seen none like this one. This is far the best mp3 player I have ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Great for travel
Review: My wife and I purchase the Lyra 2 for 2 reasons. The first is that it takes AA batteries. And the second is that it is one of the few players that accepts CompactFlash memory. These two features makes it great for international travel. Our digital cameras and other equipment use AA batteries and CF memory as well so the memory and batteries are interchangable. We also purchased a Brunton solar battery charger for [money] (weighs 7 oz.). So we don't have to purchase batteries or lug around heavy rechargers/ adapters needed in foreign countries. So far, we've purchased 4 additional CF cards (the Lyra comes with one). A local consumer electronics store (Fry's) has 64MB memory for only [money]. So, additional memory is really not a problem. We also found a small case on the SanDisk site that holds the four CompactFlash cards (plus one in the Lyra). Total package: we carry 8 hours of music: one card for each genre (Rock, Jazz, etc.), unlimited power (the sun) and interchangable components. We copy the songs at 96Kbps which is a good compromise between quality and size. And we only copy the songs that we like so it's more like 20+ CDs. The unit has some downsides. However, it works for us.
Rating:
Summary: Great for travel
Review: My wife and I purchase the Lyra 2 for 2 reasons. The first is that it takes AA batteries. And the second is that it is one of the few players that accepts CompactFlash memory. These two features makes it great for international travel. Our digital cameras and other equipment use AA batteries and CF memory as well so the memory and batteries are interchangable. We also purchased a Brunton solar battery charger for [money] (weighs 7 oz.). So we don't have to purchase batteries or lug around heavy rechargers/ adapters needed in foreign countries. So far, we've purchased 4 additional CF cards (the Lyra comes with one). A local consumer electronics store (Fry's) has 64MB memory for only [money]. So, additional memory is really not a problem. We also found a small case on the SanDisk site that holds the four CompactFlash cards (plus one in the Lyra). Total package: we carry 8 hours of music: one card for each genre (Rock, Jazz, etc.), unlimited power (the sun) and interchangable components. We copy the songs at 96Kbps which is a good compromise between quality and size. And we only copy the songs that we like so it's more like 20+ CDs. The unit has some downsides. However, it works for us.
Rating:
Summary: Lightweight, OK, Software difficult...
Review: OK, now that I actually have the LYRA2 software installed, I don't really have a problem with it, but read what I had to go through before you judge me...
I already had MusicMatch installed on my computers at home and work under my usual profile, so when I was prompted to install the software, I doidn't think it would be a problem. But it was.
First I ended up with some cranky version of MusicMatch which didn't recognize my numberous libraries of MP3s, so I had to refigure how to refind them and enter them into the library (this took a while). hen I realized that since I had already purched MusicMatch previously, I was going to have to update the software by downloading it from the MusicMatch site. Then it wouldn't recognize my 2-year-old original key, only accepting the key off the newer software from the disc for the update that I had to download from MusicMatch.
Actually I had to go through this process three times, so by the third time, it got easier. Still, it was a hassle in the long run.
As for the Lyra itself, the sound quality is OK, not great. I use my own headphones tho, because the ones provided don't really cut the noise barrier that I want.
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