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RCA Lyra (tm) Portable MP3 Player (RD1070)

RCA Lyra (tm) Portable MP3 Player (RD1070)

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Music All the Time!
Review: I love my RCA Lyra w/ 128mg for jogging or just working around the house or in the yard. It fits in a shirt pocket and is out of the way. It works great with my Musicmatch Jukebox. It's great on my tiny 2 miles run/walks. It clips on my shorts or I hold it in my hand. It weighs nothing and is very small. About the size of four quarters aranged in a square. Or 2.5 x 2.5 x 3/4 inches. I love it on my motorcycle rides the best

If I compress my song files to 96000 bitrate (128000 is normal and CD quality) on the transfer to the player from my computer, I get get up to 50 songs on my player. That's just under 3 hours of songs if each song averages out to 3.5 minutes. And you can add a memory stick that will double the song and memory capacity. I don't notice a big drop in quality with the head phones I use while using the smaller bitrate either. Now you can even drop the bitrate to 46000 and listen to the songs in mono and get double the song playing power. About a 100 songs without a memory stick.

I highly recomend my RCA Lyra. It runs on two triple AAAs and those last at least 4 or 5 playlists worth. So about 250-300 songs. I've never had any problems with it and it is extreemly easy to use.I really like the battery indicatior on the display too.

Hope this helps.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fantastic Sound, bad software
Review: I own a little newer version of this player, a 128MB RCA Lyra player. It looks the same as this KaZoo player, also has the same model number, but, unlike KaZoo, needs no updated software to work with Windows XP. It is available at Circuit City and hopefully will be soon available at Amazon.com. The sound is absolutely wonderful! Sometimes it may lock up and stop responding to pressing its controls, so you need to reformat its memory chip, as if you would format your Hard Drive (right click on Kazoo or Lyra icon in My Computer, click Format, etc.). A very simple and fast procedure.

On a negative note: don't call RCA Customer Service: they are totally incompetent and completely useless. Also, the Musicmatch Jukebox software comes as a shareware version with this player. You get those nag screens with persistent attempts to get your 20 bucks out of your pocket and into their pocket. That's a drawback, I think. A customer should expect a simple, functional and full version (not a shareware) software with this, as well as any other hardware, which would enable the unit, without offering you all kinds of unneeded extras, which you could download from the Internet anyway. Overall this is a great player with excellent sound and lots of memory for the money.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good while it lasted.
Review: I received my RCA Lyra RD1070 on Christmas Eve in 2002. I immediately fell in love with it. It was awesome for the first five or six months. Then, at one point, the belt clip just broke. Then about a month later, the USB cover on the MP3 player just ripped off. Finally, in November and December of 2003, MusicMatch Jukebox started being really dumb. I upgraded my software to the 8.1 version (player came with 7.1). The drivers for my portable would not add to my screen. I had to go to a separate website and install them from there. Once I got that done, I couldn't add songs to my player still! After numerous messages to MusicMatch, they helped me a little, but hardly at all. If you want a good player, DON'T GET THIS PLAYER! Here are some pros and cons of both the player and software:

Pros (Player)
• Small, fits in the palm of your hand
• Easy, functional screen
• Basic and easy buttons helps control the whole player
• Headphones are comfortable and easy to put on
• Easy connection to the PC using USB cable
Pros (Software)
• Easy installation
• Many features on the software
• Easy to add songs to your player
• Technical support will reply to your message within 48 hours (only for PLUS users)

Cons (Player)
• Kills batteries VERY quickly
• When adding songs to your player, sometimes nothing will show up on your player except for an "E", in which then you have to take out the batteries.
• Headphones rip easily! The part closest to the metal can rip easily!
• Headphones do not stay on ears easily. Suggest getting Sony headphones if you want the same style.
Cons (Software)
• Upgrading to anything higher than MusicMatch Jukebox 7.1 is a BIG MISTAKE. It messes up your computer, your player, and the software.
• You must download extra drivers in order to add songs to your player.
• You can't view lyrics on the player because the Music Guide will take over.
• Requesting Technical Support does NOT work for basic users. It only works for plus users. In order to get help with basic software, you must go to the website and look at the user guide there. Most of the time, they don't have your answer.

I suggest never getting anything from RCA Lyra because of MusicMatch Jukebox. Hope this helps!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Junk
Review: I was impressed when I fist got the Lyra, it had amazing sound and good features about it like the ability to change it to Jazz or Rock, and the behind the ear headphones.

Sadly, I parted with the Lyra becuase after 3 months of use it broke. I was trying to download a song into the memory and the next thing I know it won't even register any songs. I got the Lyra for Christmas and broke in March; it took RCA customer service over a month and a half to respond to my complaint and after 2 months of waiting all I'm getting out of it is $$$ and stress.

There are many other MP3 players on the market that are of much better quality and usage then the Lyra or any other RCA product.
I highly suggest the iRiver DataPlay or something by SonicBlue.

So unless you are in the mood for migranes don't even bother to listen to the RCA Lyra.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Buy
Review: I was wanting an Mp3 Player to use while I job. The RCA Lyra/RD1070 is perfect for this. It is simple to use and light weight. I don't know why everyone is complaining about MusicMatch. It extremely easy if you have any common sense at all. Also the internal memory you get for this price is the best you're going to find. I recommend this item for anyone who wants a good player for a good price.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Buy
Review: I was wanting an Mp3 Player to use while I jog. The RCA Lyra/RD1070 is perfect for this. It is simple to use and light weight. I don't know why everyone is complaining about MusicMatch. It extremely easy if you have any common sense at all. Also the internal memory you get for this price is the best you're going to find. I recommend this item for anyone who wants a good player for a good price.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mixed Results
Review: I've been less than thrilled with the RCA device. I had hardware problems, software problems, and support problems. Not a good user experience to say the least.

The software is less than intuitive. If MusicMatch is winning awards from PC magazine, it must be a weak field indeed. I loaded some songs from CDs I owned and found on playback that they would skip and terminate mid-song.

I emailed to MusicMatch from the form that comes with the software and got an email back saying that support was not included with this version, I had to upgrade to the paid version of the software to get support. This is BS, if MusicMatch doesn't offer support, don't include a form as a ploy to get people to upgrade!

A couple of days later the device stopped working completely. I returned it.

I found the constant barrage of messages to upsell me to the subscription version of the software to be really annoying. Having purchased a player from a legitimate brand name like RCA, I didn't expect to have it bundled with de-featured free software with continual pitches to get even more money from me.

I would recommend against purchasing this MP3 Player.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: RCA - There has got to be an easier way!
Review: I've been tooling around with this little gadget for about a month now, and there's definitely a few points I need to make. PROS. First of all, it's quite the bang for the buck in terms of memory. Depending on size of files, I've been managing to get roughly 30 songs into the Lyra. It's also super light and compact. I actually like the earphones it came with, needs a little adjusting to, but better than the buds I've had before.

Onto the CONS. The Musicmatch software it came with (an absolute necessity in downloading the music onto the player) would not open once I had installed it onto my Windows XP. Thinking it was a fluke, I downloaded another version through Musicmatch.com - it still didn't work. At this point, I was essentially screwed and wanted to violently pull the hair off my head. I finally got a version that worked through downnload.com and had to start practice toggling the mp3's. The programs itself is very reliable (I had used the same program on the mac though the Lyra is incompatible with it). It needs a little practicing and I would definitely recommend reading every single window before pressing "OK" or whatever. When asked "Also delete the selected file(s) from your computer?", I accidentally said 'yes' and Musicmatch deleted MY ENTIRE MP3 COLLECTION OFF MY COMPUTER!! The mp3-mpy conversion is a little tricky because my computer can't play an mp3 file if it's been converted back FROM an mpy file. It's all rather confusing, leaving me to think that there MUST be an easier way for RCA to do this.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nice Sound - Poor Software Interface
Review: I've got to agree with most of the other reviewers - the device itself sounds great, and for a good price, but the software is seriously wanting.

Firstly, it is a misnomer to label it an MP3 player. It is not that, given that one must convert the files (with the cumpulsory, cumbersome, and generally annoying MusicMatch software) into .MPY files, the only format the unit will play. I could live with that if I could get over 30% of my MP3's to be recognized as writable.

I'm returning mine tomorrow for an MP3 player that plays MP3's.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Player good, software stinks
Review: If my experience with Musicmatch is used, I will never buy another RCA mp3 player. I received it for Christmas 2002, and have used it a LOT. If you leave the batteries in, they seem to drain for some reason. The music quality is very good, and it's not too hard to use. I wasn't aware that you could play WMA files. I like sticking with good old mp3s.
Like other people, I have been very unhappy with Musicmatch. The old software works fine. You can add or remove music and see what is in the player. Now you can add music, but you can only remove music or see what is loaded by clicking on the drive icon in windows. It's VERY irritating, and Musicmatch does not seem interested in resolving the problem. With Real and Itunes supporting various players, I will try another brand in the future. Right now my eye is on the Dell jukebox.


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