Rating: 
Summary: Poor
Review: I would not recommend this product. After 3 months, it completely broke. It was never dropped or used harshly. I would not recommend this product.
Rating: 
Summary: The little mp3 player is great.....but
Review: It weights nothing and can play about 1-1/2 hours of music, which would make about one CD and a 1/2 or about 18 songs. The player is great, what really sucks is the software. I find it totally useless and when I have to download songs from my computer, I have to use my own computers software (DVD/CD record now), create a CD specifically for an mp3 player and then copy that disk into my mp3. The other way to do it is by using Windows explorer and by click and drag. And still another way to download it would be by using my computers software (DVD/CD record now) again, search for songs in the hard drive, and then download them into the mp3. The software that comes with the Lyra (MUSICMATCH) is a piece of junk, very difficult to use (if not impossible). It's good only to play downloaded music from your computer, but to download into the Lyra is a pain to learn. Other than that, the Lyra is great.
Rating: 
Summary: Linux support
Review: It works great under linux too.
All you need to do is make sure your kernel has support for USB storage (most major distros do and if they don't, it's easy to recompile with support for it), and it will come up as /dev/sda1 (unless you have a serial ATA drive, in which case, /dev/sd[b/c/d]1)
You can simply mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/mp3 and copy your files to it just like a normal directory.
Don't forget to unmount before unplugging the USB cable.
The arm-band is also great for running.
Rating: 
Summary: Very happy
Review: Just got this little thing for Christmas. Worked right out of the box. Plugged it into a Win2K machine without bothering with the accompanying software. It was recognized, and I could jsut drag and drop. 64 MB players are becoming tougher to find. Very happy with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have spent more for better product.
Review: Maybe it's just my particular unit or it's the SD card I have but every other time I try to play a large file off my SD card, the Lyra crashes. This occurs at least half the time I try to use the MP3 player. I have discovered, through trial and error, my own remedy (as the manual is pretty useless and there is very little effective troubleshooting assistance provided). I have to take out the SD card, take out my battery. Reinsert the SD card, reinsert the battery. Turn it on. Take the battery out again after it crashes. Put the battery back in. Turn it on. Take the SD card out. Put it back in. Repeat above (not necessarily in that order) until such time as the Lyra actually plays the file. Also, there is no driver for Windows ME. The manual claims that there is, but when you try to load it, there isn't one. I e-mailed RCA customer support. Their response: There isn't one. They may offer one in the future. How likely is it that they will create a new driver for a product that is being replaced with newer models? In fact, I can't download any files to my RCA at all --since I have no driver. Fortunately, my digital camera (the WONDERFUL Casio Z4) uses the same SD card so I can actually use the camera's software and cradle to upload MP3 files to the SD card and then use the SD card with my MP3 player. Really, though, it doesn't say much for the RCA Lyra when I can't use it without using a digital camera as an interface to my computer. While I'm complaining:
The manual is a thin booklet that offers very little information.
It doesn't play the latest file formats.
It eats batteries.
The unit feels cheap (it has a plastic housing).
The battery compartment door looks like it's going to fall off any minute now (and I only had this unit for a few weeks).
The display is not backlit so you can't use it in the dark (or heavy shade, for that matter). On the other hand, the volume gets pretty high.
It's tiny and very light.
Rating:
Summary: WHERE WHY
Review: My old one was stolen on a business trip - Have now relocated to UK and can't get it anywhere in Europe - Amazon wont ship it here. WANT IT again.
Rating:
Summary: couldn't make it go
Review: Struggled with this for hrs. I knew it was going to be bad when the software wizard did zip. I later read several frustated reviews by other who (like me ) had Xp, got little support for RCA and found their online help useless. Even those instructions did not work through all the steps.
Yeesh/. Waste of gas to go and buy it and then return it.
Rating:
Summary: A decent little player, with some limitations
Review: The 64Â MB RCA Lyra has enough internal storage for 13 to 15 stereo MP3s at good quality (128-160 kbps), or twice that in mono-good for spoken-word recordings. It's very small and pretty easy to use, has standard memory expansion, sounds good, and has a decent set of features for its size and price...SUMMARY Good: Small size, attractive, neither too few nor too many buttons, big-ish screen, included armband carrying case/headphones/battery (a Duracell!), decent equalization presets, appears as a standard USB drive on Macs or Windows machines (and probably Linux), standard SD/MMC memory expansion slot. Bad: Plays MP3 and WMA (but not AAC or other formats), only reads older ID3v1 artist/title tags (so MP3s that include ID3v2 but not the older v1 tags show up as "TWISTA~1.MP3" instead of "Twist and Shout.mp3"), displays only title/artist/bit-rate (not other tags), shows only time elapsed (not time remaining), clip-on headphones are kind of awkward, orders songs by filename (not playlist order), doesn't show up directly in iTunes (but you can drag tracks right from the iTunes window to the Lyra "disk"), no custom EQ possible, no backlight. DETAILS I'm quite pleased with this player, although it has its quirks. The key is that it sounds good and is easy to use. It's reasonably well built, but you can tell it's plastic. It includes a good Duracell battery and armband-style carrying case, and also has a little hole for a cell-phone-type lanyard (not included), so it's quite flexible and portable. Being able to add SD/MMC cards for storage means the 64Â MB internal memory isn't much of a limitation: you can get 256Â MB or 512Â MB Secure Digital cards quite easily, and share them with your digicam or Palm handheld if you want. The Lyra seems to order its songs by their filenames, not by the order of the iTunes playlist. Since I tend to play songs on Shuffle mode, that doesn't matter much to me, but if I wanted to listen to a whole album I'd need to make sure the filenames were numbered. In addition, while the Lyra reads the ID3 tags included in MP3 files to describe artist, title, and so on, it seems only to read version 1 tags. While an MP3 file can include more than one type of ID3 tag, many of my MP3 files use only version 2 tags, so the Lyra displays the ugly short Windows version of the name ("WHOLEL~1.MPG" for "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'.mp3", for instance). I may need to use ID3X or a similar utility to fix up my collection. Finally, the headphones that come with the Lyra are weird. They clip on with little plastic hooks that go behind your ears. Although the design is interesting, they sound good, and the mirrored earpieces look cool, they're awkward. Traditional headband or behind-the-head 'phones are easy to put on and remove (my preschool-age daughters have no trouble with theirs). These are awkward and slow to get on and off, and the cords tend to tangle. If you want something small, a set of standard earbuds might be better. Here's a good set of recommendations for replacements from a real headphone expert, with followup discussion...
Rating:
Summary: A decent little player, with some limitations
Review: The 64 MB RCA Lyra has enough internal storage for 13 to 15 stereo MP3s at good quality (128-160 kbps), or twice that in mono-good for spoken-word recordings. It's very small and pretty easy to use, has standard memory expansion, sounds good, and has a decent set of features for its size and price...SUMMARY Good: Small size, attractive, neither too few nor too many buttons, big-ish screen, included armband carrying case/headphones/battery (a Duracell!), decent equalization presets, appears as a standard USB drive on Macs or Windows machines (and probably Linux), standard SD/MMC memory expansion slot. Bad: Plays MP3 and WMA (but not AAC or other formats), only reads older ID3v1 artist/title tags (so MP3s that include ID3v2 but not the older v1 tags show up as "TWISTA~1.MP3" instead of "Twist and Shout.mp3"), displays only title/artist/bit-rate (not other tags), shows only time elapsed (not time remaining), clip-on headphones are kind of awkward, orders songs by filename (not playlist order), doesn't show up directly in iTunes (but you can drag tracks right from the iTunes window to the Lyra "disk"), no custom EQ possible, no backlight. DETAILS I'm quite pleased with this player, although it has its quirks. The key is that it sounds good and is easy to use. It's reasonably well built, but you can tell it's plastic. It includes a good Duracell battery and armband-style carrying case, and also has a little hole for a cell-phone-type lanyard (not included), so it's quite flexible and portable. Being able to add SD/MMC cards for storage means the 64 MB internal memory isn't much of a limitation: you can get 256 MB or 512 MB Secure Digital cards quite easily, and share them with your digicam or Palm handheld if you want. The Lyra seems to order its songs by their filenames, not by the order of the iTunes playlist. Since I tend to play songs on Shuffle mode, that doesn't matter much to me, but if I wanted to listen to a whole album I'd need to make sure the filenames were numbered. In addition, while the Lyra reads the ID3 tags included in MP3 files to describe artist, title, and so on, it seems only to read version 1 tags. While an MP3 file can include more than one type of ID3 tag, many of my MP3 files use only version 2 tags, so the Lyra displays the ugly short Windows version of the name ("WHOLEL~1.MPG" for "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'.mp3", for instance). I may need to use ID3X or a similar utility to fix up my collection. Finally, the headphones that come with the Lyra are weird. They clip on with little plastic hooks that go behind your ears. Although the design is interesting, they sound good, and the mirrored earpieces look cool, they're awkward. Traditional headband or behind-the-head 'phones are easy to put on and remove (my preschool-age daughters have no trouble with theirs). These are awkward and slow to get on and off, and the cords tend to tangle. If you want something small, a set of standard earbuds might be better. Here's a good set of recommendations for replacements from a real headphone expert, with followup discussion...
Rating:
Summary: Good buy.....but
Review: The player itself works fantastically. It produces plenty of volume to keep away distractions during my workout and is small enough to stay out of the way. Two problems:
1. I wasn't able to sync this Lyra with my computer. Granted, my machine runs on Windows ME...I had to take it to a buddy's computer to load music using his XP machine. 2. The earphones that come with the Lyra are [bad]. Like a previous reviewer, I use a pair of ear buds and they work just fine. Overall, a good buy.
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