RCA RD2840 Lyra 40 GB Personal Jukebox MP3 Player

Rating:
Summary: This is in No Way Mac Compatable
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: 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!!

Rating:
Summary: A great price but...
Review: 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.



Rating:
Summary: My experiences with the RCA Lyra...
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Still a beta product!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: I smashed mine to pieces out of frustration... Good Luck!!!
Review: 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!!!

Rating:
Summary: okay product, could be much better
Review: 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).

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: 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!