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RCA Lyra Jukebox
Ever since the iPod came out, all of my friends have been buzzin' about hard drive- based MP3 players. Several have asked me for advice about buying one, or something similar -- preferably a unit that doesn't cost too much or that doesn't require buying additional hardware (or switching to Mac)...
Before I begin the review of the Lyra, I should make a disclaimer: I am one of those people (in good company) that thinks the iPod is one of the best fusions of well thought out engineering and design. It wins, hands down, against any similar product on the market. Any reviewer of a hard drive- based MP3 player like the Lyra has the difficult job of taking the product at face value without comparing it at every step to what is clearly the best paradigm of the entire class of gadget. So, that said, I will be reviewing the Lyra trying not to compare, but rather judge it on its own merits, because if I didn't, every sentence would end with "of course, the iPod is [smaller] [easier to use] [has more features]"....
The Lyra Jukebox is RCA's first attempt at a hard drive-based player, though they have several solid Flash-based players. The Lyra Jukebox comes in two models, with either 10 or 20 gigs. The 20GB version has a suggested retail of US$300 and sells on the street for around $270. They are identical in size and shape, differing only in color. The 10 gig model is a bluish color, the 20 gig is more of a purple. Each has the capacity stamped on the rubber molding on one end, while on the other end is stamped in half-inch letters "MP3" lest people think that you're holding one of those, what were they called? Oh yeah, cassette players.
Out of the box, the Lyra has just about every accessory you'd ever want. It has behind-the-ear headphones of fair-to-good quality and a handy neoprene belt clip that holds the unit firmly. It has a DC adapter for the rechargeable batteries, a USB cable for connecting the unit to your PC, and a minijack-to-RCA cable for plugging the Lyra directly into your home stereo.
The Lyra is a pretty hefty device. If you're used to listening to music on a cassette player, you'll probably be fairly comfortable with the Lyra, but if you've moved on to smaller digital music players like a MiniDisc player or Flash RAM MP3 player, the size of the Lyra will seem somewhat unwieldy. It's certainly not the ideal size for a handheld gadget, which empirically speaking, is no more than 3" x 5" x 0.7 (the dimensions of the original Palm Pilot). That said, the Lyra is fairly tightly packed and fits comfortably in one's hand (though it looks a little like an insulin pump when worn in the included belt clip).
On the outside of the unit, accessible through a window on the belt clip, are the two rather unique five-way joystick controls. With the 1.5" LCD screen between the joysticks, the Lyra Jukebox looks more like a Gameboy Advance than a music player. Though the little joysticks have a certain retro appeal, they require two-handed operation. The right stick controls most of the up-and-down navigation through the menus, though perplexingly, pushing the left stick does the selecting. Pressing the right stick plays the selection, or pauses, if playing. Moving the right stick left or right skips forward or back when playing, but otherwise doesn't do anything. Moving the left stick up and down adjusts the volume, while the lateral motion of the left stick toggles play mode (random, repeat, etc). Got all that? It's more confusing than it sounds, and after only a few weeks (!) with the Lyra, I've got the hang of it.
There are also five other buttons on the front of the unit - four more buttons that control the various features and the power button. One even seems dedicated to a particularly useless feature "A->B repeat" which basically allows you to choose several seconds of every song to repeat over and over and over... I dunno, maybe it's what the kids are into these days, or something.
Despite the confusing button controls, the Lyra's navigation software is great. The main menu allows navigation by artist, album, song title or genre. The files are also navigable by file folder. Since the player operates as an external hard-drive as well, you can create a separate folder for each artist and album (this is important for those who may have collected music with varied ID3 tags, as is common when using some of the P2P software out there).
The Lyra's software is upgradable too -- that means that the menu program can be tweaked if errors are found and it also means that the unit can be upgraded to play different kinds of files. At this time, only MP3 is supported, but MP3pro is promised and WMA or other formats may be added. I wouldn't count on it though, given the complete lack of support on the website and through tech support, this is likely to be an "as is" product.
Another key feature related to the fact that Lyra can be used as an external hard drive is the ability to rip or download MP3s right to the Lyra drive. While the included ripping software is lackluster at best, using the free CDEX multi-platform ripping tool makes it easy to rip right from CDs to the Lyra. This is essential for those who don't have a lot of extra hard drive space, and also makes it easy to transport other large downloaded files (such as video files).
Not only is it easy to jump around your music collection, but it's also easy to create playlists on the fly. Songs can be marked and put in a playlist, either on the fly, or saved for future play. The only feature lacking is the ability to easily mark whole albums for play. Many of the MP3 players out there now don't have the ability to make playlists, so if you're in the market for one, make sure it has this feature.
Battery life is absolutely fantastic. I never managed to run the unit down completely while keeping track of time, but I tried. A ten-hour car trip playing MP3s the whole way and still battery left to burn. Not only that, but ripping or even playing video files right from the drive on battery power didn't even cause any problems, though it probably did drain the battery a bit faster.
There are a few, and somewhat serious, shortfalls of the Lyra Jukebox. The first and most glaring is an annoying beeping that can be heard whenever the hard drive is spinning. It's faint, it can only be clearly heard when the volume is very low, but as far as I'm concerned, it's unacceptable. The second is the occasional glitches that require a reset. This didn't happen often, but when it did, it occured at the most inconvenient times, when I had nothing with which to poke the little reset button. These MIGHT be attributable to the fact that I had a pre-production version of the hardware. Other minor niggles include the fact that it's only compatible with USB 1.1, which is somewhat slow, that it takes about a minute after downloading songs to update the hierarchy, and that it doesn't charge through the USB cable, all probably fall into the "of course, the iPod is..." category. But then, I promised I wouldn't get into that...
nate -[Friday, October 18, 2002]
Score: 
Related Link: LyraZone
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Posted by winkler1 on 2002-10-23 00:06:11
My score:
Nate-
Sounds like most of the issues you're addressing are software problems, a combination of intentional hobbling and mediocrity. I believe the Notmad stuff does address the points you raise, but don't remember specifically where I read stuff this AM.
I think it makes sense for the hardware guys (Creative) to focus on hardware: make it light, affordable, get a good display and UI, etc. Those decisions are set in stone. PC software can evolve and innovative.
I haven't tried the Notmad stuff, but like their approach --"Perhaps you're wondering, why would we conceive something so twisted as turning an MP3 player into a relational database? We're into funky convergence. It's a thing. Humor us."
...these don't seem like people who are afraid of evolution or opening doors to build tools on.
Jeff |
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Posted by nate on 2002-10-22 16:06:37
My score:
Well, I have high hopes for the Zen, but my experience with other Creative products hasn't been great. With the other HD MP3 player I used from Creative, I found the Playcenter software was deliberately hobbled, probably in an attempt to limit music trading. Ripping to the player seemed impossible, and drag-and-drop transferring of files, music or otherwise, didn't seem possible. That was with their original Nomad Jukebox though, so things may be different now.
The solution to this problem is to have an HD MP3 player that simply shows up as a hard drive on your PC. That allows you to use third party software, such as CDex, and allows you to rip directly to the MP3 player. That is what you can do using the Lyra, which is really great. The iPod does this too, as do the Archos players and some others.
The Zen looks like it might have more features built in that allow file transfer and ripping to player, but it's hard to tell. Initial reports indicate that it can be used for storing other files, which suggests that it can be used as an external hard drive, but I haven't seen it spelled out anywhere how that works or whether it allows those features.
I was unaware of the Notmad software, which looks like it solves some of the problems but not all. I'm hoping to get my hands on a Zen, and I'll certainly write a review if I get one. Initial reports on the Zen are overall good, and it looks like it might be worth losing a little battery life in favor of having something that is much smaller than the Lyra. Of course, I also have high hopes for the e.dig Odyssey, but I don't know if that's going to be worth the $100 more. |
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Posted by winkler1 on 2002-10-22 14:33:21
My score:
How's it compare to the Creative Zen..it has my inner geek drooling. Notmad Explorer sounds really good too..makes for an open, tweakable system, firewire-based. |
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Posted by nate on 2002-10-18 17:06:14
My score:
Note:
The CDex ripping software is available free at Download.com, and is highly recommended.
The "LyraZone" link is probably not the right place to go if you want to purchase or learn more about the Lyra Jukebox, because they haven't put up any information there yet on it. For more information and where to buy go to RCA.com.
Finally, a couple notes about battery life; the 20 gig model is rated to last 17 hours, and I've got nothing that would dispute that. That's pretty impressive. Second, there is another difference between the 10 gig and the 20 gig models that I recieved -- the 10 gig did not have the battery indicator, while the 20 gig did. It's probably just a difference in firmware, but since there's no upgrade available from the LyraZone, you may get stuck with no battery indicator if you get the 10 gig model. |
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