Customer Reviews:
 Awful in many ways December 10, 2007
I had this player for about 2 years and just seem to be encountering problem after problem with this player, I have finally replaced it with an IPod. First, I could never get it figured out how to import a playlist. Even after several calls to technical support who could not help me either. It freezes up every now and then too, you just have to wait for the battery to die before it fixes itself. For the past few months I have been battling the headphone plug which has stopped working. I occasionally get sound in 1 earphone and that is only if it is in exactly the right spot, which makes for a frustrating workout for sure. I would not reccomend this player for anyone, it has just been a frustration and I should have taken it back while I could.
 RCA LYRA Model 2762B September 2, 2007
Well after reading all the other reviews I am shocked. I have had mine for well over a year and not had hardly any issues with it. It does freeze once in a while but what I found causes it is there are album cover files that can download along with the music file. When the Lyra tries to read the album file it freezes. I have found about thirty songs out of hundreds I have on it to be corrupted by having the album cover file that came throught the download. Someone stated downloading from cd's is cleaner which I agree with. As for the battery life I still get about 3-4 hours use before I start to see the battery fading badly. I would even buy another one if this one quits. I use it at the health club daily for about 2 hours at a time and maybe have one or two songs that freeze it up. I write down those songs and delete them when I do another download. Well worth the money I paid - $69.00 w/shipping, on line.
 lyra March 12, 2007
I really like the lyra that i purchased but i find that battery life if very low. The new one that my son has lasts over 6 hours where mine lasts about 2 hours before a recharge. So i would prolly never purchases a remanufactured product again.
Do yourself a favor- Buy another Brand!!! March 11, 2007
Don't buy it! The 4 GB mini-Hard drives that come with this unit fail after a few weeks. Trying to get RCA Customer Support is impossible. Their on-line support is pathetic. To get an idea of how bad these units are, just Google "RCA File System corrupted" and you'll immediately get 129,000 hits!! You don't even have to reference "Lyra" or a model number in the search. That's how bad these are! In fact, there is a Class-Action lawsuit vs. RCA and Thompson, the manufacturer of the Hard-drive pending in NY. So, don't waste your money. Buy some other brand- anything but RCA!
A great little player at a great price March 7, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have been loving this little gem since the day I took it out of the blister pack. It delivers plenty of volume, more than you'll probably ever need or want with headphones of 100 db sensitivity or better. The built-in 5-band graphic EQ is not bad; it really would do better to have more than 5 bands, but hey, at least it's not canned presets, and I have written down my settings for various headphones I have, so I can set the EQ the way I like it when I change out 'phones. Being disk-based, it's a bit slower to power up and look through directories than a unit with solid state memory, but the drive is part of what allows it to be so cheap for what you get (4 GB). The ability to sort your music by artist, album, genre and/or year is a very nice feature when you're trying to find what you want to listen to. And the software for your PC (which auto-activates when it detects the unit plugged into a USB port) can even check the playlists on the Lyra and delete songs that are in the playlist but not on the Lyra (or you could tell it to ignore the discrepancy and move the missing file over to the Lyra).
The niggles are few. First, there's an annoyingly loud "pop" in your headphones while powering up. It shouldn't be difficult to design the thing so that wouldn't happen, but now I'm sorta stuck with it. :/ The unit must be profiled any time you change music or edit ID3 tags, so its master file list (sort of a simple FAT) can be updated; otherwise, it'll list songs you don't have on the thing, and miss songs you do. And profiling the whole 4 GB drive takes a minute or two. An annoyance, not anything worth complaining about, but if you're in a huge hurry all the time, you'll probably find that frustrating. The battery, being a LiIon, does wear out, taking less and less charge over time; it should be quite possible to open the unit if the battery fails and get a reasonable replacement from an online retailer. And the one major drawback of the unit also centers around the battery; it's only good for about 4 hours of loud play, which is not long at all. And the plastic "joystick" in the middle of the control wheel is getting looser with use; I worry about its life expectancy. Also, the carry pouch has a belt loop instead of a clip, meaning you have to string it onto your belt while putting on your pants, and vice versa if you want to get it off your belt. A clip would have been a much better solution, IMHO.
Thomson/RCA is very wily with their mini-B USB interface. The data cable to your computer has the regular 4 pins on the computer (USB type A) side, and those connect to the 4 "usual" pins in the mini-B connector. When you plug the Lyra into a computer with that cable, it goes into "data transfer" mode, and you can't listen to music when it is in that state. To tell the Lyra that it is connected to a charger, and thus to not go into "transfer" mode, the extra 5th pin on the mini-B connector gets connected to the V+ pin as well, thus signaling the Lyra that it's not connected to a computer; you CAN listen to music with it when in this mode and charging. With RCA asking for so much money for a car adapter, I've sourced cable ends and cables that I can adapt to work with the Lyra, and I'll be offering them for sale soon. The kit consists of a cable that is USB type A on one end and mini-B on the other, with the extra mini-B pin tied to V+, a cigarette lighter adapter with a solid state voltage regulator and a USB type A socket (with the cable, you can charge and play at the same time while plugged into a cigarette lighter), and a small battery pack that holds two AA batteries and which connects to the cable via a USB type A socket (so now you have an external battery back that holds two AA batteries, thus making the unit a lot more versatile because of its longer play time and ease of replacing the AA batteries as needed rather than having to find a place to charge the LiIon battery every few hours). The cable alone can be used to charge the unit from a computer's USB port while still allowing it to play music.
I had been having occasional problems while listening and riding my motorcycle where the unit would just freeze as if paused and stop playing music; skipping to the next song and then back again cleared it up, but it was a bit annoying. However, they just released new firmware (how many companies still are improving their firmware long after the product was discontinued as a current unit?) that improves stability, as well as fixing a few other niggles (like having to press a control twice if the unit's backlight had shut off to get it to obey your command).
All in all, I have no complaints of any real gravity. For the capacity, the thing is a total bargain, even considering the hard drive instead of solid state memory. My girlfriend has one too and loves hers as much as I love mine.
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