Lyra (thing)

I've been with the MP3 "scene" for a long time (about 3 years). I'd been meaning to get a portable MP3 player since they were available, but I didn't want to dish out $200 for one. This weekend an opportunity arose. My friend had just got a brand new RCA Lyra but couldn't figure out how to use it and was too lazy to take the time to learn. He offered to sell it to me for $150. I considered but then declined. Later that day he asked for a ride to San Francisco. I told him no, but then he said he'd give me the Lyra for a ride and $40. I couldn't pass that up. So now I am the proud owner of an RCA Lyra portable MP3 player.

After getting it from my friend I took it home and hooked it up to my PC. My friend neglected to give me the software or manual so I was on my own. It came with cables to hook up the memory card to my PC's parallel port. Unlike some MP3 players you don't dock the whole unit but rather eject the memory card and plug only that in. I went to Lyra's web site to download the parallel port drivers. The driver installed with no difficulties, which actually surprised me. Another thing that surprised me is that it maps the memory card as a letter drive. I thought that was great. Having not read the manual, and seeing no other software on the Lyra website, I figured you could simply drag mp3s straight to the memory card. How wrong I was.

It turns out you have to use special software to copy the files to the memory card. Most MP3 players use software specific to that player to copy music to it. The Lyra has no such software. Instead it relies on third party Jukebox software such as RealJukebox, MusicMatch, or even Windows Media Player 7. It apparently comes with RealJukebox Plus, but since my friend neglected to give me the software, I just used my free copy of RealJukebox. Copying music to the device was very simple. You just make a playlist and select "Send to Portable Device". RealJukebox does the rest. During the copying process I noticed something interesting. Some of the songs copied in seconds, while others took a minute or two. It seems that the Lyra does not support MP3s encoded at higher than 128 kbps. Any file that is encoded at a higher bitrate or encoded at variable bitrate has to be re-encoded by RealJukebox. Since I only have the free version it cannot encode at higher than 96kbps. That really pissed me off. Most of my MP3s that I encode myself or download from Napster are 192kbps, meaning that if I use RealJukebox almost all my MP3s will be changed to 96kbps when I move them to the player. I tried using WMP to do the transfer instead. WMP ended up taking longer than RealJukebox did. Sure it will encode at 128kbps but it re-encodes everything to WMA files, and the encoder is very slow. So basically I have three options: Live with RealJukebox and 96kbps MP3s, Deal with WMP taking ages to re-encode the files to WMA, or pay $30 to upgrade RealJukebox to the Plus version. All three options are unappealing. Why can't I just copy the files straight to the player? Goddammit!

The Lyra has some other issues too. Even at max volume it isn't very loud. The buttons are unresponsive. It is very slow when changing tracks. The battery life is very short. Even with all its shortcomings I do really like it. It is a first generation product and I'm sure that things will only get better.