Whoa! New HD Mp3 Player

[CompDude]

I just found out 2day while surfin on futureshop that there's a new mp3 player out by RCA called the Lyra RD2854. It boasts a 40 GB Hard Drive, Usb 2.0, Radio, a 10 hour battery life (but it's the same kind of battery as the HXXX Series), 94db s/n ratio, radio recorder. and voice recorder. Supports MP3, Mp3Pro, WMA, DRM, but is Format Upgradeable. Included in box is: Clip-on style headphones, Carrying Case, AC adapter, Aux/o cables, car kit, usb cable, and music management software.

[XavierGr]

Any Links for the lazy ones??

[turdburglar]

Ugly as sin, though it has a nice big screen on it.

I don't like the looks of the navigation buttons.

Doesn't have any extra features that I care about, besides FM recording.

I'm wary of RCA ever since I owned a Kazoo (small 64MB flash player years ago.)

Oh, and it's ugly as sin also.

Next.

[CompDude]

Here's the link if any of you (lazy) ones need it RCA Lyra RD2854

[FlameGrilled]

I'm also wary of Thomson Lyra/RCA Lyra...

I had a 2840U sitting here for all of three days, out of curiosity during one of my defecting moments when i was ready to chuck in the 'go for the rational choices' towel. The fact i had a copy of everything i ever encoded already in Q100 VBR MP3PRO made it an easier decision.

The U variant (the UMS one in other words) actually was a good deck, it was certainly no pile of junk nor outstanding - but for mp3pro, it was one of the limited numbers of decks in the arena.

Like the iHP, it has DB and direct nav modes - which closes the gaps that often diff between HDD units.

Where my faith got shattered was... firmware upgrades.

I found there was a firmware upgrade for it, but i decided to sit it out and test the deck via the onboard firmware. For ref, the Lyra JB's dont use a 'firmware' in the sense of a mass flash update, you actually replace protected files on the HDD such as components of the modular audio player app.

However, during a sync process (the remote, attached to pc, DB rescan and update - can be done also using the onboard scanner when not connected to PC), it kept insisting on trying to update the f/w.

So i caved in, and because a crictical file needed to be altered, i had to manually change the attributes from r/o on that one on-board file.

Guess what got totally screwed during the auto upgrade process..??

The result, a deck that would only boot up to an error message .. was totally useless and not even accessible as a UMS device.

It even failed to show a corrupted UMS device to one of my data rec programs can can literally lift data from a device if it appears to be UMS, or other such non-physical 'disk' or storage - to put some perspective on that, it's better than 98% successful on almost anything i've thrown at the software to date.

So, as you can imagine, my mp3pro discs got returned back into deep fireproof storage, and i ended up seeking (and sucessfully and painlessly) getting a refund for the retailer.

The same retailer also stocks the item that replaced the 2840U, but i still aint got over the shakes and cold-sweat of seeing the 2840 go 'dead' to risk another Lyra that i spent my money on (if my bosses ask me to test, for potential stock line addition, it'll be a different story).

So i think i'll be not jumping and doing somersaults over the concept of a new Lyra JB - more like running back into the bunker and hoping to god noone askes me to help them out re Lyra's..

[reddshack]

RCA makes a brick of a DAP. Those things are sooo BIG. My friend has a Lyra 2..... twice the size of my H140, seriously. And yes, ugly as sin.....

And side headphone jack??? What were they thinking!?

[Lone]

The two redeeming qualities of that player are; gapless playback, and being able to use either file tree or tag browsing. Also, the joystick navigator thing is supposed to suck something awful.

[SRGilbert]

Given it's squarish shape, I wonder if they use the same HD as the Rio Karma?

[sweetspot]

Originally Posted by Lone

The two redeeming qualities of that player are; gapless playback, and being able to use either file tree or tag browsing. Also, the joystick navigator thing is supposed to suck something awful.

Where did you read that it's capable of gapless ? Did I miss that ? Even so...as mentioned above...HP jack on side=Bzzzzzzzzt ! Try again dumb asses ! Oh..and for me, no remote is an automatic disqualification. I personally don't find it all that ugly though..But that's just me, Mr. Ugly.

[NPswimdude500]

I'm sure that this player will be perfect for those pda owners looking for that special dap with that "outdated" squarish look that is so common to ALL pda's

[pomegranate]

Hey.. I quite like that, reminds me of 80s Sony personal radios and cassette Walkmans. Shame about the phones socket though..

[tine]

That is ugly, but in a cool utilitarian 12 Monkeys kind of way!!
I can't speak for it as I haven't tried it, but I have a Thomson Stereo which has been amazing. The sound quality is excellent, and I have had no problems in 18 months, the only issue is that there is no line in for my baby. So i think I'll have to upgrade soon!

[Lone]

Where did you read that it's capable of gapless ? Did I miss that ? Even so...as mentioned above...HP jack on side=Bzzzzzzzzt ! Try again dumb asses ! Oh..and for me, no remote is an automatic disqualification. I personally don't find it all that ugly though..But that's just me, Mr. Ugly.

Austin at Dapreview.com got one of those things real early into production, and did a short write up on it. He said it's got gapless, and that it works as it should. And yeah, a headphone jack on the side is just ridiculous.