Plays Microsoft WMA's now. Cool!
Written: Jun 06 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: wow, a new digital audio format!
Cons: won't play low sample rate streams
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| scottredd's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD2204 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I've already rated this device, but I wanted to chirp up again and mention that the Lyra now plays Microsoft WMA files! This advancement brings the Lyra out of the realm of ordinary MP3 player (of course, it played Real G2 files, already) and make it a true portable Digital Audio Player!
To play the WMA format on your Lyra, you'll need to do one of two things.
1. Install the new Beta 7 version of the Microsoft Media Player. In my opinion, I would caution against this. The product is bloated beyond recognition, trying to be a all-in-one media center. If you do install it, somewhere there is an option to install the Lyra plugin. This will install the new WMA.EXE file onto the Lyra.
2. Get a copy of the simple WMA.EXE file from someone else and install that directly on the Lyra's Compact Flash card. This is all you really need to play the new format. Many other third-party apps will let you encode to WMA without the bloat of the new Media Player from Microsoft.
The WMA format for music sounds great on the Lyra. A file compressed at 64 kbps sounds nearly as good as an MP3 at 128 kbs. That gets you nearly two hours of music on the 64 meg Compact Flash card. Another plus is that the WMA files are not encrypted like the Lyra's proprietary MPX format. Therefore, you can store and exchange the raw WMA files with friends and install using your Windows Explorer rather than a special app just to copy music to the flash card.
One drawback to this new player is that it won't recognize low sample bit rates. I was excited about encoding hours and hours of low bitrate speech and audiobooks, but found that the player balks at anything less than 64 kbps. With that in mind, I'll stick to encoding my audiobooks at 16 kbps with MP3.
All things considered, I would recommend every Lyra owner investigate this new functionality. The ability to play not just one, or even two digital audio formats, but an amazing three formats makes the Lyra one of the coolest of the portable players.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
scottredd
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Member: Scott Redd
Location: Omaha, NE
Reviews written: 28
Trusted by: 12 members
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