Really Cool...If and When You Figure It Out.
Written: Jan 04 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Sound: |
 |
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Portability: |
 |
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Can hold a lot of music
Really small
The price is RIGHT
Durable
Cons: Not sure about battery life
No back light
It could use a clip
The Bottom Line: Great for those looking for something that gets the job done but not so expensive that it puts a dent in the pocket. It helps if you know about computers
|
|
|
| manlyguy's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD1021 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I was overjoyed when I got this neat looking, little compact mp3 player for this Christmas. Being a newbie when it comes to these things, I tore open the box and promptly installed the MusicMatch software. Moments later, I was totally stumped... trying to figure out how the software worked. The instruction manual that came with it really did not explain much.
I finally was able to (using MusicMatch) create a playlist and download 13 songs to the 64mb built in memory. Gee, I thought that it would have been more than that. Anyway the day after Christmas, I went out and bought a 128mb memory card so that I could have more music. I was able to download another 26 songs onto the memory card for a total of 39 songs. Cool, I thought, but I was hoping for more.
And then it happened, I turned the mp3 player on and it froze at the opening "RCA" logo.What? No amount of button pushing after that made it work. I had to take the battery out of the unit, put it back in, turn it back on and it worked...but now it did not recognize the memory card...saying that the player only contained 13 songs. I went thru this for awhile before I finally got online to read reviews on the project. While most of them were positive there were several negative reviews, and most of those talked about the same problems I was having. And then I figured it out. When the battery gets low, there is not enough power to boot up the player properly. I simply put in a new AAA battery and had no problems after that. After about 8-10 hours of use, the same thing happened and I did the same thing and it worked again.
I still wanted more music, though. I went back to the reviews and read something about not needing Musicmatch and Windows Media Player being a better tool for downloading music. So I started fooling around with WMP and found out that it was easier. So I deleted Musicmatch.
The reviews also said that there was a way to reduce the size of music files so that you could fit more music onto the player during downloads.
In Windows Media Player, after connecting the RD1021 unit to your computer, go to tools and click options...select the devices tab and a pop up showing your attached devices shows up. Select your player and click properties. From there, just select a smaller option for the devices downloads and apply. I had been doing downloads at 128mb and I switched to 32mb for downloads. After that the computer automaticlly converts your downloads to the player.
After that, I deleted everything I had on the player and started over. When I got done, I had a total of 129 songs downloaded to the RCA Lyra RD1021. By my estimate, around 4-5 hours of music. You may sacrifice just a bit in sound quality (sometimes I can't tell the difference)but it's been more than worth it to me.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 58.00
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
manlyguy
|
|
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.