In this community, we have done much to document and preserve the history of cassette Walkmans, MD Players, Discmans, and even iPods. Thanks to forums like ours, internet users have comprehensive access to so much information on portable music devices... but the player I am documenting today is one that seldom gets much attention online, has very few decent pictures available, and has never even been covered on YouTube. Of course, I am talking about the RCA Lyra RD2201, the 1999 Thomson digital audio player that was an early trailblazer of portable digital music. Predating the iPod by 2 years, the Lyra was created by Thomson Electronics in partnership with Real Networks and is actually a fairly well executed product that was decent to use, simple, and surprisingly ordinary (in comparison with the slightly older MPMan and Diamond RIO). To be clear, despite being sold as an RCA product here in the US, this product has nothing to do with the old RCA company and was sold under the Thomson name in other parts of the world. The Lyra had several standout features that made it fairly competitive against other 1st gen players, but it was ultimately squashed by the iPod and cheaper flash players that came a few years after. Luckily, I have a NOS Lyra that has been waiting 25 years to come out and play. Let's set it up and see just what it was like to be on the cutting edge of digital music in 2000. To be clear, we are looking at the RD2206, which is exactly the same as the RD2201 except it adds in support for WMA via a preinstalled firmware upgrade. Before anything else, we have to talk about the box... I just love the design of it! Don't get me wrong, it's not good design... it's cluttered, gaudy, has too much text, and the people on the front are trying way too hard to make the player & CF card look sexy and desirable. It honestly reminds me of something you'd find at Kmart or Big Lots... a massive box that grabs your attention hanging on a peg in the electronics department beside the VCR cleaning kit and blank CDRs. I especially love the velcro clasped folder flap that opens showing the actual player inside and CF card/reader... They tried really hard to make this appealing. Also notice that this player supports not just one, but TWO Jukebox software programs, both included! This is pretty uncommon because most brands of players would choose just one Jukebox and stick with it... until Windows Media Player became popular... then by that time players would work with either the bundled software OR WMP which was a great selling point for users, but not for the companies making jukebox software. Speaking of Windows Media Player, I think it's important at this time to understand just what software you can use the Lyra RD2201 with. Not surprisingly, Windows Media Player is not supported... and neither is just copying MP3 files via Windows Explorer. Also, the versions of Real & MusicMatch that are included with the device are custom RCA branded, so the Lyra won't work with retail copies of Real/MusicMatch or newer versions. Basically, what you get on the included CD is what you got, nothing more, nothing less. Thomson was really generous here and gave us plenty of extra junk in the box. We have the player, some premium headphones, a 64mb CF card (quite spacious for 1999), USB CF reader, some documentation, the Jukebox/driver CD, and also a rather cheap and flimsy looking cassette adapter & car charger. Although it may seem strange to bundle a futuristic MP3 player with a 'last millennium' cassette adapter, this was during the time when cars didn't have an 'AUX' input, so using a cassette adapter was the only way to get MP3s in the car. Now that I've freed the unit from its discount store style tomb, let's examine the look and feel of it in the hand. I enjoy the champagne/silver two tone paint job, and the way the buttons are organized is easy to see and comprehend. My only complaint would be that the STOP/FF/REW buttons all have traditional 'tape transport' iconography, but the play button does not. It isn't consistent in this manner. Also the display is quite large and looks to be backlit from the 'light' button that is included. Incidentally, reviews at the time praised the large display and backlight ability as being to one of the best available. On the negative side, the device is quite lightweight and cheap feeling in the hand, and pressing any of the buttons causes the entire device to creak. The plastic moulding is also not consistent/smooth around the corners, leaving ugly gaps and paint problems. Finally, the belt clip would probably break in a few days and the sticker that has the model and serial number on it is quite tacky looking and not evenly placed. The cheapness continues inside of the battery compartment where we can easily see exposed wire running from the battery contacts to the motherboard. Combine this with the QC passed sticker and it's not a high quality look. Ditto the exposed CF slot that has no door to keep out dust and debris. Okay, so the design and quality isn't perfect, but for what it is, it's not too bad. Let's power it up for the first time and see if it works. Looks like it does indeed power on and the display looks clear and easy to read! I believe the MusicMatch logo here on boot indicates that the player was setup at the factory to use MusicMatch Jukebox (as opposed to Real Player). Neat. Now, Let's get it hooked up to a period accurate computer! This 2002 HP Pavilion 501n will do the trick nicely as it has Windows XP Home Edition SP2 installed and is ready to go. I have hooked up the CF reader to a USB 2.0 port (via a PCI add-on card), so let's put some drivers on here for it. On the slim chance you may have a RD2201 yourself and are trying this in XP, I will save you some time and go ahead and tell you that the included drivers and jukebox software CD will ONLY work with Windows 98. Nothing else. I tried it on XP and it failed to even start the installer (the driver installer checks the OS version before installing). Compatibility mode doesn't solve this issue either... What you actually need to get XP to work with this thing is the Installation CD for the 2001 RCA Lyra 2, which conveniently uses the same CF card reader as the RD2201. In fact, the installation CD for the Lyra 2 will let you select from 'Lyra2' or 'Lyra' from a drop down to get true Lyra 1 support. Looks like the right player! ...and the same 2000s babe that really loves her Lyra. Once you finish the installation, you may see a message that the hardware wasn't installed properly. This is normal. Once the computer reboots, put the CF card in the reader before logging in, and it will come up with the find new hardware wizard. Point the wizard to your CD drive and the Windows 2k folder under the USB CF Card driver folder on the Installation CD... it will say that it failed again but it will magically still work. This happened to me. Clearly, we can see the CF Card as 'Removable Disc G' here. I decided to install Real Jukebox instead of MusicMatch as I prefer it. It's simple and generally has better import compatibility with music ripped to Windows Media Player. In fact, you can see that Real Jukebox very quickly grabbed all ~2500 tracks I had stored on this computer with Windows Media Player 10 series. It was surprisingly painless, and I'm sure with MusicMatch I would not have been so lucky. Here we can also see the custom RCA branding I mentioned earlier. This is indeed a bit of a custom flavor of the player, and if you go into the settings or about page, it's also a bit modified in there as well. Ok, so we have the drivers working and a compatible player loaded up with music... all we have to do now is actually copy a track! Here we can see how Real shows the CF card, and how the bread crumbs in the menu show it as a 'Lyra' product. All of the music on this system is MP3 320kbps, but sadly, the Lyra only does 128kbps max. So, Real Jukebox is going to covert it down to 128 for me automatically. It looks like Van Halen's Jump is going to use up ~4mb of space on that 64mb card after being converted into 128kbps MP3. The process was slow, but it was reliable and didn't have any issues copying over. And just like that, it is playing the track I just copied! Honestly, this was much easier than I was expecting, especially after that issue with the XP drivers not working properly at first. I was surprised to see how basic the display was. Going from nice bold RCA & MusicMatch logos to basic text was disappointing. There is no track progress bar or UI helpers for anything... the display kinda does look like an old receipt or computer read out. On the bright side (no pun intended), the backlight on the screen is really nice and makes the display more readable in even daylight conditions. As far as sound quality goes, this unit sounds just ok. It is a bit flat sounding, and the MP3 max compression of 128kbps isn't doing it any favors. Even through my Dali IO-8s (which are famous for a more dramatic sound rather than a flat sound), the Lyra sounds kinda lifeless and dull. Again, it's not bad at all, it's just not as good as other Players from the same vintage. The DSP button allows you to select between the classic EQ presets of this time period (Rock, Pop, Jazz, Vocal, Etc.). They don't do much to the sound, but with the right track, it could be useful. I guess the bottom line is, I really like this old player, and its charm and lack of online presence intrigued me enough to spend time with and try it out. It may not be the best sounding player, or have best build quality, but for it's time it was more than decent. Add in the fact that this unit (the RD2206) has WMA support, and it’s clearly a strong contender for a Y2K pre iPod race. As for the Lyra name itself, it actually became a brand that was used on many MP3 players for the next several years. Most of the later follow up players were marketed at budget conscious consumers and were panned by critics.
What a wonderful and detailed description of one of the first MP3 players! I remember those days when I was eagerly waiting for a simple, portable MP3 player. There were so many promises online back then, but it took far too long for actual options to appear. It’s fascinating to look back on the transition from physical to digital media.
Here is its big brother and the other two MP3 players in the 2002 Argos catalogue These three are all hard disc based. In contrast in the same catalogue there were 7 MP3 playing CD portables and 12 MiniDisc players/ recorders. Having bought my first digital camera (which also used CF cards) back in 2001 I remember how expensive they were As usual Sony were the most expensive (edit the MMC card is even more) and didn't offer any discount. Per MByte flash cards were three times the price of Floppy Discs (which explains the popularity of Sony's floppy based digital cameras), while a CD-R costing less than £1 would store as many MP3s as £500 worth of flash cards.
It seems to me that the cheapest card in this list is the Compact Flash. A Sony 64mb memory stick is £60 whilst a 64mb CF card is only £40. Even a Smart Media card of the same storage is £10 more than the CF. It makes since to me that CF would be the cheaper option because of how large it is in comparison. This theory seems to check out because the MMC card (the smallest and most impressive option) is a whopping £80 for 64mb… double the price of the CF! I used to have a ton of MMC cards that I found at a rummage sale… I was so confused at first because I thought when I bought them I was getting SD cards.
Thankfully, I was able to open the box without damaging it, and it all went back in there the same way, so it still presents as a new open box product. Sadly, the headphone cushions had melted to the plastic tray holding them in, so they were stuck and couldn’t be removed. I was disappointed because reviews at the time of the unit’s release praised the inclusion of real headphones as opposed to flimsy earbuds, so I was interested in trying them. Looking at them here, it’s not worth disturbing them.
Great overview of an old 90's MP3 player... makes me shudder though. 128 only and no ability to just drag and drop any old MP3 file. (Pssst....hint hint... to future readers.... audio recorders like Olympus ones were better all around for early digital file playing )
