RCA Lyra RD2317 1 GB Personal Digital Audio Player with Voice, Line-in and FM Recording

• 1GB built in memory, stores up to 32 hours of WMA music or 640 songs encoded @ 64 kbps.
• Multiple recording option; Voice Record, Line in Record and FM Record
• Digital FM Tuner with FM Record.
• Full Dot Matrix backlit display for navigating through this product's different features and for navigating through your music selections.
• Dual orientaion LCD screen

Overall, this could be a great mp3 player, but they left out one very critical option. Each time you turn on the player, it starts at the main menu. You have to navigate to the album and song you want. In other words, it doesn't remember where you were last time you used the player. This is annoying when listening to music because there is no natural progression through the albums. It is intolerable when listening to audiobooks. It takes forever to find the place where you left off.

Other than that, the controls are easy to use, the player looks good, audio quality is good, and you can expand the memory with SD/MMC memory cards. It has a line-in jack for making your own recordings. It has an FM radio built in, and comes with an FM transmitter for playing through your car radio. I haven't listened to the FM radio much, but it seems to work well. The transmitter also works pretty well unless you are in a large city. It can broadcast on about 6 different frequencies, half at the extreme low end of the FM band and half at the extreme high end. You just need to find a frequency that is not in use in your area.

Also, this player does support Audible format for audiobooks. If you use Audible, this would be a good choice as these files are bookmarkable. If your books are in mp3 format like mine, I recommend getting almost ANY other mp3 player.

You should also be aware that there is no printed manual with this player.

I tried writing to customer support about the issue I have with this player, but their support page has a canned set of topics geared to sales rather than support. I still would have left something, but they want too much 'required' information about me before I can even do that. Hopefully, they will read this review and take it to heart.

Buy RCA Lyra RD2317 1 GB Personal Digital Audio Player with Voice, Line-in and FM Recording Now

I read the other reviews and they had some good points.

Yes, when you switch on, your previous audio selection is not remembered, but I have not seen many that do. And I use many Audio book mp3's. Upon power up it takes a moment to read files, this is irritating. My purchase did not come with an fm transmit adapter (as per other reviews). My first issue upon purchase was the firmware. It needed to be upgraded from v1.xx to v3.11. This took me some time to figure out, if you did not read all the small peices of paper in the package. If you don't upgrade the firmware the Lyra does not recognize any subfolders on the SD external card. It was very simple to download and execute the upgrade from the given RCA website. I did write to RCA to fix this v3.11 though. It only supports 520 files. I can easily fit many more files (I tried to load over 800 files). All my mp3's are compressed to 64kbps and Audio books are broken down into many pieces (sub directories). I have been using a 2gbyte sd card with no prob. be carfull not to overload the line-in. the mic is also very sensitve. My overal opinion of the Lyra is great. Not many MP3 players have these features for this price range. A biult in fm transmitter would be nice though.

Read Best Reviews of RCA Lyra RD2317 1 GB Personal Digital Audio Player with Voice, Line-in and FM Recording Here

when looking for my first mp3 player I made a list of requirements my new device should have. I wanted a flash drive with at least a gig of memory, an fm radio, not apple specific and the capability to menu different play options. This player does all that at a very good price, especially consdering the inclusion of an fm player-adapter for the auto. It is surprisingly small and yet the controls do not feel flimsy, however the unit sometimes needs to be commanded a second or third time especially when skipping songs on an album play. The sound is terrific compared to regular cd players when songs are downloaded at 128. The song capacity is only 250 or so at 128 but that is plenty. Music can be downloaded as album folders and played as an album or you can shuffle everything. The battery life seems adequate enough. The controls and menu are all very easy to use and I figured everything out without the manual. The fm radio has decent reception. The car adapter only comes with 3 low and 3 high stations to choose from and in a place like san antonio with stations up and down the dial there was some static bleed through. It has the capability for another gig with an additonal sd card but I have not tried that yet because it looks like the memory card is not too secure in the player and I don't want to lose it. I put songs on it in mp3 and wma formats and it only played the mp3 format for some reason. The only reason I do not give it 5 stars is because I don't have anything to compare it to