40GB RCA Lyra: Apple Fans Needn't Fret

PaulEshoreLives writes "The Globe and Mail isn't taking too kindly to RCA's Lyra 40GB iPod 'competitor.' Amongst its gripes are a crazy-slow FFW. How slow? Like 6 minutes to get to the end of a 60 minute file. Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."

Comments

Re:ffw ?

[jrandall]

I believe what is being referred to is a ridiculously slow "Fast Forward" function.

Why should Apple fans fret?

[3terrabyte]

I don't understand the tone of the post. Why would a better product coming out years later be a bad thing for Apple fans?

Will it make your iPod quit working? Or make you love your iPod less?

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[pertinax18]

I had this same question. Do Apple fans really have so much of their self-worth, emotional well-being and identity tied up in the Apple products they use that a competitor would make them concerned? Perhaps the Apple Corporation would fret, but unless I am really missing something this is hardly a concern for iPod users as it will only force Apple to innovate more and create a better product.

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[mrtrumbe]

Because Apple is the only manufacturer in the world whose batteries eventually die, right? Or is it that, IN THE PAST, they didn't have a battery replacement program?

IN THE PAST, they didn't have a way to fix the issue of a dead battery. That was bad. Bad Apple! But they fixed that problem. Now, they are just like every other manufacturer out there: your battery dies within the warranty period? You get it fixed for free. Your batter dies outside the warranty period, you pay to replace it (either through Apple, or through many of the "unofficial" sources available).

Can we stop grousing about this issue now? Please?

Taft

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[jellomizer]

It is an issue of feeling validated with your purchase. iPods are not cheap and for a person to shell out a week salary on a Portible MP3 Player takes some though for most people. So after they chose the iPod and they find the next week that XYZ company produced a better product or an equilvlant product at the same or less cost. Then the consumer feels like they have made a bad decision and have wasted their money. But as in the case of the iPod it has been popular for a couple of years now and so far there hasn't been a product that compleatly competes with it. So the customer feels good about their purchase and that they made a wize decision. This hold true in differnt areas that is why there are people who take joy when Crysler has a recall because they are a proud owner of a GM Car. If a product can over time make the customer feel good about buying it then there is a chance they will buy it again. But if there is something out there that was better and more afordable then they feel anonomsity towards that product, but mostly to themselfs for putting the money into it.

This emotion is straight from childhood. Having to defend your toy with your friends. So if your friend has the latest plastic car with all the features. The child may often defend their Hot Wheels by the fact that the body is mostly metal and can't be broken as easily. Or the Kid with the Game Cube vs. the Kid with the PS2 They will argue back and forth saying whos is better.

So now as an adult we see somones elses toys to be infearor to yours so it makes you happy like you just won an argument.

Hey, not all codecs ..

[torpor]

.. are conducive to rapid-scan indexing of frames.

Sure, on an uncompressed mpeg4, you can just fseek() where you need to go and pick right up, but some codecs (not gonna mention names) are designed with limitations that make faster-than-1x speed indexes exceedingly difficult for simple lower-power processors ..

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[tomstdenis]

mp3 falls into that category. On a CBR file you can roughly just fseek to bitrate*seconds into the file and be approximately where you want to be.

Valid mp3 decoders must allow "garbage" data before a header. So

cat somerandomtxtfile.txt mysong.mp3 > new.mp3

new.mp3 is now a valid mp3 file/stream.

Chances are the testers aren't actually users which is why they didn't find a really slow FFW "a problem".

Though really cumbersome MP3 players are pretty much the norm. Mine [from Samsung of all companies...] doesn't sort the files so even though my tracks are numbered they never play in any particular order [and no this is with shuffle turned off]. It also "plays" as you seek which is annoying [so it's even slower than 6min/60min as this player has].

Tom

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[CKW]

Doesn't mp3 allow you to just "start somewhere" and begin playing? It's a streaming media protocol... They don't need to *process* 60 minutes of mp3, they just need to stop processing the mp3 while you're holding down the Fast ForWard (FFW) button, AND do a slow rise in the rate that the "time counter" is increasing....

My Lyra 64 MB SD mp3 player also has this problem, it only fast forwards at a fixed rate of about 10:1, which is entirely unacceptable for a "whole albumn" mp3. For "large files" they need to rise to 50:1 after 5 seconds, and 200:1 after another 10 seconds. Maybe leave it at 10:1 and 30:1 for files less than 10 minutes... heck scale the rise in rate with the size in file...

And my Lyra isn't processing the file either like this reviewed device is, I don't hear any clipped chatter.

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[doofusclam]

Sure, on an uncompressed mpeg4, you can just fseek() where you need to go and pick right up

What are you on about? What is an 'uncompressed' mpeg4 file? The real issue is the bitrate, is it variable or fixed per frame? Most decent codecs are the latter and you need to build an offset list to handle ffw correctly. Rewind is even harder that ffw, especially with b-frames.

iPod Competitor

[Ionizer7]

Why does every new hard disk mp3 player have to be labeled an iPod competitor? Some of these devices aren't even close to the iPod.

Lyra: the * MPY * player. (not MP3)

[denis-The-menace]

I have a Lie-ra too. The 128MB version. It claims to play MP3s but you must convert them to MPY format using a MusicMatch plugin!! (BTW: it plays WMA files too but without a conversion to MPY )
I wonder if this Lyra play MP3s or MPYs?

So?

[iainl]

So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?

But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Slower than a cassette player?

[suso]

Most cassette players and VCRs can go from start to end of a tape in about 1-2 minutes. That's sad.

I love that headline

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Apple Fans Needn't Fret

What is that saying about a group of people, that a competitor's product to Apple might cause you to "fret"? I guess its implying that Apple users don't like competition? But beyond that, why should competition cause anyone outside of Apple cause any stress for anyone that doesn't make a living selling Apple realted products? Its just wierd thats all. I understand that we can all get caught up in fandom every now and then, but geez louise give it a break.

Reasons to fear

[worksucks371]

I believe "apple fans" have a reason to fear iRiver and the Nomad Zen more then this.
since IMNSHO both of these give you far better bang for your buck, not to mention the iRiver has more features.

Just my two cents really.

Re:Again? Look, can we just take it as read

[thisfred]

In that case: have a look at the Rio Karma. 1. It's cheaper 2. It plays Ogg 3. It has a better screen resolution 4. It has cross platform support (a java client that uses an ethernet connection to download/upload music from/to it)

4 dimensional

[pwells]

According to the article (sorry):
The 154 gram unit comes in at 8.5-by-13.8-by-7.2 centimetres and 2.5cm thick

Should we fret about the 4th dimension instead?

Speaking of portable music players...

[gumpish]

It seems the Rio Karma hasn't had a feature bump since it's introduction last year. Sure, it's pricing is on par with the 20 GB iPod (and the Karma comes with a dock, featuring an ethernet port, not to mention native support for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC), but I think Rio can do even better. =)

Re:But there already IS something better

[Talthane]

Actually, the iPod doesn't convert everything to AAC. Why do you think it's called an MP3 player? It'll play either of those two formats.

Secondly, AAC can either be lossy or lossless, depending on which format you choose. AAC Lossless is, by definition, lossless (er...hence the name).

So apart from getting both of those facts wrong, you were almost right :-)

Competition

[SJ]

What are you talking about?

Apple fans WANT something to fret about because thats what makes thing better. The worst thing that could happen to the industry is for no one to bother challenging Apple.

See what happened when no one challenged Microsoft?

Apple fans WANT some one to beat the pants off Apple, 'cause it means that after Apple has gotten up off the floor and brushed itself off, it is going to come up with something freakin amazing to get back into the game.

Thats what makes healthy competition great.

FFTW?

[KevinDumpsCore]

I misread the post, I thought the complaints were about the speed of its FFTW, the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West! I thought the author wanted to criticize the quality of its fourier transform functions.

Thank goodness usability matters somewhere.

[dpbsmith]

The big revolution from, say, 1973 to 1980 was making computers affordable, an activity which the IBMs of the world had no interest in whatsoever. They saw microprocessors as a direct thread to mainframes and sought use them in limited ways and protect products like the DataMaster from cannibalization by cheap general-purpose PCs. The result was that the personal computer revolution was fueled by technies and hobbyists.

From 1980 to 1990 it was all about making computers usable and seducing ordinary people who had no interest in learning how to program in BASIC or learn a traditional CLI. The result was a revolution in usability. The overall computer usability experience (not just the GUI shell, but quality, installability, and usability of applications, ease of adding peripherals, etc.) probably peaked in the Mac world circa Apple System 7.

Ever since then, it's all been slowly downhill, as user familiarity and "computer literacy" have increased the tolerance of the general public for complexity, crashes, and other things that are now accepted as "what computers are like." Usability has been in a slow but perceptible decline.

You can see it in all sorts of little things. The latest Dell computer we got has six USB ports on the back, two of which are totally unlabelled and four of which are in close proximity to the letters "A," "B," "C," "D" in circles which are spaced closely together and are not aligned with the USB connectors they are probably labelling. There are color-coded, iconically labelled jacks for speakers and headphones, and but no obvious clue as to where mouse and keyboard are supposed to plug in.

Meanwhile, every new gadget I buy has a microprocessor in it... and usability problems. The $10 thermometer I bought in a drugstore has several different measurement modes, all incomprehensible, controlled by two unlabelled buttons and an LCD screen which displays not only the temperature but smiley faces and pictures of a running stick figure while emitting incomprehensible beeps. I can guess that if it tells me my temperature is 98-something degrees it is probably in Fahrenheit mode and if it tells me it's 37-something degrees it is probably in Celsius mode, but I'm darned if I know how to set it, or what it is that I'm doing that causes the mode to change.

My cell phone comes with a 100-page manual but frequently emits strange beeps and displays messages that the manual does not explain. (In this case, the explanation is that the cell phone user interface as experienced by the user is a combination of what the phone itself does and what the specific set of services offered by Verizon does. But the user experience is one of a low-quality UI.

Thank goodness there is at least one arena in which the market is apparently still rewarding usable design.