Wurlitzer Lyra – a storing, streaming jukebox for the 21C

Wurlitzer Lyra's touchscreen

Wurlitzer LyraI saw a Wurlitzer when I was out and about on the Gold Coast yesterday. Not a machine you see that much these days, so when I got home I hit the C7 button on the internet to see what Wurlitzer are up to these days. And this is it, the Wurlitzer Lyra.

There’s no vinyl records or CDs in the Wurlitzer Lyra. Instead, there’s a 320 gigabyte hard drive, that should hold somewhere in the vicinity of 500 CDs, oir 60,000 individual MP3 tracks. It will directly plat music from CDs or USB drives, or you can “load music from audio CDs, cell phones, data CDs, data DVDs, thumb drives, USB drives, media sticks and more”. It also hook into your network and play music wirelessly, and is soon to receive a software update that will enable the Lyra to play digital radio.



All of this is operated using a 15-inch touchscreen, pictured below. Not exactly an attractive interface – it’s not modern, and it’s not particularly cool retro – so I would hope there’s options to customise. Oh, and the Lyra is also operable by infra-red remote control.

The Wurlitzer Lyra is 156 cm high, 45.5 cm wide, and weighs 56 kg. In the UK it sells for £2995.


Wurlitzer Lyra features

  • High quality audio system made by ‘Adam’, Berlin
  • 200 watt rms amplifier
  • External studio-quality speakers, discrete subwoofer in cabinet
  • CD/DVD burner, SD-MMC-xD card reader. 2 x USB 2.0
  • High resolution 15 inch touchscreen with easy to use interface
  • Hard disc 320GB holds more than 500 CDs or 60,000 MP3s
  • Online operation including wireless network support
  • Customisable playlists
  • Live streaming music
  • Internet radio. Software update will be available in Summer 2011.
  • Infra-red remote control

Wurlitzer Lyra's touchscreen