MusicBee & Sansa Clip Jam :-)

Firstly, I just want to say that I’m in love with this MP3 player!!! :smiley:

I recently changed jobs, and my new employers are very security-conscious when it comes to having smart-phones in the office. We’re instructed to lock our phones in lockers before entering the main office floor. I was shocked last week, when a number of colleagues were randomly searched for phones, and a number were dismissed on the spot, for having their phones on them.

I’m scatty and forgetful - especially when rushing to work. I usually use my smart-phone for listening to audio while commuting; and it’s typically inside one of my jacket pockets. The office is usually ridiculously cold and I don’t always take my jacket off because of the frigid temperature…

So, because I didn’t trust myself to remember to put my phone in my locker, I decided to invest in a cheap MP3 player. I’m so glad I bought the Clip Jam.

I’d read so many reviews saying that it’s quiet… It really isn’t!!!

I set-up my region as North America (as I’d read that setting it to Europe would decrease the maximum loudness of volume). I set the ReplayGain pre-amp to 7.5dB - I always apply MP3Gain tags to any MP3s I create from CD rips.

The supplied earphones were a little tinny-sounding. I used my own cheap JVC Gumy earphones and customised the EQ to increase the bass a little.

It sounds as good as the sound from my HTC One M9 smart-phone. It’s actually louder!!! I can’t believe the battery life on this thing. It’s incredible.

The only issue I had with the Clip Jam, was finding a way to get my subscribed podcasts onto it. There’s surprisingly few dedicated podcatcher programs out there for Windows users. I’d have paid for a dedicated simple podcatcher program had it existed. :neutral_face: I tried nearly every podcatcher in existence - from the ancient Juice to the bewildering GPodder.

So, I tried a few different media-library programs with podcast support.

Sony’s MediaGo worked fine - but there was no way to change the location of the saved podcasts. It saved all the podcasts to a folder called “podcast” within the Clip Jam’s Music folder, when syncing. There was no way to change the location of the directory within the settings. I’d want to shuffle music, and have podcasts playing at random. :cry:

I then tried MediaMonkey. It was just too over-fussy… Way too complicated for what I wanted it to do.

I then tried MusicBee. I’d never heard of the program before. It’s absolutely fantastic!!! I can’t believe it’s free!!! :smileyvery-happy:

I’ve created a folder on my PC, called “MP3 Player”. I just copy existing MP3 files into there. I’ve set-up MusicBee to only scan that one specific folder, to add tracks to its library. Anything in the library main screen gets synced when I plug-in the Clip Jam &MusicBee is running.

The podcast support is amazing. It’ll even automatically transcode M4A files to MP3 when syncing the podcasts to the Clip Jam. And it saves podcasts to the Clip Jam’s actual “Podcast” folder!!! As soon as the podcasts are synced to the Clip Jam, it marks them as played on the PC, and deletes them.

It’s very fast when ripping CDs too.

I just love the program, and wanted to share my experience of it. If I struggled to find a simple podcatcher that would sync properly with the Clip Jam, I figured others may be struggling too.

Here’s some screen-shots. You can change the look of it too, by changing the skin in the preferences.

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You can download the program from here:

https://getmusicbee.com/downloads/

Honestly, just give it a go. It’s great!!!