SanDisk Clip Sport Firmware 1.17 released

@davide37 wrote:

You’re right in some respects, but what’s difficult to understand is why SanDisk have crippled the Sport even further by reducing the file limit.

Current engineering limitations . . . .    :frowning:

Could you please upload the old firmware 1.09 in order for us to be able to change the file limit at will? I would be grateful if you at least do that Sandisk.

jilocasin wrote:

 

  • Books??  Have you seen the low resolution on this device?  You can barely make out the album cover art.  Who expects that anyone is going to be reading books on this thing?

 

I think you are mistaken as to the “Books” feature. It refers to “audio” books; it is not a Kindle-type device where you read the book on the screen, but rather you listen to them.

Other than that, I have to agree with you. It is a rather disappointing device (and f/w fix), given what SanDisk has offered in the past.

Finally, but awwwwww!

You’re so right.  It’s definitely not for people like me.  I chafed at cutting it down to 6000 songs, but my ClipZip battery gave out within the warranty period anyway. Best Buy said they don’t sell those anymore, but here’s your ClipSport!

At least now I know why it said there were only 4000 songs on the card! Seeing that the upgrade will only make things twice as bad, I’ll just return ClipSport and use the store credit for something different.  Too bad, I really liked the audio quality and the reliable battery.

If enough of us do that, maybe Sandisk will produce something better.  Unfortunately, I can’t see where anyone else seems to be making anything better, e.g., a music player that can use Sandisk’s 128GB SDXC cards with at least 64K songs.

I’ll probably end up taking this advice, buying and returning a string of ClipZips with extended warranties, while I wait for someone else to jump on the pent-up market demand created by SanDisk’s dropping the music player ball.

The sandisk players are the only ones that worked for me and at a fraction of the cost of the other supposedly premium players.  A lot of these players back in the day that got great reviews had major overlooked problems. 

I’ve never spent more than fourty five bucks on a sansa player.  iI’ve owned everything since the clip plus including the fuze plus and the zip.  I guess I won’t be purchasing this player though.  The fuze plus, clip plus and zip just worked for me even though most hated the zip and fuze plus.  I have used the crud out of these players for hours a day and still am but the batteries are giving on all of them.  I could buy another zip but I would rather have something better.

It looks like the only major players left are sony, apple and sandisk.  sony and sandisk are each only still manufacturing one player from at least what I can tell from what’s available.  Most of these small tablet manufacturers have ceased production on mp3 players as well like visual land.  wWe’re all supposed to go around listening to music on smartphones and tablets now.  I don’t want mobile phone service or even a smartphone so I guess I’m going to be hiking around the mountains with a large tablet in hand just to listen to music.  I guess i could buy a 50 dollar dragon touch tablet and just lug that around.  IIm using a kindle right now to type this but it has very limited memory for music and its one of those things I don’t want to mess up on a several mile hike.

So, what’s the point of allowing a 32GB external card if the database is limited to 2000 files?  

I can live with how it works that it actually plays songs in order now and doesn’t ask to “activate my device” when I start an audiobook on the SD card.

I get it that you want to limit functionality based on the chipset to reach a price point, but limiting number of files is utterly ridiculous.  Did you know that Sandisk sells memory chips?  They probably make more money selling 32GB chips than 8GB chips.  Why do they insist on irritating their userbase and limiting what we can use on an SD card?

I wish I could understand why these decisions are made, but it seems like Sandisk can’t find its rear with both hands this time.

Dear friends Tapeworm and Miikerman,

Is it possible to upload the previous firmware? The ability to be flexible is very important I believe. Some users are not happy with the update, others like me would like to test the update but only if they were sure that they can go back to the previous firmware 1.09.

Hopefully, the good folks at SanDisk will get back on this.  Currently, the earlier firmware doesn’t exist other than in an already-installed fashion on a new player. 

Good to see there’s now a lock option and that tracks are sorted correctly; not that I’d call either of those things enhancements. (I’d gone back to my Clip + as those two problems made the Sport pretty much unusable for me)

Still finding that sometimes there can be annoying delays between pressing a button and the command happening when the display has been off. For example, press pause and the display wakes up first then playback stops; the same problem exists when you want to resume playback. Personally I have no interest in seeing what’s on the display when I use pause nor when I resume playback within a few minutes as I already know what I’m listening to and it seems like the display waking is causing the delay.

It’s a shame that the internal and external memory is still split.

Overall the firmware update is a big improvement for the way I use the Clip Sport. The one thing I still would like to see added is gapless playback. The Clip + and Zip do gapless playback fairly well. In my initial frustration with the Clip Sport, I went and put out the big bucks for an Ipod Nano. I understand you get what you pay for, but I must say the Nano does gapless playback better than any of the clips.

The firmware upgrade seems to have hosed my  Radio Broadcast Data System display scroll.

Was this intentional?

@mk995 wrote:

The firmware upgrade seems to have hosed my  Radio Broadcast Data System display scroll.

 

Was this intentional?

No, but this was reported by someone else a few days ago. The SanDisk development team has been made aware of it, and hopefully they will identify the bug and fix it in the next f/w update. This happens frequently where one thing gets fixed, but something else gets unintentionally broken as a result of it.

There is still problem with audiobooks. It is not critical but is definitely annoying.

If the audiobook is divided into multiple files, and for some reason you start to listening to, let’s say, second file for 5 minutes, then realise that there this is not a correct file and switch to previous one and start to listening from that file.

Then, when first file ends, clip sport continues to second file, but not from the begining, it automatically continues from the 5 minutes mark. This is not optimal as player makes gaps in narrative. In case of audiobook i never heard before i didnt even noticed that.

If you select file directly it should continue from last played position, but if same file is played in sequence, it should start from the begiginig of that file. Well, at least in my opinion. Or, perhaps, I’m doing something wrong.

I have few problems with the firmware:

  1. When I add songs to GoList from Folder/External Card, they don´t get added to the playlist. Only songs from internal memory can be added to the GoList?

  2. Why is actual time not shown on the display? It could be shown in the top next to the battery. What is the point of setting time and date, if it is shown nowhere?

  3. If I want to add song to GoList I have to play it first, so I can access the menu (Music options) by pressing the down button. This is really annoying. Why can’t I for example press and hold the down button in the song select screen to access the “Music options”? Why do I have to play the song first? I want to add songs to GoList and listen to different song when I am doing it. 

  4. The alphabetical order is wrong in my Folder/External card. It starts with A and goes to Z, all right. But some folders are placed after Z, even if they begin with A-Y. Is there a reason for this? For example folder Audiobooks is currently lowest on the list even if it begins with A. Why is it not on the top of the list??

@rumpelr wrote:

I have few problems with the firmware:

  1. When I add songs to GoList from Folder/External Card, they don´t get added to the playlist. Only songs from internal memory can be added to the GoList?
    The interal and external databases are not combined in the clip sport so it will not be able to use files from both internal and external for the golist. All golist songs would need to be on the internal memory since that is where that list is stored. 
  1. Why is actual time not shown on the display? It could be shown in the top next to the battery. What is the point of setting time and date, if it is shown nowhere?

This is a good point but was the time shown on the main screen for any of the clip products? IIRC the time was never shown but maybe this could be added. This would be good for the feature request thread.

  1. If I want to add song to GoList I have to play it first, so I can access the menu (Music options) by pressing the down button. This is really annoying. Why can’t I for example press and hold the down button in the song select screen to access the “Music options”? Why do I have to play the song first? I want to add songs to GoList and listen to different song when I am doing it. 

The submenu button has the function of a down button when browsing a list. maybe adding a press and hold for 2 sec add to go list would work. Another good suggestion for the feature request thread. 

  1. The alphabetical order is wrong in my Folder/External card. It starts with A and goes to Z, all right. But some folders are placed after Z, even if they begin with A-Y. Is there a reason for this? For example folder Audiobooks is currently lowest on the list even if it begins with A. Why is it not on the top of the list??

Did you load the files at the end of the list after the initial file load? From what i can tell folder view only looks at the FAT it does not actually update or rebuild the FAT. When you load all the files at once the PC will build the FAT. The Sport will look at the FAT and display it as in in alphabetical order. If you then go back and add more files at a different time the FAT is not rebuilt just amended. When the Sport looks at the FAT after the new files were loaded it only sees the FAT amendment and the files are displayed at the end of the list. If you load all files at once it will likely show them all in alphabetical order. 

I’ve tried firmware 1.17 and 1.18 and the ploblem with songs still in alphabetical order instead of

original order on the albums is not solved for about 80 percent of the albums on my player.

@drlucky wrote:

  1. Why is actual time not shown on the display? It could be shown in the top next to the battery. What is the point of setting time and date, if it is shown nowhere?

This is a good point but was the time shown on the main screen for any of the clip products? IIRC the time was never shown but maybe this could be added. This would be good for the feature request thread.

 

Actually, the Clip Zip displays the time.

@gsurman wrote:

I’ve tried firmware 1.17 and 1.18 and the ploblem with songs still in alphabetical order instead of

original order on the albums is not solved for about 80 percent of the albums on my player.

How could you when 1.17 is the newest firmware version? There is no 1.18 version.

@turbinea wrote:

There is still problem with audiobooks. It is not critical but is definitely annoying.

If the audiobook is divided into multiple files, and for some reason you start to listening to, let’s say, second file for 5 minutes, then realise that there this is not a correct file and switch to previous one and start to listening from that file.

Then, when first file ends, clip sport continues to second file, but not from the begining, it automatically continues from the 5 minutes mark. This is not optimal as player makes gaps in narrative. In case of audiobook i never heard before i didnt even noticed that.

If you select file directly it should continue from last played position, but if same file is played in sequence, it should start from the begiginig of that file. Well, at least in my opinion. Or, perhaps, I’m doing something wrong.

While this has been less of an issue since Audible converted to a single file format, I can understand the frustration. If I recall correctly, previous Clip versions (Zip and +) would ask if you want to resume listening or start at the beginning if you return to a previously initiated segment. 

I’m curious about the audiobook performance you experience. I returned to an older Clip for audiobooks since there was a distinct pause (like 20 - 30 seconds) between pressing the key and the playback beginning. Do you experience any delay? 

My original intent for switching to the Clip Sport for audobooks was the longer battery life and the larger screen that can display both the current runtime and the total length.

I switched to sport because my old clip zip developed problems with audiojack. So, I checked web if there is new model, and there was one. And it has better battery life! And bigger screen! Considering stellar performance of older models, it was sure buy. oh, boy…

I tried various mp3 of different size and slowest response time was around 3-5 sec. but usually only 0.5-1. There is always delay but small.

And another annoying detail:  if I’m in playing screen and press go back, it shows content of the folder in which current file is located in. but after i press go back again, it goes all the way up to main screen. so if i want to go to different folder i have to again navigate from main screen.

This model,  in sport’s terms: fail