Something went wrong with the sound.

I listen to my player at normal eq.  I noticed that something changed in how it sounds. 

I’ve been trying to figure out how to give you guys a good comparison.  The best I could do is put a copyrightfree song on a SanDisk Jam Clip and the Sansa Clip +  and record the audio through the computer’s inline jack.  When everything is right these two players sound alike. 

The orginial track on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzXMxZJCEfM

The sound track on SanDisk Jam Clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmLrmvWyTCA

The sound track on Sansa Clip +

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX6icK3bJXI

Hopefully you can tell that something on the Sansa Clip + isn’t quite right.  I tried to re install the orginial firmware but that didn’t help.  Any Ideas would could of caused this?

Sounds to me like an “open mic” effect in the Clip + audio.  The Jam has a fuller, richer audio. 

Is there a way to disable the built-in mic when you do not want to use this feature??

Could you cover the mic hole with a piece of black duct tape?   Just a wild idea 

If you want to measure what changed you could download RMAA, hook up a line in cable to a PC and test the output.  Possibly though the amp or something was damaged if the output changed.

I can try that…  But I don’t hear any outside noises while the player is playing…

I was running rockbox on the player and thought maybe something with it caused the issue, so I got rid of rockbox and installed the orginal firmware.  That didn’t help.  But I don’t think it was a rockbox problem because I have another Sansa Clip + that is around 5 years old.  And I’ve been running rockbox on it all year and I’m not having any problems.  I had bought the new one because my I realized how old my old one was getting and I knew I might need to replace it soon.  My player gets a lot of use! 

It was just all of a sudden…  One day it sound just fine and then all of a sudden it sounded really bad.  Especially when I connect it to mono iHome speakers.  Again I have been using those kinds of speakers for years, and have had to replace them from time to time (the cord connector that connects directly to the the speaker goes bad)  Never had any past problems with that kind of speaker causing the mp3 players go bad. 

I think the AMP in the Sansa Clip + is faulty.

I have two questions:

  1. What is a RMAA program?

  2. How Can I test the Player’s Amp?

Long ago I had a Creative Zen MP3 player with a deteriorating audio output socket. I could revive it for a while using a small wad of Vaseline.    (Eventually I had to retire the player from active duty.)

   From this experience I decided to stop disconnecting my head phones from all my future audio players at the end every listening session. Now I leave the audio cord plugged in and wrap the cord around the player. 

Good advice for some people, but that would never work for me since I use head phones sometimes and sometimes I need the external speakers.

If its just the headpone jack, you could probably fix it by soldering a new one on.  

RMAA is a program on the internet that can measure the output of devices and tell you how well they are working.  Google it.