Sansa® Clip Zip™

[Conversionbox]

---

tnmats wrote:

Also, gapless playback (if it doesn't support it).  The irritating gaps in some LPs like "Dark Side of the Moon" or classical music really detracted from the music.  Some other players (yeah, some begin with "i") can do it so why can't the Clip Zip?

It plays Gapless. Its may not be 1000% perfect but Listening to live comedy albums as proved to be perfect in terms of listening quality.

---

[tnmats]

---

Conversionbox wrote:

It plays Gapless. Its may not be 1000% perfect but Listening to live comedy albums as proved to be perfect in terms of listening quality.

---

---

Thanks Conversionbox.  I recently got a (company supplied) iPhone so I've gotten to use the iPod portion a bit.  I really loved the true gapless function so it spoiled me a bit.  I HATED the fact that it didn't have a true multiband EQ nor could play my FLAC files though like my Clip does.

How's 44.1kHz playback?  In the final FW revision for my Clip, Sandisk improved it but I can still hear some pitch error.  Hopefully that's fully resolved with the Clip+/Clip Zip.  And I REALLY hope they bring back the elapsed time/total time indicator along with the track/total track indicator my Clip had.  I was really surprised to see it gone.

I ordered 2 8GB black CZs (for my wife and me); and Sandisk threw in a travel pouch for both.  Can't wait to get them.  The iPhone is nice but the Clip is so much easier to use when I go out running.  And I sure would have never paid for an iFruit device out of my own pocket!

[Miikerman]

---

tnmats wrote:

Please bring back 2 things I loved about the display in my Clip: elapsed time in the track playing and the track number/total tracks indicator. I was quite surprised these two features were left out and they shouldn't have been.

Also, gapless playback (if it doesn't support it).  The irritating gaps in some LPs like "Dark Side of the Moon" or classical music really detracted from the music.  Some other players (yeah, some begin with "i") can do it so why can't the Clip Zip?

---

Yes-yes-yes!  And, remaining or total time.

As to gapless, to my ears, the Clip Zip has it.  Although some report the faintest of clicks, with others not sure--it could be "ghost clicks."

[FredrikX2000]

Feature Request: "Timed Auto Pause" (for audiobooks primarily).

I listen to audiobooks a lot when I go to sleep, and I keep an ageing "iAudio U2" for this purpose alone. It has a feature where you can play 1 track, it pauses and waits for you to press play to play next track and if I don't press play within a certain time the device turns itself off. As I might fall a sleep in 5 minutes or 45 minutes, I don't need to worry about setting an "Auto Off timer" and have the hassle of finding where I actually fell asleep. It will always be in the last track played (i.e. the last 5 minutes), so I can quickly just go backward 1 track and continue listening. Normally I go back 2 tracks, because I don't remember much from 5-10 minutes before sleep.

If you could have the same feature implemented on your Sansa players it would be awesome, but I have an even better idea:

Instead of relying on tracks (which not always come in 5 minute chunks), why not just make it a "Timed Auto Pause" where the device pauses every X minutes, waiting a brief time for you to press play to continue or otherwise shut down (obviously rembering the position). When you start it next time, the back button should be able to take you back X minutes for each press, so that you easily can continue from where you were really awake and remember. Preferably, auto-bookmarking should be used (as well as manual bookmarking) for audiobooks, so you can use the mp3 player for other things and still easily get back to your audiobook later.

So I see this feature as an option where you could have the following settings:

"Timed Auto Pause": Enable/Disable

"Play Time": X minutes (until pause)

"Back Time:" X minutes (i.e. for rewinding with back button single press X minutes)

"Shutdown Time": X seconds (or just use some global setting for shutdown time) 

... or just do it like my ageing iAudio U2, which has "Single Track" play option, which does what I described at the top.

Cheers,

Fredrik

P.S. I have a Clip+ for music alone, as I find it hard to use for audiobooks in other aspect as well, most particularly with regards to lack of bookmarking. Even though there is some function to remember where you stopped an audiobook it does not work well with my mp3s which are labelled by CD number and track. I can only get it to work if I merge everything to one single mp3-file. So I think improvements are in order for audiobooks in general, if Zip is like Clip+.

[JK98]

---

P.S. I have a Clip+ for music alone, as I find it hard to use for audiobooks in other aspect as well, most particularly with regards to lack of bookmarking. Even though there is some function to remember where you stopped an audiobook it does not work well with my mp3s which are labelled by CD number and track. I can only get it to work if I merge everything to one single mp3-file. So I think improvements are in order for audiobooks in general, if Zip is like Clip+.

---

The Clip+ and Clip Zip work okay for audiobooks or series of podcasts. If you tag your audiobook and give each file the same album tag, and fill in the track number tag(it is easiest if the numbering starts with 100, assuming there are less than 900 files) the player won't just remember the place in the file, but which file it was playing last in the audiobook. Editing the tags is easy with mp3tag. I do miss the lack of variable speed playback with automatic pitch correction though.

I previously stated that I wanted an optional mode with a user settable value that will turn the player off if no buttons are pressed within that time. That way if someone is listening to the player and gets distracted and forgets to pause the player, the battery won't get run down.

---

[notgod]

God, you really saved on the screen, SanDisk, don't you... 96x96x65k dollar-a-bucket huge pixels oled. The Clip's 128 width is (barely) enough for long titles, 96 is beyond enough, unless you're a big fan of trading stocks.

Would be so nice to have a deluxe version, with a quality oled that takes all the space. Or at least the same quality oled, but 128x128, so we wouldn't have to sacrifice width for height.

There's a theory that there are parallel universes. I would like to use this forum to leave a message for myself in the universe where Zip has a border-to-border screen:
**** ***.

On the other hand, I am still all yours, SanDisk, a slave customer . You got me with a quality AMS SoC, with the sd card slot, with flac, with the fact that you are the only major vendor who supports ReplayGain (no-bo-dy else does, even cowon).

So I'm yours SanDisk, even with your stupid crappy screens. But if you do a good screen and (Dear God!) open up your stuff to Rockbox, like you originally planned long time ago, I'd be screaming about your players at every forum like a cult zealot.

[tnmats]

Found a serious flaw with the CZ.  When track transitions happen and if you have imaged embedded in the mp3 there's a burst of static (or pause) before the next track starts to play.

This happens no matter what size of image (I tried multiple albums with 8k and 60k images, 128k CBR and 320k VBR, MSC and MTP).  Same thing each time.

This needs to be fixed guys.  It sure does look like a firmware/software issue.

[Miikerman]

Yep, you are right--both the issue and the fix.  Stay tuned.

Update:  New firmware has been posted, which fixes the issue.  See the firmware upgrade sticky thread at the top of the forum--

[mwringe]

Ability to shuffle podcasts like you can with normal music.

[tnmats]

---

Miikerman wrote:

Yep, you are right--both the issue and the fix.  Stay tuned.

Update:  New firmware has been posted, which fixes the issue.  See the firmware upgrade sticky thread at the top of the forum--

---

Thanks Mikerman (and to the admins/software coders).

Gapless is a whole lot better than with the Clip but not quite there; quieter passages (like the ones in Abbey Road) are imperceptible.  The one between Sgt. Pepper Intro and "With A Little Help" is quite noticable (that one has some higher amplitdues) but the transition between "Good Morning" to "Sgt. Pepper Reprise" which melts into "A Day In the Life" is vastly better.  Cover image size or even no image doesn't seem to matter.  Don't know why one is fine the other isn't but it's there with some transitions within the same record.

BTW, is the CZ a bit brighter, bass shy or a little of both compared to the Clip?  It might be my imagination but it sounds like it.  I tried it with my Beyers and my Grados and they seem a bit brighter; when I try with my Sennheiser/Addias running 'phones I had to use quite a bit of EQ with my Clip.  Not so with my CZ.