@skinjob wrote:
@cruiserdude wrote:
This is great info, and its good to be able to get this much technical information on the inner workings of these devices. Even better to hear that Sandisk is addressing this further for us. I do, however, have two simple questions:
- Would it be possible to enable line-out without requiring voltage to pin 7? If so, what are the chances Sansa would allow this with a future FW upgrade, and what (if anything) would be their reasons for not doing so?
- Why doesn’t SanDisk want to make a cable? Seems like it would be a great way to make some extra money, as well as increasing sales to people who buy Ipods instead due to the much greater accessory market. I can understand that they want to sell their docks for home use, but it would be great for cars, as well as for the portability factor. Seems like they’d be missing out NOT to make a cable, so what are the reasons against them doing this?
- Sansafix has indicated it is possible via FW, but they have decided not to do it. You would need a setting to enable either the phones or the line-out. Since you can’t have both at the same time, I guess they were afraid users would set it to line and not be able to figure out why their headphones don’t work. Seems to me this could be handled easilly in the UI with some kind of status icon (for example, in the same way you know if shuffle is on or not).
- I have no idea. It makes no sense. Especially since the official Sansa dock is so expensive. I doubt that many people are willing to spend $50-60 on a dock, but I would think many would buy a $10-15 cable. And as you said, a dock is not really useful for car and other portable applications. And if they implemented an output switch in FW, you could use the existing View A/V cable. They wouldn’t need to make a special Fuze cable.
Hmm, yeah, its wierd that they seem to be keeping quiet on their reasoning behind either of those questions. I’m not calling them out by any means, and I certainly understand that sansafix can’t tell us something if SanDisk doesn’t want him to, but it still bugs me as to why they don’t seem to want to give us a reason.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful that they’re so involved here, and actually listen to our questions, problems, and requests, great customer feedback! I just get very curious when I feel that the reasoning behind something is being hidden.
At this point, all I can think of is that they are afraid of competition with the View, though this would be rather illogical. The hardware on the Fuze does not enable a video-out, and due to the lower SQ, I doubt anyone will buy a View strictly for audio line-out purposes, so its not like they’d be robbing people away from the View. (I hate to say it, but with the lower SQ, larger size, and higher price, the View isn’t nearly as attractive a purchase, anyway, just my honest opinion.) Regardless, I can understand certain reasons why they may not want to enable this in FW, though I still think it could at least be a rather hidden-away option for us more advanced users to enable. Like, bury something in the system settings about enabling line-out, and if its “switchable”, rather than “off”, we’d have an extra icon on the home screen, or you could just hold the center button from the home screen, to switch between line-out and headphones. That way we could take advantage of it, but the users who would get confused would never enable this option, anyway. Then y’all could sell us an audio output cable and make some extra cash!
