I’ve decided - so far - on the Clip+ though I’m wondering if I’ve missed any other ‘advantages’ of the Zip and Sport models other than a larger color screen of which I’m not really interested in?
Deciding between the 4g and 8g Clip+ is it better to go with the 8g and attempt to fit all or most internally or does the 4g with an SD card perform equally well (other than size of course with a larger SD) Also I read on Amazon playlists won’t work from the SD. They have to be internal only. Is this true ?
Btw I just looked on Amazon and to my shock the price jumped from $34.95 yesterday to $45.95 today. I’m not on Amazon very much if at all, is this how it works there ???
If you really want to have playlists that hop between internal and external memory, one method is to use the alternative firmware called Rockbox, which will do that.
Another is to use playlists in the .pla format rather than the usual .m3u format.
As for price, Amazon fluctuates constantly. I got a refurb 4G there for $20. You can also look on eBay for refurbs–just check the seller’s reputation, obviously.
Well now the price is $29.99 down from the $45.95…
so I grabbed it !
Anyway a few questions…
Does the SDHC have to be a Class 4 Card as I’ve read or has that been addressed by firmware updates ? Also is the limit still 32MG ?
Hopefully I won’t be hopping between internal and external SD Card memory for my playlists. Being ‘overly orderly’ I would like to keep all ‘bands’ and playlists in each ones own folder and make playlists of just that band. IE, Beatles in the Beatles folder, on the external SD Card and also containing its playlist. I’ve read (there’s A LOT of info out there !) that you can place the songs in their perspective folder ALONG WITH the playlist file keeping ALL in either the internal or external SD memory. Is this correct ? Or is there a better way ?
Is there an mp3 setting that works best for the Clip+ ??? I just downloaded ‘TAudioConverter’ and it seems to default to encoding mode VBR (VBR: 1.92) . I looked at a test Wav file using Windows Explorer that I converted to mp3, it shows it at 187kbps … is this suitable ?
Doesn’t have to be any particular class, but some people have reported that cards of a particular class may be less buggy. SDHC is limited to 32 GB by convention, but reformatting a 64GB card to FAT32 makes it an SDHC and it will work in basically any device. You’ll still be limited to a few thousand files by the sandisk firmware though.
Hopefully any non-terrible MP3 encoder app is using the recommend LAME encoder settings for a given bitrate. If you’re going to use a 32GB or larger card, I’d go with relatively higher bitrate VBR. ~200kbps seems sensible. You’ll bump into the sandisk track limit before you run out of disk space.
You don’t need anything faster (or more expensive) than Class 4, and some people have sporadically reported problems with Class 10.
There’s a limit on the size of the database the Clip can display. Depending on how many songs you cram on there, you might well hit that limit on 32GB, and I would guess that a full 64GB card would be way over.
It’s the number of characters in the database file, not a fixed number of songs (more metadata per song, fewer songs). Might be frustrating to know the song is on there and you can’t see it. Rockbox solves this.
You also have to format a 64GB to FAT32–some versions of Windows don’t do that, but there is freeware that does. I believe people have used 64GB. But they may be Rockbox geeks.
You can just play an album in order without even making a playlist. Iff you look at those .pla instructions I linked to, that is a more flexible playlist form that should be able to play everything from an external card.
Also, there is a Folders view under Music that is pretty much like what you would see on your desktop and would play in order by filename. If your albums are tagged right, you can also click on Album and it plays the songs in order by track number.
VBR is Variable Bitrate. The converter calculates how many bits per second it will need depending on the requirements of the music, so you might see 187 for one song and 229 for another. The Clip can handle VBR, and the difference in quality may not be perceptible through your headphones or listening conditions or ears. But with the size of available storage now, why not just go to the full 320 (CBR, constant bitrate).
VBR is Variable Bitrate. The converter calculates how many bits per second it will need depending on the requirements of the music, so you might see 187 for one song and 229 for another. The Clip can handle VBR, and the difference in quality may not be perceptible through your headphones or listening conditions or ears. But with the size of available storage now, why not just go to the full 320 (CBR, constant bitrate).
You’ll end up wasting some of the player’s battery just copying zeros stuffed into the bitstream to hit a needlessly high bitrate. Best to use high quality VBR and let the player set the frame size to whatever it needs to be. No sense being inefficient, even if only a little.
To avoid problems I added a Kingston 32G class 4 sd card to my order from Amazon. (hope its not a china fake) . Thanks for the heads up guys !
2.Black-Rectangle - There’s a limit on the size of the database the Clip can display. Depending on how many songs you cram on there, you might well hit that limit on 32GB, and I would guess that a full 64GB card would be way over.
_ It’s the number of characters in the database file, not a fixed number of songs (more metadata per song, fewer songs). Might be frustrating to know the song is on there and you can’t see it. Rockbox solves this._
Please explain the limit of characters and metadata as opposed to songs… I’m not clear on this.
I’ve seen where one can add a folder in Win7, right click and create playlists. Is this a good approach to this ?
VBR vs CBR… I made a few test mp3s from multiple styles in both VBR and CBR. I used the highest quality VBR and CBR at 320 . Played back to back I really couldn’t tell the difference. And I see Miikerman is satisfied with VBR at the high end.
Miikerman - Many years ago, when I got my first MP3 player, I experimented with rip rates, to find (for me) a good spce/quality trade-off. I ended up in the range you’re discussing–something like 192 kbps VBR with a 320kbps at the high end. I’ve been happy with it.
But that’s just my ears I suppose. And according to Saratoga I may save some battery usage.
saratoga - You’ll end up wasting some of the player’s battery just copying zeros stuffed into the bitstream to hit a needlessly high bitrate. Best to use high quality VBR and let the player set the frame size to whatever it needs to be. No sense being inefficient, even if only a little.
To avoid problems I added a Kingston 32G class 4 sd card to my order from Amazon. (hope its not a china fake) . Thanks for the heads up guys !
2_.Black-Rectangle - There’s a limit on the size of the database the Clip can display. Depending on how many songs you cram on there, you might well hit that limit on 32GB, and I would guess that a full 64GB card would be way over._
It’s the number of characters in the database file, not a fixed number of songs (more metadata per song, fewer songs). Might be frustrating to know the song is on there and you can’t see it. Rockbox solves this.
Please explain the limit of characters and metadata as opposed to songs… I’m not clear on this.
I’ve seen where one can add a folder in Win7, right click and create playlists. Is this a good approach to this ?
VBR vs CBR… I made a few test mp3s from multiple styles in both VBR and CBR. I used the highest quality VBR and CBR at 320 . Played back to back I really couldn’t tell the difference. And I see Miikerman is satisfied with VBR at the high end.
Miikerman -Many years ago, when I got my first MP3 player, I experimented with rip rates, to find (for me) a good spce/quality trade-off. I ended up in the range you’re discussing–something like 192 kbps VBR with a 320kbps at the high end. I’ve been happy with it.
But that’s just my ears I suppose. And according to Saratoga I may save some battery usage.
saratoga - You’ll end up wasting some of the player’s battery just copying zeros stuffed into the bitstream to hit a needlessly high bitrate. Best to use high quality VBR and let the player set the frame size to whatever it needs to be. No sense being inefficient, even if only a little.
You shouldn’t have to worry about fakes on Amazon. It’s eBay where things can get a little iffy.
The database is like a document that can only have a certain number of characters and then cuts off. If your tags have more info in them–Electric Light Orchestra as Artist, instead of ELO–that’s more metadata, more characters. Lots of longer tags mean that fewer of them will fit into the database. So it’s not an exact number of songs.
Not sure I understand (3). If you want to put a playlist of songs into a folder and then play the folder under Music/Folders, yes, you could do that.
Tags are very flexible and can be used all sorts of ways. You could also make a folder, copy the songs into it, use mp3tag (free tag editing software) to decide the track order and change the Album title for those songs to My Playlist (or anything else). I sometimes do this after I’ve seen a band–I copy the songs from the setlist into their own folder, open mp3tag and change the album names (since the songs are from various albums) to Setlist.
Both of those methods involve making another copy of the song and placing it somewhere instead of having the player find the song in its original folder, which is what a playlist does.
There is other music library software, like Media Monkey, that’s also good with playlists. The free version is fine–all you get with the paid version is mp3 ripping, which you can do with another program or tweak into the free Media Monkey.
You shouldn’t have to worry about fakes on Amazon. It’s eBay where things can get a little iffy.
The database is like a document that can only have a certain number of characters and then cuts off. If your tags have more info in them–Electric Light Orchestra as Artist, instead of ELO–that’s more metadata, more characters. Lots of longer tags mean that fewer of them will fit into the database. So it’s not an exact number of songs.
Not sure I understand (3). If you want to put a playlist of songs into a folder and then play the folder under Music/Folders, yes, you could do that.
Tags are very flexible and can be used all sorts of ways. You could also make a folder, copy the songs into it, use mp3tag (free tag editing software) to decide the track order and change the Album title for those songs to My Playlist (or anything else). I sometimes do this after I’ve seen a band–I copy the songs from the setlist into their own folder, open mp3tag and change the album names (since the songs are from various albums) to Setlist.
Both of those methods involve making another copy of the song and placing it somewhere instead of having the player find the song in its original folder, which is what a playlist does.
There is other music library software, like Media Monkey, that’s also good with playlists. The free version is fine–all you get with the paid version is mp3 ripping, which you can do with another program or tweak into the free Media Monkey.
Thanks for the database character limitation info, I think you definitely saved me hours of renaming files !!
I was referring to this… there are slight variations of this on numerous forums. (not quite sure if this actually works or is a practical approach though)
Connect the MP3 player with the USB connector
Go to My Computer and open Sansa Clip folder
Go to the Music Folder
In the Music Folder, right click and make a New Folder and name it.
Copy and paste all the songs you want to be in a playlist into the New Folder.
Right click the New Folder with the songs you just dropped in and click on Make Playlist
Name the Playlist
Disconnect the MP3 player
I’ve downloaded Media Monkey and will give it a try when my Clip+ arrives.
Yes, that works. You’re making a copy of the song and putting it in a folder.
But then you have two whole copies of the song: one in the original album folder, one in your playlist folder. If you want to save space then it’s better to have a playlist–which is just a list–that would locate each song where it is and play them in order, without copying them or moving them out of the original album folder.
That’s what playlist formats like .m3u and .pla, the two formats the Clip recognizes, will do. And that’s why you use music library software, like Windows Media Player or Winamp or Media Monkey, to create them.
If you are eager to use playlists, look at some of the instructions for making them in whatever music-library software you prefer. Or you can use the copying method.
Yes, that works. You’re making a copy of the song and putting it in a folder.
But then you have two whole copies of the song: one in the original album folder, one in your playlist folder. If you want to save space then it’s better to have a playlist–which is just a list–that would locate each song where it is and play them in order, without copying them or moving them out of the original album folder.
That’s what playlist formats like .m3u and .pla, the two formats the Clip recognizes, will do. And that’s why you use music library software, like Windows Media Player or Winamp or Media Monkey, to create them.
If you are eager to use playlists, look at some of the instructions for making them in whatever music-library software you prefer. Or you can use the copying method.
Got it thanks… yes you’re right it makes no sense to have two copies of the same songs.
I’ll check out the music-library software that you mentioned…
My Clip+ finally arrived and I have to say it has easily exceeded my expectations in ease of use and sound quality. I tried it both on my home stereo and auto via a transmitter.
I do though want to correct one thing. As to creating playlists in the folders, there is no need to have duplicates of each song. You simply drop songs in their folders (Beatles in the Beatles folder) select which you want in the playlist, right click and go through the menus. However this may not work if all the songs for the given playlist are not in that particular folder. I can’t say as I have not tried that yet. I put each band in their respective folder and create a playlist as such. So for this method, there are no duplicates necessary. This is all done in windows with no third party software. I suppose I’ll use this method (very easy) until I figure out MediaMonkey… Hope this helps others who are starting out… like me.
WMP should allow you to use songs from different folders. I don’t think it will allow you to mix songs from the internal memory and the external card–but then again, I don’t use it.
