Thank you for submitting the post about the pitch issue. I almost purchased a Clip+. I will not buy a Clip+ until the issue has been corrected.
Over the last few days there have been several meetings with Engineering, Marketing, and Product Management regarding the pitch issue some users have seen. Please see below a statement regarding the decision that was reached as a result of these meetings.
At SanDisk, our goal with our Sansa MP3 product line is to provide products which deliver a quality consumer experience at price points which are accessible to the majority of the population. Our “value” positioning has served us well historically, although we acknowledge that occasionally our products do not live up to some users’ expectations. The issues raised on this Forum regarding sound fidelity are important to us however due to trade-off decisions that were made in engineering these products to deliver superior consumer value at what we believe are extremely attractive price points, our sound fidelity isn’t perfect. We have re-evaluated the possibility of reducing the pitch variation and due to the engineering trade-offs the decision was made to stay with the current design. Very few listeners, however, have noticed or complained about it as an issue in actual practice. For those who can detect sound differences with their naked ears during actual use and not via frequency analysis, our products may not be the best choice for them.
Forum Admin
slotmonsta
Oh my, you guys just put the nail in your coffin.
Funny how the rockbox guys seem to be (almost) able to write proper firmware for your hardware, though.
Message Edited by Kohlrabi on 09-23-2009 10:55 AM
that’s fine I can accept that. but are they going to apply the pitch improvements that they have already made to the fuze and the clip+ to the original clip?
I’m still unclear from Sandisk’s statement as to whether the pitch problem is due to hardware or firmware.
If it’s hardware, I have no problem with their decision.
If the Clip+ contains the same hardware as the Clipv2, this is clearly a software bug, which probably just takes some mirroring of the fixes to the old hardware. It seems like noone on abi or the rockbox team has disassembled a Clip+ so far, though.
@slotmonsta wrote:
Over the last few days there have been several meetings with Engineering, Marketing, and Product Management regarding the pitch issue some users have seen. Please see below a statement regarding the decision that was reached as a result of these meetings.
At SanDisk, our goal with our Sansa MP3 product line is to provide products which deliver a quality consumer experience at price points which are accessible to the majority of the population. Our “value” positioning has served us well historically, although we acknowledge that occasionally our products do not live up to some users’ expectations. The issues raised on this Forum regarding sound fidelity are important to us however due to trade-off decisions that were made in engineering these products to deliver superior consumer value at what we believe are extremely attractive price points, our sound fidelity isn’t perfect. We have re-evaluated the possibility of reducing the pitch variation and due to the engineering trade-offs the decision was made to stay with the current design. Very few listeners, however, have noticed or complained about it as an issue in actual practice. For those who can detect sound differences with their naked ears during actual use and not via frequency analysis, our products may not be the best choice for them.
Forum Admin
slotmonsta
SanDisk, if you give us some infos (docs, datasheets), we would happiliy fix it for you in our firmware (Rockbox).
We would of course promise to keep it confidential and sign an NDA if needed. But remember that code resulting from it is open source.
We don’t believe in intentionally keeping bugs which prevent users from having the best audio listening experience possible.
I have one question and three comments.
Question: What exactly is the status of this statement?
Is it an official statement of SanDisk Corp? If so, why does it appear only here, in this forum?
Or is it a personal statement of the forum admin, which could thus be denied at any time by SanDisk Corp as reflecting a personal opinion and not the view of the corporation?
Comments:
(1) Not being an engineer, I cannot imagine what trade-offs might be involved in the pitch issue. But far cheaper players – specifically: aRoc MP-20 [1GB], Camnex EM641 (CM650) [1GB], Coby MP200-2G [2GB], Nextar MA166-200 [2GB] – display pitch variations of <1 cent, that is, far superior to Sansa’s >19 cents. In view of this, I find the notion that Sansa’s poor pitch accuracy is some kind of trade-off required to deliver an “extremely attractive price point” as somewhat difficult to swallow.
(2) I fully agree that, “For those who can detect sound differences with their naked ears during actual use and not via frequency analysis, our products may not be the best choice for them.” The only problem is that one discovers the inferior quality of the Sansa only after paying down the money for it. The Sansa Clip box carries notes to the effect that “1GB” does not really mean 1GB, and that “15 hours of play time” may not necessarily mean 15 hrs in real life. It has no note saying “BIG sound” actually means “BIG sound which is off-pitch by 20 cents”.
(3) Good-bye, Sansa.
@tipsypenguin wrote:
that’s fine I can accept that. but are they going to apply the pitch improvements that they have already made to the fuze and the clip+ to the original clip?
We have re-evaluated the possibility of reducing the pitch variation and due to the engineering trade-offs the decision was made to stay with the current design.
I would take that as a NO.
I’d like an explanation for these statements made prior to the current nonsense:
From http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clip&message.id=20033#M20033
@microsansa wrote:
Ouch.
You guys are brutal
It’s a simple case of busy times. As mentioned here, the support system is being updated. The website is also undergoing some construction. Note some subtle changes, like the SanDisk link in the upper left, as well as changes in the corporate side of the site. I’ve been busy repairing interrupted links, among other things.
Development for the Clip is continuing, rest assured. Thank you for your patience while these changes take place.
µsansa
And, fromhttp://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clipplus&thread.id=40&view=by_date_ascending&page=1#M187
@donp wrote:
That was back when sansa was a little more active in the forum. WIth a response like:
" sansafix wrote:
Hi, its a battery life tradeoff. Running higher PLL will degrade battery life 5 - 7%.
Issue is logged and we will look into it again as time permits."
And announcing it was fixed the next day:
"All,
Good news, We have reduced the pitch error by one order of magnitude with little to no effect on battery life (<3%).
The optimization will be included in the next firmware release due out this quarter.
We have optimized for 44Khz and the pitch error is < 0.14%
For all other samples rates its <0.18%
Message Edited by sansafix on 02-19-2009 08:37 AM"
I note that the ORIGINAL material by sansafix, quoted above, seems to have been airbrushed out of history (Hi, Orwell!)
@slotmonsta wrote:
Over the last few days there have been several meetings with Engineering, Marketing, and Product Management regarding the pitch issue some users have seen. Please see below a statement regarding the decision that was reached as a result of these meetings.
At SanDisk, our goal with our Sansa MP3 product line is to provide products which deliver a quality consumer experience at price points which are accessible to the majority of the population. Our “value” positioning has served us well historically, although we acknowledge that occasionally our products do not live up to some users’ expectations. The issues raised on this Forum regarding sound fidelity are important to us however due to trade-off decisions that were made in engineering these products to deliver superior consumer value at what we believe are extremely attractive price points, our sound fidelity isn’t perfect. We have re-evaluated the possibility of reducing the pitch variation and due to the engineering trade-offs the decision was made to stay with the current design. Very few listeners, however, have noticed or complained about it as an issue in actual practice. For those who can detect sound differences with their naked ears during actual use and not via frequency analysis, our products may not be the best choice for them.
Forum Admin
slotmonsta
@malix wrote:
I have one question and three comments.
Question: What exactly is the status of this statement?
Is it an official statement of SanDisk Corp? If so, why does it appear only here, in this forum?
Why is it here? Have you not seen the fervor over this issue encompassing 3 different boards regarding the pitch problem? Last word was, slotmonsta promised to let us know what was going on as soon as he could get an ‘official’ answer. While some may not like the decision kudos must be give to slotmonsta for following through and keeping his word to the concerned folks here on the forum.
@malix wrote:
<–Snip–>
Comments:
(1) Not being an engineer, I cannot imagine what trade-offs might be involved in the pitch issue. But far cheaper players – specifically: aRoc MP-20 [1GB], Camnex EM641 (CM650) [1GB], Coby MP200-2G [2GB], Nextar MA166-200 [2GB] – display pitch variations of <1 cent, that is, far superior to Sansa’s >19 cents. In view of this, I find the notion that Sansa’s poor pitch accuracy is some kind of trade-off required to deliver an “extremely attractive price point” as somewhat difficult to swallow.
<–Snip–>
Think about this Malix. Did those FAR CHEAPER PLAYERS have all the bells and whistles your Sansa does? Did they play FM radio? What about Podcast and Audiobook Support? What about Codec Support? Could they play OGG and FLAC? I wonder what SanDisk Gave us (because of User Demand) that required trade-offs, where the “CHEAPER” players didnt.
Wow. That’s really surprising and unfortunate. It was confirmed by Sansa in the earlier threads that this is in fact, as I initially suspected, a firmware issue. Sansa also went on to explore a fix and verify it’s effectiveness–albeit at a 3% compromise in battery life. It would seem that was the same fix they did release for the Fuze. The resources to apply this fix and release for the Clip should be, according to Sandisk’s own description, minimal.
@slotmonsta wrote:
For those who can detect sound differences with their naked ears during actual use and not via frequency analysis, our products may not be the best choice for them.
Forum Admin
slotmonsta
That’s perhaps the most disappointing statement. For those who took the trouble to seek out a player specifically for audio performance and fidelity, it’s especially discouraging to hear Sandisk admit that they don’t think it’s worth their time and effort to fix something very important to some listeners; even more so when they admit that they already know how to fix it. I work in audio electronics. I understand the technical issues here related to PLL ratios, etc. and I agree with one of the previous posters. In my job, we would never be allowed to release a product with such a large playback pitch error. Even if most people can’t detect it, there’s no good reason to not get it right. It’s should be fundamental.
@conversionbox wrote:
@malix wrote:
<–Snip–>
Comments:
(1) Not being an engineer, I cannot imagine what trade-offs might be involved in the pitch issue. But far cheaper players – specifically: aRoc MP-20 [1GB], Camnex EM641 (CM650) [1GB], Coby MP200-2G [2GB], Nextar MA166-200 [2GB] – display pitch variations of <1 cent, that is, far superior to Sansa’s >19 cents. In view of this, I find the notion that Sansa’s poor pitch accuracy is some kind of trade-off required to deliver an “extremely attractive price point” as somewhat difficult to swallow.
<–Snip–>
Think about this Malix. Did those FAR CHEAPER PLAYERS have all the bells and whistles your Sansa does? Did they play FM radio? What about Podcast and Audiobook Support? What about Codec Support? Could they play OGG and FLAC? I wonder what SanDisk Gave us (because of User Demand) that required trade-offs, where the “CHEAPER” players didnt.
Could they play OGG and FLAC?
LOL!
What the hell is the point of a LOSSLESS codec, when the player cannot even keep in tune?
One of two things just happened: This company has either jacked up the perceived falue of “generic mp4” players, or, shot itself in the foot. With a cannon.
Looks to me like they’re saying that they aren’t really interested in the “quality” market, they’re going for the cheepiebopper crowd.
Slick, real slick, after having the audiophile crowd boost 'em into the limelight.
What ever happened to “you dance with the one that brung ya”?
Ride to the top on the wallets of those who care about audio quality, and then tell them to ■■■■ off, because you want to compete with the no-name bottom-rack players?
Well, guess what? Even the no-name bottom-rack players can keep a **bleep** tune!
Unbelieveable
I hope they get Rockbox finished, SOON – and, I hope they can get a Clip V2 implementation for it!
Is there some industry sweepstakes going on? A contest to see who can do the most self-inflicted damage to their reputations in one month? Until now, it looked like Micrsoft was going to be the winner, hand down, with their idiotic Zune HD stuff (mandatory spamvertising, no apps other than the few they deign to produce, total control of “the experience,” removal of existing features, inability to control the volume when it’s in your pocket, etc.)
But now, I think Sansa may be giving them a real run for the money.
Heck, if I want a cheap player with a microSDHC slot that sounds good, I’ll get a Sansa C or E series off eBay and Rockbox it. It’ll have an equalizer!
Thanks Sandisk. I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of your products over the last 5 years, MP3 players (two of them), countless USB memory sticks for myself and co-workers (I have the office purchasing card), SD and Compact Flash cards, card readers. Never again. You’ve lost me as a customer.
@tnmats wrote:
Thanks Sandisk. I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of your products over the last 5 years, MP3 players (two of them), countless USB memory sticks for myself and co-workers (I have the office purchasing card), SD and Compact Flash cards, card readers. Never again. You’ve lost me as a customer.
Same here. I’ve bought three Sansa mp3 players. Never again.
@tnmats wrote:
Thanks Sandisk. I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of your products over the last 5 years, MP3 players (two of them), countless USB memory sticks for myself and co-workers (I have the office purchasing card), SD and Compact Flash cards, card readers. Never again. You’ve lost me as a customer.
Ditto.
I was one of Sandisk’s most obnoxious supporters, but no more. I sold my last Sansa product, a Clip+ yesterday…and have moved on.
From this point on, my participation in this forum will be nil.
I’ll start by saying this issue, and Sansa’s current stand on not giving the same fix that Fuze got, are a blemish on the company’s reputation.
But… other than that, the things they DID do right still make both my players preferable to the equivalent offerings from the fruit company: FM on both (just now coming to Nano), Having a display at all on the small one (still none on shuffle AFAIK), memory slot, ogg files, rockboxable (at least Sansa doesn’t actively block it like Apple does).
