Some days ago I bought the SanDisk Sport Clip. While looking for a fix for issues with track order (for mp3 files with full ID3 tags) I stumbled upon this forum and decided to post my question in the hope of a useful reply from SanDisk support.
Out-of-the-box my player had FirmWare version 1.17 pre-installed and I can confirm that the tracks are now indeed ordered according to tracknumber. However, some very serious issues remain that make this player practically unusable as-is:
In Music view: A directory structure Artist->Album->Tracks is created using the tags as one may expect any decent mp3 player to do. However, the Artist, Album and Track names are truncated at ~12 places. Since it is extremely common for album, artist (and/or tracknames) to be longer than 12 places the sorting mechanism is effectively nullified. Take this example:
Artist\Album\Track
Britney Spears\Live at Winterland Theatre 1971, Disc 1\Track 01 (etc)
Britney Spears\Live at Winterland Theatre 1971, Disc 2\Track 01 (etc)
Due to the name truncation both Disc 1 and Disc 2 are renamed to the folder ‘Live at Wint’ containing first all ‘Track 01’ files, then all ‘Track 02’ files, etc. Adjusting the Album-tag to something below 12 spaces may possibly prevent this issue, but it is simply not an option to change my entire database with many tens (read: hundreds) of GB’s worth of mp3/flac files into nonsensical-less-than-12-spaces names specifically for this player.
Folder view: The folder view could have provided a good workaround for the issue mentioned above using filename=track_nr-title, except that here and with Firmware version 1.17 the files are sorted in seemingly random order (i.e. not in alphabetical order, but perhaps in order of modification/creation date?)
Due to the combination of both issues the SanDisk sport clip is effectively in a permanent pseudo-shuffle mode (under both the Music and Folder views) making it worthless whenever the track order is essential for album integrity, for example with concept albums, full-concert recordings or classical music (concider listening to the Matthaus-Passion in random order).
If I had been aware of these issues earlier I would never have purchased this player, which brings me to the question:
Will the issues mentioned above be fixed in an upcoming Firmware update?
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
(It would be great to receive a replay within a week, since then the warranty will approach expiration and I will be forced to return the product for a refund if things remain as they are now, with the associated breach of trust in brandname).
The Sport has engineering restrictions. It is unlikely that the truncation will change, due to database limitations. On the second issue, my understanding, if I recall correctly, is that the songs will be in order but by batches depending upon when they were added to the player. Someone posted here, I believe, software that handles this, when run against the player’s contents (and so the software would need to be run periodically)–the software basically simulated a full re-transfer of the player’s contents to the player (or something like that). You could try a search here.
SanDisk currently is working on improved firmware, but what it might be is unknown (as is the when).
If you have an upcoming return deadline, the Clip+ and Clip Zip are nice players, indeed, and do not have these issues, if they are important ones for you . . . .
Ja som to vyriešil vytvorením PLAYLIST. Paylist vytvorím za niekoľko sekúnd, uložím si ho do priečinka “Playlists” a pri spustení prístroja zvolím prehrávať z Playlist. Prístroj prehráva skladby v poradí ako sú skladby zapísané v PLAYLIST, to znamená presne tak, ako ty potrebuješ - v poradí albumov a v poradí skladieb, ako sú v tomto albume.
Prístroj prehráva skladby jedine v abecednom poradí, ktoré číta z ID3 Tág. Prístroj nedokáže neprehrať viacero slbumov podľa názvov skladieb.
Miikerman. Your response is greatly appreciated and has been very useful.
I’m sorry to hear about the database limitations. For my understanding: is the restriction on character length for names inherited from restrictions in FAT? If so, does this player employ an older more restrictive version of FAT than is common and would that explain why all previous players that I have owned did not suffer from this limitation?
Perhaps, given these restrictions, there is an improvement opportunity by implementing an automated unique full-filename –> short-filename mapping (something along the lines of e.g. 8.3 format) rather than the simple truncation that in practice will often amount to a many-to-one mapping.
With interest I pursued the second point that you made in your reply about rebuilding the file allocation table. I tried your suggestion and at first sight this seems indeed to have restored the alphabetical sorting in the Folder view. For me this is an acceptable situation, so I will hold on to this player (because of the other excellent specs, like battery lifetime & memory extendibility). However, since this workaround introduces extra steps after every file-update I still hope that a permanent solution will be implemented in a future Firmware version.
I do have some concerns about the impact of the repeated FAT rebuilding on the lifetime of the flash memory, because with this workaround every file is effectively copied three times. Does this imply that the lifetime is reduced by a factor three as well?
Please allow me to make a small addition to Miikerman’s post.
FatSorter has an installer that requires admin rights. For people that would like to update the files on the SanDisk Clip Sport on a system on which they do not have admin rights (such as for instance at work): Do an internet search on FAT sorting and you’ll find many alternative tools.
The process is rather simple if I understand it correctly: all files are moved to a temporary folder and replaced in alphabetical order. Sounds like something that you could implement yourself in your favourite programming language … [warning: could be that I’m overlooking some subtleties here :O]
I went for a ready-made bat file: http://www.murraymoffatt.com/sortfolder.zip
Unzip and you’re ready to go without administrator rights. It is a sufficiently easy-to-use tool that is called from the command prompt and takes about half-a-minute to sort the entire SanDisk Clip Sport 4GB memory. Open the bat file in a text editor to view the instructions.
As the solution is a hack, to get past limiation in the design and software bugs, I hope some this will be address by SanDisk in the next / future firmware …
Does anyone think any of the issues raised here are now addressed by v1.22?
The sport does not recognize album names over 30 characters. I renamed the album with by selecting all the tracks on the album, right clicking, choose properties, and change the album name to something shorter - it now plays fine. I also updated firmware to 1.22
I’m having a ploblem with my sandisk clip sport the album mix-up and the time clock on the system will you help me or release another firmware update with the version 1.23.
i cant contact sandisk so please e-mail me on
micky.mouse_4@hotmail.com
for help on my MP3 player if the Firmware update is not possible.
