At the moment the line-out signal of Fuze can only be gained if the dock is powered up, hence no cable can be used to connect your Fuze to other devices. Line-out only works through a docking station which is not the best option for poratbility and works only with the speakers belong to the dock (in the docks made by Sandisk, I don’t know about the rest).
Sansafix recently explained that the Fuze can’t recognize if a cable is plugged in if there’s no voltage going in, but there’s a possibility that the signal can be switched between the headphone jack and the line-out port manually, and could be enabled with a firmware update.
I looked through the posts and there’s an interest for this feature, so I hereby request this to be included in a future firmware, and hope that will be joined by others.
I think most of my other minor gripes about the Fuze will be fixed in the next FW. The “no line out without a dock” problem is the one major bummer for me that I would love to see resolved.
People want line-out because line level is a different impedance than headphones. It works much, much better with stereos (that typically have line-in). If you mean line-level out the headphone jack, that would be wonderful but the headphone levels are usually something done in hardware and not changeable.
@sansadj wrote:
I’m wondering why you would want line out from the 30 pin connector instead of just using the headphone jack.
Ditto what bdb said. Whenever you see a post like “I hooked my player up to my stereo and the volume is really low”, the impedance difference between headphone-out and line-in is the reason.
Actually, it’s all about the signal level. The voltage of that AC waveform is the key. Matching the impedance, with your average amplifier input’s high impedance, is a far smaller problem.
The headphone amp is about 50mW, designed to drive a nominal 16 ohm load.
The dock pins have a greater capability. When docked, the Sansa disables the headphone amplifier.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
Message Edited by neutron_bob on 09-02-2008 05:02 PM
Also, using the line-out you bypass the Fuze’s internal amplifier, so the signal is (supposedly) clearer and you won’t end up with a sound going through two amplifiers if you connect it to your stereo, car radio etc.
So there’s DAC->Line-out amp if using line-out, and DAC->Headphone amp if using headphones?
I was thinking that the headphone amp uses the line-out signal, and it’s there so you can change the volume and it pushes the current through the headphones.
There was some information about “hacking” the View cable to work with Fuze, by getting 3.3v to pin 7, so the Fuze thinks it’s docked, and enables line-out. With the view (and I presume with the Fuze as well) there’s a steady 5v coming from pin 1&2, so with a resistor a line-out cable can be made after all, using the Fuze own battery and there’s no need for an outside voltage supply?
