Firmware Wishlist

Hi there and Happy 2010!

I would like to start a wishlist for the next firmware (and hope it isn’t a problem):

  1. Scrolling album title (and not only song title). Because, for example, I’ve got “The 80’s Collection” (every year). Well it’s impossible to know what year is playing!

  2. Track Info available by clicking the middle button.

That’s all for the moment!

Any other ideas?

By the way, Thank you SanDisks for that great convenient player! Great Sound Quality! :wink:

EDIT 

  1. Remaining time during playback (instead of running time)

  2. Time only available via “date & time” settings… Why is that?

Message Edited by Nuntius on 01-14-2010 09:26 AM

Gapless playback is an issue with the rip, not the player - correctly ripped files are gapless, at least for me.  Fixing bad rips in playback is possible, but hard, and I’d rather see development effort put into other areas.

My #1 wish is for physical limits to be removed - I want to be able to plug in a 128GB card when they become available.  I could fill that quite easily, and I’m not a FLAC fanatic…

#2 would be to help port Rockbox…yeah, I can dream…

@u38cg wrote:

Gapless playback is an issue with the rip, not the player - correctly ripped files are gapless, at least for me.  Fixing bad rips in playback is possible, but hard, and I’d rather see development effort put into other areas.

Well… you are wrong!

Gapless playback can be native or added by a firmware! It’s a player specification.

Nuntius wrote:


@u38cg wrote:

Gapless playback is an issue with the rip, not the player - correctly ripped files are gapless, at least for me.  Fixing bad rips in playback is possible, but hard, and I’d rather see development effort put into other areas.


 

Well… you are wrong!

Gapless playback can be native or added by a firmware! It’s a player specification.

A gapless album has to be ripped gaplessly , as well. So u38cg is not completely wrong. Most have reported that the Clip+ is close to, but not quite gapless, with decent rips. But to get back to your statement, a player capable of gapless may not play it back that way if an improper rip is done.

And if I ask you to rip an album NOT gaplessly, what do you do?

Since…

Message Edited by Nuntius on 01-03-2010 01:17 PM

@nuntius wrote:

 

 

  1. Not important but the possibility to choose the color of the fonts.

 

Good thing it’s not important.  The clip/clip+ display has a yellow area and a blue area.  Not full color, and no option which color is displayed in a given area.

 

@donp wrote:


@nuntius wrote:

 

 

  1. Not important but the possibility to choose the color of the fonts.

 


Good thing it’s not important.  The clip/clip+ display has a yellow area and a blue area.  Not full color, and no option which color is displayed in a given area.

 

 

Well, I know that. That’s why this topic is called “Firmware wishlist”!

Nuntius wrote:


@donp wrote:


@nuntius wrote:

 

 

  1. Not important but the possibility to choose the color of the fonts.

 


Good thing it’s not important.  The clip/clip+ display has a yellow area and a blue area.  Not full color, and no option which color is displayed in a given area.

 

 


Well, I know that. That’s why this topic is called “Firmware wishlist”!

Stop wishing for this. Its a hardware thing not something that can be changed with a firmware.

Now on your earlier gapless debate. You have to rip songs properly to implement any kind of gapless. This could be as simple as changing the codec you use. Something like DbPoweramp would do the trick. 

Well I’ll stop wishing for colors then (even though it’s not always a hardware problem)!

I rip my CD with foobar or EAC and Lame (for MP3) or FLAC (no way I’m gonna change codec). Everything is ripped properly believe me!

Now don’t tell me your Clip + is gapless! No matter what codec used or whatever.

@nuntius wrote:

Well I’ll stop wishing for colors then (even though it’s not always a hardware problem)!

 

I rip my CD with foobar or EAC and Lame (for MP3) or FLAC (no way I’m gonna change codec). Everything is ripped properly believe me!

 

Now don’t tell me your Clip + is gapless! No matter what codec used or whatever.

Mine is gapless, but not glitchless…big difference.

NO, Sansa Clip + is not gapless!

@nuntius wrote:
NO, Sansa Clip + is not gapless!

:smileyvery-happy::smileyvery-happy::smileyvery-happy:

You can bold face type all you want…My Clip+ is indeed gapless, but not glitchless.

:stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s my firmware wish list…

1: Battery life improvement! The wide discrepancy in power consumption between MP3 and Vorbis needs to be addressed. Given Vorbis is a more modern and more CPU intensive codec I can understand some difference, but the current situation is silly. 

2: Better navigation! With the ability to load so many tracks - between the built in storage and what can be added via SDHC - just scrolling doesn’t cut it anymore. We need at least an “alphabetic jump” option to make this less tedious. If someone has an even more clever idea I’m open to suggestions, but we need SOMEthing!

3: Faster library refresh! I’ve got an 8GB Class 4 MicroSDHC  about 75% full of songs, and whenever I update my netcasts it takes 10 minutes plus for the database update to grind grind grind to completion.

4: Allow playlists for “Podcast” material! I listen to three different tech netcasts from the TWiT.tv network, and I want to listen to them in overall chronological order … and a playlist is the only way I know of to accomplish this. I’d like to be able to take advantage of some of the extra features the Clip+ offers for “Podcast” (I just loathe that term…) material, but right now I’m forced to decide between them and listening to the shows in the proper order.

Don’t’ we already have an improvements thread?  Oh well.

  1. An easily accessible clock display.  It could replace the equalizer display, or it could be worked into some open space in any other top-level display or menu.

  2. Allow a folder hierarchy in the Podcasts folder.  I think I have found that when I have subfolders, a lot of Podcast features don’t work because the player starts working in “Music mode”.

@nuntius wrote:


@u38cg wrote:

Gapless playback is an issue with the rip, not the player - correctly ripped files are gapless, at least for me.  Fixing bad rips in playback is possible, but hard, and I’d rather see development effort put into other areas.


 

Well… you are wrong!

Gapless playback can be native or added by a firmware! It’s a player specification.

There are several different things that have to happen for true gapless playback to occur.  

1 - the player must not insert a gap between tracks.  TheClip+ does this.

2 - The player must not close and re-open the output stream.  The Clip+ doesn’t do this, and this is the source of the small (and unimportant!) blip that you can hear.  

3 - Each audio frame (about 1/40th of a second) must be full of audio. 

This last one can be fixed by hackery, but it will simply not be as good as getting it right in the first place, as it is well nigh impossible to match up the two waveforms.

Sorry for double post.

@nuntius wrote:

 

I rip my CD with foobar or EAC and Lame (for MP3) or FLAC (no way I’m gonna change codec). Everything is ripped properly believe me!

 

Unless you are setting the --nogap option with lame and lining up the inputs and outputs correctly, it will *not* output gapless files.   I don’t use the tools you mention but it is quite possible they invoke lame seperately for each track and hence do not produce gapless files.  There are a lot of gotchas around gapless playback!

u38cg wrote:


@nuntius wrote:


@u38cg wrote:

Gapless playback is an issue with the rip, not the player - correctly ripped files are gapless, at least for me.  Fixing bad rips in playback is possible, but hard, and I’d rather see development effort put into other areas.


 

Well… you are wrong!

Gapless playback can be native or added by a firmware! It’s a player specification.


 

There are several different things that have to happen for true gapless playback to occur.  

 

1 - the player must not insert a gap between tracks.  TheClip+ does this.

2 - The player must not close and re-open the output stream.  The Clip+ doesn’t do this, and this is the source of the small (and unimportant!) blip that you can hear.  

3 - Each audio frame (about 1/40th of a second) must be full of audio. 

This last one can be fixed by hackery, but it will simply not be as good as getting it right in the first place, as it is well nigh impossible to match up the two waveforms.

 

Thanks for the education!

@u38cg wrote:

Sorry for double post.

 


@nuntius wrote:

 

I rip my CD with foobar or EAC and Lame (for MP3) or FLAC (no way I’m gonna change codec). Everything is ripped properly believe me!

 


 

Unless you are setting the --nogap option with lame and lining up the inputs and outputs correctly, it will *not* output gapless files.   I don’t use the tools you mention but it is quite possible they invoke lame seperately for each track and hence do not produce gapless files.  There are a lot of gotchas around gapless playback!

 

Well, since my MP3’s are gapless (and glitchless:stuck_out_tongue: ) with my Cowon S9…

  1. Time remaining option on songs.

  2. Easy access to a clock (and date).

  3. Better shuffle function.