I recently bought a Sansa Clip for on the go use, and was blown away by the sound, especially with the custom EQ and my Sennheiser Canalphones. I’m ususally not a big audiophile but noticed a glitch in the audio which can be replicated on my machine and I’ve informed Sandisk about it and want people to check and see if it’s not just my machine.
Basically I have the EQ on custom to start off with for personal preference because I find the other presets flat. So if I start up the player after a certain period of time of it being off, or I switch from the FM radio to the music, then the sound will be flat like the presets. In order to correct this, I have to go to the EQ menu, highlight “normal” preset, which boosts the sound for some reason, then switch back to custom, which gives me my preferred audio. I don’t know why it does this and it does it quite often. To make sure whenever I start an album I switch the EQ back to normal the custom to get the proper sound.
Can anyone confirm this. I know for sure that this occurs when switching from fm radio to an album, but it happens seemingly randomly when playing it from the start (which is what I do most of the time as I listen to it in the car and have no need for the radio feature). I hope someone is able to confirm this (or maybe not, it’s better off being an isolated incident), but please check it out.
Okay, I found a sure way to replicate it. It occurse whenever changing your albums through the music menu. it “resets” the equalizer eavery time it starts and loads another album. So I have to manually switch to the proper selection otherwise it sounds flat.
I’ve noticed the same thing … the volume gets really low for some reason on occassion with my custom eq. Then I need to switch to normal and then back to custom as you described to get the volume back at the right level.
I contacted sandisk about it but haven’t even gotten a confirmation that it was received yet. I’m glad I’m not the only one, but the glitch is kind of tiresome, because I tend to listen to a few albums on the way to school.
I played around with my Clip and I found something that may be causing your problem but is a little different than you have described. What I found is this:
When you go to the EQ menu, you can “audition” all the various presets, including the custom settings for the EQ by scrolling through the several options. While you are auditioning a setting, if you hit the center select button, that setting is remembered as the selected one. Hitting that select button also exits you from the EQ menu screen. However, if you audition a setting (by scrolling) but have not selected it, and you exit the EQ screen by any other method than by pressing the select button, then the result is that your equalizer stays operating with the auditioned setting, but the “remembered” setting is still the last one you hit the select button for. So now if you navigate back to the EQ screen, it will show that your last “remembered” setting is highlighted and check marked (say, you had made a custom eq setting and selected it, “Custom” would be highlighted and selected). But the EQ sound you would hear is the one you were auditioning last when you exited the EQ menu screen. If you then navigate away from custom setting and then back to custom setting, now you will hear the real custom eq settings. This is a little bit confusing when you see a check marked setting but you hear something different.
You can check this out and see if this is what is causing your problems. The ways to exit the EQ screen other than by selecting are with the forward and back arrows or the home (menu) button or just by waiting and the backlight timeout will send you to the main menu.
If only exiting EQ menu by a selection solves your problem, then you can manage that for the time being. A future firmware upgrade (V01.01.18) (this may take a few weeks) will force the selected eq settings to be applied upon exit from the EQ menu no matter how you exit.
If only exiting EQ menu by a selection does not solve your problem, post some more instructions on how to reproduce it, and we’ll try to fix it.
I was aware of that issue before as well, but that’s not what is causing the problem. If I select custom EQ, and press OK, then go to the album menu and change albums, then the setting dissappears and I have to re select it.
There is a new firmware release available today on the sansa updater (see the website for details on how to get the sansa updater software loaded on your pc) Version 01.01.17 fixes this problem. Try it out. If you think the problem is still there, reply to this post.
Now my second has this volume/EQ problem.
Should I exchange it again for another or move on to something else?
The clip is my first mp3 player and when it works it’s great.
But these problems are getting frustrating and time consuming.
Plus I’m sure that their sales are impacted. Are all mp3 players this unreliable?
Update: I contacted tech. help at sandisk. Big mistake!
He acted as if they have never seen this problem before.
After the typical frustration of trying to understand someone from another country
and anger over being treated like an ■■■■■ with the common questions he defaulted to
“just re-format” and that will fix it.
Now the Album folder has vanished and that is where I put my music.
So fixed or not I am unable to load any music. I’ve now gone from bad to worse.
Oh, and he didn’t call back to check on the problem like he said he would.
OK, here’s the latest. With the forums and Sandisk unable to provide any insight,
I decided to do a second exchange, being the origional purchase was less than two weeks ago.
Sitting here with my third Clip, I see that this one has a much newer firmware version out of the box
(xxxxx.18). I downloaded the most recent firmware and loaded my music. No luck, same problem.
At least I feel comfortable knowing that this is probably a glitch in all Clips which will eventually
be fixed with an update.
Note to anyone from Sandisk that may read this:
This almost always happens when the EQ is in “rock” mode but has happened to me in “jazz” mode. Since rock, jazz & custom
are the only ones I listen to, I can’t speak to the others. Please fix this!
