Sansa Clip Wish List

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1

I’ve had my Clip for a few days now and am loving it. It is replacing my 2-year-old Hi-MD minidisc player as my main portable music player. After thoroughly exploring all the options and features on the clip, after reading most of the posts in this forum and the anythingbutipod.com Clip forum, and after upgrading the firmware to v1.01.18, I have come up with a short wish list that I hope can be addressed by the powers that be here.

1.  add a clock/calendar function,

2.  display elapsed track time along with total track time, like 00:35/04:23. Remove the progress bar to make room for this configuration. The option of this display configuration or the current default configuration of progress bar and elapsed track time should be user-selectible in the settings.

3.  add a text search at the artist, album and song levels. The increased scrolling speed added with the firmware update helps speed searches,. but doesn’t help if I’m looking for a word in the middle of a song title.

Looking forward to many happy tunes.

Message Edited by BigJohnL on 12-04-2007 08:11 PM

2

Nice list!  I’d like to add the following:

  1. Option to turn off OLED display while connected via USB.  OLED displays lose their brightness as they age (rated at 5000 hours by many sources).  This means a little over a year before the display life is up for someone who charges overnight every day.  The Clip is cheap enough to replace yearly but seems like a waste to do so.  Blue elements wear out the quickest.  And perhaps a time estimate on the battery meter. 

  2. Lower minimum volume. 

  3. Better playlist compatibility / reliability.  There are playlists that show up fine in WMP11 and My Computer, but then do not contain any entries when viewed on the Clip.  Perhaps it has something to do with ID3 tags that others were discussing.  I have had two playlists do this.  Only way I’ve solved it is to load songs one by one until I see which one causes the playlist to come up empty, and just not load that song.  Ability to view songs by Folder seems like a very good feature to those who don’t use WMP11 exclusively.

Thanks!

Message Edited by YueIBM on 12-04-2007 03:53 PM

3

I bought this A/C adapter

http://store.bargaincell.com/B000I1XLG6/M/B000I1XLG6.htm

and this car cigarette lighter adapter

http://store.bargaincell.com/B000CRFDEO/M/B000CRFDEO.htm

for about $10 including shipping. So far they seem to be working great. When I have the Clip connected to the A/C adapter, the OLED display turns off after the time interval I’ve selected in Settings, even while charging.

4

Wishlist:
0) Am radio ( who listens to Fm anymore?)

  1. Lower initial volume step
  2. FM and Voice recording as MP3 (not sure of the horsepower of mr. cpu)
  3. Turn off OLED when charging
  4. Turn on OLED briefly during track changes
  5. Make a 4/8GB model when cost effective
  6. Play list when synced via MSC: if I create 10 folders with 10 songs in each I want to see 10 groups in the menu.
  7. Group/Folder repeat.
    Not too much under my tree huh?
5

1.  Bookmarks.
2.  Bookmarks.
3.  Bookmarks.

I’ve only had the clip for a day, and it’s a good little (tiny!) player, but it falls a little short of the mark when it comes to audiobooks (and by audiobooks I mean Netlibrary, Overdrive, or ripped-from-CD books; not Audible, with which I have no experience).

To make the grade as an audiobook player, an mp3 player really needs a bookmark feature that allows a listener to, say, pause in the middle of a fifteen-hour audiobook, listen to a few songs, the radio, or a podcast, then return to the audiobook right where it left off.  My wife’s iPod Nano does this automatically—when one navigates away from an audiobook, it automatically sets a bookmark—and that’s the method I’d like to see Sandisk emulate.  On my old Rio players (Cali, Carbon), I could manually set multiple bookmarks—not as slick or convenient as the iPod, but it worked.

Sandisk:  Please implement bookmarks via firmware update soon!  Don’t make me beg . . . .

6

I second, third, and fourth the bookmarks request. 

I was thinking that if you put an MP3 file in the “Audible” folder it should show up under the “Audiobooks” menu item and have the automatic resume where you left off feature.  I don’t think it’s important for MP3 audiobooks to support the additional “Audible audio” features like speed and ch. mode, the automatic bookmarking is the big thing.  Since the player already supports MP3, and bookmarks in audiobooks, it seems like this is a relatively simple feature request.  I hope :wink:

7

Oh, and I also agree about folders.  Why in the heck can’t I just create a pseudo-playlist by sticking a bunch of files in a subfolder?  Crazy man, crazy.

8

MIN. VOLUME TOO LOUD!!!
Then it would be nice to have the OLED time out when charging.

Message Edited by yeroc40 on 12-13-2007 04:45 PM

9

Yepp! It`s too loud! And I really would appreciate to navigate through folders!!!

10

I was wondering if any of the data provided by radio stations about songs and what not could be used by the clip. Since I’m not sure what hardware and software is required to do it, does anyone know if the clip has the resources to use the data.

Link to a Wikipedia article I think has something to do with the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System

Think this would be a useful feature if it were possible to implement it? Knowing the station name or song being played would be an awesome feature for this tiny powerhouse.

11

Wishlist:
0) Am radio ( who listens to Fm anymore?)

  1. Lower initial volume step
  2. FM and Voice recording as MP3 (not sure of the horsepower of mr. cpu)
  3. Turn off OLED when charging
  4. Turn on OLED briefly during track changes (option in settings)
  5. Make a 4/8GB model when cost effective
  6. Play list when synced via MSC: if I create 10 folders with 10 songs in each I want to see 10 groups in the menu.
  7. Group/Folder repeat.
    Not too much under my tree huh?
  8. Auto Shutdown of clip when idle. (i forgot to close my clip a couple of the times after charging)
  9. Clip attached from the side. (this way, the clip won’t detach when pulling it out without pressing the clip)
  10. A FREE UPGRADE TO NEW CLIPS IF EXPANSION SLOT IS EVER INTRODUCED
12

  1. I wish, in one of your future firmware updates, you include somekind of an power-saving option where the screen and more importantly the almost blinding useless circular light does not turn on during volume changing or skipping tracks – which is a frequent operation in the gym etc (for which this player is extremely well suited). Otherwise this product rocks!  Atleast there is no need for the circular light.

  2. Some kind of smart volume?

13

bookmarks

14

1)  bookmarks for any file type… my wife has a zen v plus (2gb). she can make up to 10 bookmarks… this is a big deal, yet so simple…
2)  enable adding to the on-the-go list when viewing the song list.  and not just while playing song…
3)  display elapsed track time along with total track time, like 00:35/04:23. Remove the progress bar to make room for this configuration.   The option of this display configuration or the current default configuration of progress bar and elapsed track time should be user-selectible in the settings.

Message Edited by amkoas on 01-05-2008 05:11 PM

15

Non-repeating shuffle mode where no song repeats until they’ve all played once.  

16

Hello!

Just joined this forum, although I’ve been reading here for a while; it’s what convinced me to get a Clip in the first place!  Great little product, but since there is opportunity for improvement, here are my suggestions:

1) “Shuffle Play” when “Play All Songs” engaged should be modified to:
        a) when possible, not play songs by either the same album or artist back to back
        b) have a “lookup table” so that previously played songs since the last database refresh are not played more than once, and that the << button allow us to go back to those songs vice spooling up the next random song.   Spooling up the next random song is what the >> should do in that context.  Also make it possible to download the table, including the order of songs played, to the computer - some of these shuffles are playlists I’d like to be able to repeat!

       
2) Turn off OLED display when Clip is attached to the computer, except when a button is pushed to activate the display timer.  That way, battery charge status can be checked without burning out the screen unnecessarily.

3) Be able to display “time remaining” of a song, or album when “Album Mode” is selected.

4) I note that when both the artist name and song title are too long to fit on the screen, only the artist name scrolls.  Make it that both scroll, or that hitting the “select” button changes which one scrolls.

5) I’d like to echo other folk’s requests, such as:

        - gapless playback
        - OGG, FLAC support
        - better on-the-fly playlist creation
        - File/folder browsing
        - Pan/balance
        - FFWD/REW with sound - and adjustable FFWD/REW speed
        - Keep the tracks’ play count in the database/tags(?) - like Cowon, Creative, or Zune players

But overall, a superb product!  I look forward to downloading FW 1.01.19 with all these features incorporated!  ;-)

Also, for future products, it might be too much to ask if a Clip could be outfitted with swappable SD microchip capability, but I certainly hope that the improved audio quality of the Clip makes it’s way into ALL your players, and that they accommodate micro SD’s.

MG-bert

17

Best player for the price out there right now. if I were to make some requests for features they would be the following:

1: selectable record quality, low or high, A one hour lecture took almost 200mb or thereabouts.

2: an espresso machine attachment.

Seriously though, I have zero complaints and love the product AS-IS. Excellent job updating the firmware to address certain issues, but I would consider the product perfect for the price already.

Cheers,

  Mike

18

I agree strongly with the OLED display timeout while sitting idle and charging.

The scrolling text should be faster.  Often, longer title information requres waking up the display.

Bob

20

folder-based navigation… as opposed to the artist/album/track now

thank you sandisk for keeping up with all this… you guys are awesome

21

Miikerman touched on an interesting point: the EQ display is visible only for “custom”. 

The yellow band display shows “Custom EQ” while the “sliders” are in the blue section. For all others (presets), the display is a menu only. 

I think SanDisk opted to minimize confusion during the EQ mode.  Note the “nav right” arrows available in all EQ menu choices.  If the user presses the right button, in anything but “custom” that choice is held, and we are moved to the “equalizer” option within “settings”.

If “custom” is selected, a press of the “right” button moves us to the graphic EQ “sliders”, and the left/right navigation buttons will select a slider (band) while up/down will move the slider.  The “hint” to the user, on what to do next, is the pointer below each slider.  Pressing the center button finishes the selection, as will the “home” button.

If we try to navigate forward, or right, in any of the presets, we’re bumped back.  Perhaps, in the future, a right press will yield a display of the preset settings (the sliders could look narrower, denoting a difference from the “custom” ones).  Maybe if the up/down button is pressed while at this point, the yellow portion will show the preset names as the user scrolls between the choices, with the “custom” ones looking different- meaning user adjustable.

At least we have an EQ option!  I am happy for that.  I like the “jazz” preset personally…

Bob