SO, what do you think: a Clip firmware revision out by Sept. 15?

@miikerman wrote:

Given that it’s been 6-1/2 months since the last firmware upgrade and given that the Clip+ firmware overlaps that of the Clip, I could see SanDisk upgrading the Clip firmware–there is a huge user base out there. 

 

Word from you SanDisk?

Not the word you’re looking for, but at least it answers the question:

From the new Clip+ board posted 9/13/09

@slotmonsta wrote:

All,

 

The SanDisk Firmware developers are aware of this issue and a fix is in the works for the Sansa Fuze and the Sansa Clip+. At this time due to development targeted on the Clip+, firmware for the original Clip is not currently under development. This may change in the future as time permits.

 

 

 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta  

Way to GO, Sansa! Nothing like spitting in the face of your cadre of core enthusiasts — the folks responsible for the VAST majority of the word of mouth advertising that we ALL know is worth FAR more than any amount of agency produced paid tout-ware.

Yeah, stunningly BRILLIANT move, offending the millions of people who’ve made the Clip a world-beater in the sales department – the people who raised this company out of the terribly overloaded PMP commodity market.

I could not think of a more effective way of leveraging an unimaginable amount of free advertising if I tried.

The thing is… and I don’t now how to break it to you boys… it ain’t quite likely to be free “good” advertising.

I know, I know… it’s in vogue for corporations to make commitments to their base of most dedicated customers, and then take the proverbial dump in their lunchplate, simply because the beancounters tell you you’ll save a nickel.

Once again, I don’t know how to break this to you, but there’s a reason that beancounters spend their lives counting beans, rather than PRODUCING them.

Y’all just “holed your hull” if you ask me.

So, from what I read in that other thread, you made a comittment to fix the firmware in the Classic Clip (IMO a MUCH sweeter form-factor than the new “Playskool Style” beast), and then, a few months later, you delivered the classic “too bad, so sad” message.

So, I’m going to make YOU a comittment: If I purchase ANY further products manufactured by your company, they will be either USED, or REFURBISHED (by a third party).

In short, YOU will not receive ONE MORE PENNY from me, until such time as you HONOR your comittment to SUPPORT this product that you CONTINUE to sell.

I am not going to ■■■■ around with class-action lawsuits or petition drives, nor am I going to go out of my way to provide the aforementioned “free advertising” – I am old, and in poor health, and I have a life.

I, on the other hand, CAN promise you that I will NOT continue giving the free advertising that I HAVE been giving.  I don’t know how many units I am personally responsible for having sold due to my enthusiastic “free-lance evangelism” – but whatever that number was in the past, it’s goiing to be ZERO from this point forth.

My life is too short to NOT reciprocate with the same sort of treatment I receive at the hands of huge corporations that have redefined the concept of “honor.”

I had thought that Sandisk was a Japanese company – but clearly, they have learned how to behave like an American corporation.  A pity.  Remember the sad estate of the American auto industry back in the 1970s, when the Japanese carmakers cleaned their clocks?  Well, it looks like Sansa is bucking to become the Ford Motor Company of PMP devices.

Ugh!

OK, can anyone point me in the direction of the “Toyota of PMPs”?

This is just so insanely surreal… crapping on their flagship product – the one that made their reputation as THE one to beat in their category – while it’s still selling in the stores – on the shabbiest of pretexts, AFTER telling us suckers that you WOULD be coming out with another firmware that addressed the shortcomings.

What WAS that “promise” anyway?  Some nimrod’s idea for how to clear out the remaining stock?  Tell us you WILL take care of the problems, so that we’ll run out and buy them, confident in the assurance that you WILL be fixing the firmware any day now?

Wow.

So, tell us how you really feel.  Don’t hold back.

Just kidding.  I would not work myself into a lather about the Sansa Clip.  The blue ring version is my favorite.  There are only a few refinements left for it to be sublime.  In a nutshell, timing algorithm tuning, and gapless would be awesome, as well as- I am really stretching here- fixing the inverted podcast order.

The Clip’s internal clock is the way it is, in the interest of maximizing the service time of that wee little LiPo battery nestled within.  I am confident that most of us will be happy with SanDisk finding a happy medium between all-out performance and battery time.

Don’t forget, there are 4.21 bazillion Clips out there, and abandoning that big ship is not likely.  What is likely is that development resources are being concentrated on new product currently.  Don’t forget that.  There are future Sansas on the approaching horizon, no doubt, and only a limited number of staff to work out the kinks.  That’s just a sign of the times we are in.

The flash memory market is about as volatile as can be, with the market gyrations making a simple spreadsheet virtually impossible.  Priorities have to be realigned accordingly, but that doesn’t mean that the basic engineering isn’t happening, it just runs into, shall we say, a “countdown hold” occasionally.

Delays in the firmware don’t necessarily mean that there’s a problem, just that there are other priorities on deck.  At least, the Clip runs wonderfully in its current versions.

Bob :smileyvery-happy:

NB, I’m as optimistic about these things as I can be.  But the message that development on the original Clip firmware is not currently continuing and may be picked up as time permits does not leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.  This is the second time I have faced this with a DAP manufacturer; fortunately, my other player had Rockbox to rely on.

I’m not a software engineer but, would it really take all that much time to port the Clip+'s firmware improvements (with that firmware presumably based on the Clip’s) back to the Clip?  (And especially now that the Clip+ has hit the market, possibly making time available?)  Sigh.

Well, I feel a lot better about the pending sale of my 8GB Clip and FiiO E5 now. And perhaps next spring when I am in the market for a Clip+, it will be on pitch, so nobody will complain about it anymore (I never noticed it myself, on Fuze or Clip) :smiley:

Told ya so! It’s obsolete product. It’s timeline and CIP are most likely done. Upper manegement sets policy and sticks to it. They don’t read these forums and could care less about the same dozen people crying for this or that. Sansa supported this player very well and it only has minor bugs that the majority of users could care less about. These are $50 players not $250 dollar players. We’ve all been lucky to get the improvements that were made over the product lifespan. I would be very surprised to see another update.

@14124all wrote:
Told ya so! It’s obsolete product. It’s timeline and CIP are most likely done. Upper manegement sets policy and sticks to it. They don’t read these forums and could care less about the same dozen people crying for this or that. Sansa supported this player very well and it only has minor bugs that the majority of users could care less about. These are $50 players not $250 dollar players. We’ve all been lucky to get the improvements that were made over the product lifespan. I would be very surprised to see another update.

Agreed. I really can’t complain about my time with my Clips…they served me well and were remarkably trouble-free. 

It would be really aggravating if there are no more firmware updates coming for the clip.  In my opinion, the pitch issue warrants an update by itself–for several reasons:

1)  In the year 2009, it should not be acceptable for digital playback devices (even relatively cheap ones) to have playback pitch errors this large.  We should have left those days behind with cassette tape-based players.  Even though some, or even most people may not notice it, it still is not acceptable.  

2)  It’s affects 100% of the clips out there (at least all of the v2 clips)

3)  The pitch issue affects the #1 primary function of the device–playing audio.  This is not a case of an ancillary function few people will ever use.  When using the player with 44.1kHz sampling rate files, the defect is there every time.   

4)  Sansa already have a fix that they have verified to work with the only side effect being a very small impact on battery life.

I agree that this “problem” (actually design tradeoff) should never have existed from the day one on these players. But, if manegement does not budget the time for an update, it won’t happen. The View has severe functionality problems and people have been waiting over a year for a fix. The View deserves a fix before the Clip does. It doesn’t look to me that “time will permit” anytime soon - if ever. If you want this problem to be heard by Sansa, return your players. If they get thousands of players returned as unacceptable, maybe manegement will put a higher priority on it.

While I’m not a bit Apple fan, I’m beginning to understand the one of the attactions to an iPod.  Apple will release software updates well after one of the players is discontinued.  Then again, you do pay a higher (much higher) price for their players.  I’d be willing to pay some more up front to get support later on.

If you look at the last PC World reliability/customer satisfaction data for MP3 players (published January 2009), Sandisk was dead last.  Now I know why.  There’s no reason for fundamental problems with an MP3 player; features yes, but things like playing music too fast/slow is inexcusable.  I’m a chip designer (analog and mixed signal chips to be exact) and I have a good idea what is allowable and what isn’t.  I’ve been doing it for decades so I’m not some newbie.  I don’t understand how a player that’s off key (ie fast/slow) even got out the door to customers to begin with.  This is just plain sloppy and poor engineering.

@14124all wrote:
 if ever. If you want this problem to be heard by Sansa, return your players. If they get thousands of players returned as unacceptable, maybe manegement will put a higher priority on it.

 In most cases, they will just see some total of returned clips, with no way to know why.  The easy (self serving) assumption would be they were returned because people wanted the clip+ instead.

 

PickMorel,

Thank you for your well written post…

 

PickMorel wrote:

Way to GO, Sansa! Nothing like spitting in the face of your cadre of core enthusiasts — the folks responsible for the VAST majority of the word of mouth advertising that we ALL know is worth FAR more than any amount of agency produced paid tout-ware.

 

Yeah, stunningly BRILLIANT move, offending the millions of people who’ve made the Clip a world-beater in the sales department – the people who raised this company out of the terribly overloaded PMP commodity market.

 

So, from what I read in that other thread, you made a commitment to fix the firmware in the Classic Clip (IMO a MUCH sweeter form-factor than the new “Playskool Style” beast), and then, a few months later, you delivered the classic “too bad, so sad” message.

 

So, I’m going to make YOU a commitment: If I purchase ANY further products manufactured by your company, they will be either USED, or REFURBISHED (by a third party).

 

In short, YOU will not receive ONE MORE PENNY from me, until such time as you HONOR your commitment to SUPPORT this product that you CONTINUE to sell.

 ---------------------------

PickMorel, and the others who have written passionately about this problem,

Thank you for your well written posts and keep them coming…

They describe my feelings exactly.

When it comes to priorities, the original Clip owners deserve a pitch/speed fix, before they move on to the next product.

Hey Sansa, you haven’t finished your meat!!

How can you have any pudding, if you don’t eat your meat?!

 

Here is what Slotmonsta had to say on 9-13-09 about my repeated speed/pitch complaints…

 

All of the posts copy and pasting the same response simply are not necessary. If you continue to post these messages you will be ban from posting on this forum. This is your one and only warning. All of your duplicate posts will be deleted. You have gotten your point across and we would like to thank you for your contributions.  

 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta

 

If you are interested, here are some of the “abusive” posts (many have already been deleted) that led up to slotmonsta finally responding to questions about the pitch/speed problem and the future of the original Clip.

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clip&thread.id=20623&view=by\_date\_ascending&page=6

 http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clipplus&thread.id=40&view=by\_date\_ascending&page=1

 

What really amazed me was the same few posters who always seem to jump in and make excuses for Sansas bad behavior.

Whenever someone points out a problem with the product, they are right there to say “oh it’s not so bad, no one else cares, tut tut, stop your complaining”

Who’s interest are they promoting, hmmmm?

 

 I think my point is a valid one that new or potential customers need to see, and by posting a link to them, instead of copy and pasting them here, I can avoid getting banned for over expressing my opinion.

There are three different products in three different forums that all have the same Pitch/speed problem.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to cross post or “quote” the same message to the relevant threads in all three forums, when the same message applies to all three products.

There sure is a lot of effort here to silence complaints, instead of fixing problems.

Be careful that you don’t complain to much or they will delete your posts and any quotes of them.

It is clear to me now that Sansa is not an honorable company.

I think we have waited long enough for a pitch/speed fix.

Xmas is just around the corner, it’s time to start spreading the “pitch/speed deffect” message to the other message boards, like…

cnet 

Anythingbutipod

Computershopper

PC Magazine

Digital Trends

SF Gate

 

Show them, that in the age of the internet, they can’t hide there products defects and ignore there customers.

 

We can warn new or potential owners so they can return these products before it’s to late. 

 Never give up and keep bumping the speed/pitch problem threads until the problem is fixed!

 

 

 

Message Edited by slotmonsta on 09-14-2009 02:53 PM

I’m really shocked by slotmonsta’s statement that Clip FW development is done.  Just a week ago I would have bet a large amount of money that the last Fuze enhancements (folder browsing, ReplayGain) would be added to the Clip before they stopped development.  Sandisk has kind of set a precedent of feature parity between the Clip and Fuze, and those features were added to the Fuze months ago, long before the Clip+ showed up.

This is going to alienate a large number of current Clip owners who are currently some of Sansa’s greatest evangelists.  If Sandisk had at least brought the Clip up to date with the Fuze before cutting it off then I could kind of understand not dealing with the pitch issue since it hadn’t been addressed on the Fuze either prior to the release of the Clip+.  As it is now, Sandisk is sending the message that Fuze customers are important enough to deserve folder browsing and ReplayGain, but Clip customers are not.

I really hope slotmonsta is mistaken.  If not, Sandisk really dropped the ball on this one and are seriously risking their reputation among their most loyal fanbase.  One of the reasons we’re all Sansa fans is because Sandisk doesn’t normally do the kind of FW hose jobs typical of so many other companies.  Badly done…

Message Edited by Skinjob on 09-14-2009 05:58 PM

wavydavy,

 

As I have said before I have engaged this issue with the Sansa Firmware developers team on behalf of all consumers including yourself. I am waiting to hear back if it is feasible to have a firmware release that would correct the Pitch issue and not impact other projects. Currently all developers are working on different projects however this does not mean that there will never be another update released for the original Clip. 

 

If you have noticed I have edited your post to take out the unnecessary font size.  

 

Once I hear back from the development team I will update the forum. 

 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta 

Message Edited by slotmonsta on 09-14-2009 03:07 PM

@slotmonsta wrote:

If you have noticed I have edited your post to take out the unnecessary font size.  

 

Once I hear back from the development team I will update the forum. 

 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta 

Message Edited by slotmonsta on 09-14-2009 03:07 PM

If it were up to me, the entire post would have been deleted and the poster banned. He was already warned once. If one wants to spread such rhetoric on the other forums mentioned, that’s one thing. But I consider it it very bad form to do it here. :angry:

Message Edited by Tapeworm on 09-14-2009 06:34 PM

@slotmonsta wrote:

wavydavy,

 

As I have said before I have engaged this issue with the Sansa Firmware developers team on behalf of all consumers including yourself. I am waiting to hear back if it is feasible to have a firmware release that would correct the Pitch issue and not impact other projects. Currently all developers are working on different projects however this does not mean that there will never be another update released for the original Clip. 

 

If you have noticed I have edited your post to take out the unnecessary font size.  

 

Once I hear back from the development team I will update the forum. 

 

Forum Admin

slotmonsta 

Message Edited by slotmonsta on 09-14-2009 03:07 PM

Slotmonsta–

With all due respect, it is not simply an issue of the pitch bug.  It is getting the Clip up to date to where the Clip+ is:  folderview/navigation, gapless, current/next track information, faster screen scroll, etc.

Really, it has been 7 months, with these improvements in the making but no upgraded firmware for the Clip, and the Clip customers patiently and politely waiting …

Message Edited by Miikerman on 09-14-2009 06:33 PM

Buy a Clip+ and be done with it…:smileyvery-happy:

And if you are that unhappy with your original Clip there are many people that would purchase it from you…

I know this as fact, because I sold my 2 original Clips within seconds of them being available for sale.

@donp wrote:


@14124all wrote:
 if ever. If you want this problem to be heard by Sansa, return your players. If they get thousands of players returned as unacceptable, maybe manegement will put a higher priority on it.


 In most cases, they will just see some total of returned clips, with no way to know why.  The easy (self serving) assumption would be they were returned because people wanted the clip+ instead.

 

Actually I stated that sarcastically. I seriously doubt there would be any great quantity returned. Most people are happy with the Clip, it’s a great player. A firmware update? I could care less, I have a couple dozen of these players and they are all running on the .18 firmware. It’s obvious people here have not worked in manufacturing - I’ve been playing the game for over 20 years. The loud mouths here think they are going to burn Sansa, no way. The new Clip+ is a true winner and it is going to sell like mad. Welcome to the machine, people.

Hey, we’re all human, last time I checked.  Well, I can’t as yet verify that for the average politician, but there you go…

Slotmonsta is a good guy, and he’s trying to give you an honest answer based upon what he can see.  Promise, I’ll see about getting him a cool hydraulic chair that can power over the cubicle walls.  Now that might be cool.

Development has all kinds of pressures and deadlines, different teams (software, device electronics, packaging, etc) work on parts of the complete product, and this involves existing plus future products. 

I’m hopeful for a revision for these popular features too.

Bob  :stuck_out_tongue:

@wavydavy wrote:

I think we have waited long enough for a pitch/speed fix.

Xmas is just around the corner, it’s time to start spreading the “pitch/speed deffect” message to the other message boards, like…

cnet 

Anythingbutipod

Computershopper

PC Magazine

Digital Trends

SF Gate

 

It was already brought up at Anythingbutipod , both months ago with the Fuze, and more recently,with the Clip and Clip+, and it never seemed to have any impact.So good luck with that.