[solved] Summertime 3

MP3 players Sansa Clip | Clip+
1

I’ve recently downloaded DJ Jazzy Jeff & Mick Boogie’s latest mixtape, Summertime 3, and am playing it from my Sansa Clip+. The tracks all play, however it takes 5-10 seconds to load each track. Every other mp3 I’ve played on my Clip+ plays instantly. I’ve done some troubleshooting to figure out the cause:

  • Summertime 3 plays fine on other devices (computer, webOS tablet).
  • The problem occurs regardless of whether the files are located on the Clip+'s internal memory, or the microSD card.
  • I’ve tried playing from two different microSD cards. Both are genuine SanDisk cards. The problem occurs with both cards.
  • I’ve tried two different Clip+s (my boss has one which I borrowed). The problem occurs on both.

So, individually, everything works. But for some reason, Clip+s have a problem with Summertime 3. I can’t figure out why. Can anyone help?

BTW, the mixtape is a free legal download here: http://www.datpiff.com/Mick-Boogie-DJ-Jazzy-Jeff-Summertime-Vol-3-mixtape.361472.html

3

Just downloaded the album and tried it out and experience none of the problems you describe.  They appear to be normal mp3 of just a few megs each. 

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4

How are the ID3 tags?

  • Are they in the format that the player has the easiest time with (ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1)?
  • Are there any strange or foreign characters that could choke the player?
  • Is the Comments field of the tag loaded with all kinds of reviews and/or other nonsence?
  • Is there humongous album art embedded in the tag?

Any one, or a combination of the above things could cause what you are describing.

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5

If the original poster wont reply I will.  There are a couple of 300kb images only the one is tagged.  Nothing in the tags looks unusual.  Since they play just fine for me, my only suggestion is to download them again and see it that works.   Without further information from Mr Jive Turkey I suppose we will never know what the problem is.  

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6

Hi all, thanks for your replies.

As far as I can tell they are regular mp3s.

  • They are only one to two minutes long.
  • The ID3 tags are v2.3, I don’t know how to check the ISO version.
  • The tags contain only letters, numbers and underscores. I tried removing the underscores, which didn’t help.
  • There are no comments in the tags.
  • The embedded album art is 1246x1240px. Is that huge? The file sizes don’t seem unusually large to me - the largest being 7MB. I will try stripping out the art though.

I will also try downloading them again. I’ve already done that, but I just realised that the official website moved. So, the link I provided is not the source I originally downloaded from. It could be that the original website had bad files and the new one has working ones.

7

So the files from the new website are completely different from the original.

  • The filenames are different
  • The ID3 tags are empty not viewable by Windows Explorer. These are v2.4 ID3 tags.
  • The embedded artwork is smaller (500x500px).
  • I also noticed that the original files were encoded with Itunes, the newer ones are encoded by Unknown.

I still don’t know why the original files have this problem, but it doesn’t matter now as the new files don’t have the problem :smiley: My guess is either the large embedded album art, or Itunes encoding is to blame.

8

Just to sate my curiosity I stripped out the embedded album art and now the original tracks play immediately! I then added the images again and they’re still working perfectly :manlol: So it seems the problem was the way that Itunes embedded the images!

Thanks again to everyone for helping me figure this out :smiley:

9

@jiveturkey wrote:

  • The embedded album art is 1246x1240px. Is that huge? The file sizes don’t seem unusually large to me - the largest being 7MB. I will try stripping out the art though.

That is ginormous!! Wow! :dizzy_face:

That is desktop-wallpaper sized! Given that the Clip+ doesn’t even display album art, I would delete those embedded images, or if you plan on using these tracks in another player that does display album art, download more appropriately-sized cover images from the internet, like 300 x 300.

@jiveturkey wrote:

So the files from the new website are completely different from the original.

  • The ID3 tags are empty not viewable by Windows Explorer. These are v2.4 ID3 tags.
  • The embedded artwork is smaller (500x500px).
  • I also noticed that the original files were encoded with Itunes, the newer ones are encoded by Unknown.

 

It’s likely your Clip+ can’t see them either. All the Sansa players are very picky about ID3 tags. You can use MP3Tag to convert them to the desired format all in one stroke.

The embedded artwork is indeed smaller, but still larger than you you need. As I said, the Clip+'s screen doesn’t even display images.

itunes is known for mucking things up for any other players besides the ‘pods’.

@jiveturkey wrote:

Just to sate my curiosity I stripped out the embedded album art and now the original tracks play immediately! I then added the images again and they’re still working perfectly :manlol: So it seems the problem was the way that Itunes embedded the images!

Thanks again to everyone for helping me figure this out :smiley:

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. I’d still recommend eliminating or re-sizing them to avoid any future issues, though. :wink: