Just read this review, it is a bit worrying.
Especially since it’s a bit difficult measuring the sq of it just by using your ears since one bought and listened to them as new but i haven’t heard any differences yet though.
Any thoughts of this?
@djchristian wrote:
Just read this review, it is a bit worrying.
Especially since it’s a bit difficult measuring the sq of it just by using your ears since one bought and listened to them as new but i haven’t heard any differences yet though.
Any thoughts of this?
That person is a moron. The player will sound the same when it is new, until the day it finally dies…
I never noticed any faults with my Clip after using it for more than a year, while running in the park or listening to it on my way to work. The price of this gadget is actually fair so I would not be bothered even if it would be any.
I would like to know exactly what parts wear out. Most likely that little disk drive, need to oil the bearings maybe. So you’re listening to something and you’re very happy with the quality. Your buddy takes a listen and says that’s awful and it will onlyl get worse with time, so you dump the unit.
These things can be had for arount $40, for that price they are fine.
Those RMAA results don’t look particularly believable. I suspect that something was wrong with his testing.
@dave61430 wrote:
I would like to know exactly what parts wear out. Most likely that little disk drive, need to oil the bearings maybe. So you’re listening to something and you’re very happy with the quality. Your buddy takes a listen and says that’s awful and it will onlyl get worse with time, so you dump the unit.
These things can be had for arount $40, for that price they are fine.
You’re joking, right? There is no little disk drive. 
This is a solid-state player, using a flash memory chip not a spinning disk drive like some of the higher capacity (and older) players on the market. No moving parts.
Marvin_Martian wrote:
That person is a moron. The player will sound the same when it is new, until the day it finally dies…
Why, thank you. I love reading something like this about an article I wrote 
@saratoga wrote:
Those RMAA results don’t look particularly believable. I suspect that something was wrong with his testing.
I thought so too so I repeated my testing - with the same results everytime. You can believe me that I didn´t want to see results like this, I thought it would behave much better. You see, I really loved my Clip+…
I believe you got those results, I just mean that they don’t seem physically reasonable for an analog device. The rolloff on your frequency plots for instance looks suspiciously like a digital filter, as does the almost perfectly linear IMD plot. Furthermore, you have strong IMD (mixing of two tones) but not THD (degenerate mixing of one tone with itself). That is a very unusual combination. What sampling rates did you use? Are you certain nothing was resampled?
@saratoga wrote:
I believe you got those results, I just mean that they don’t seem physically reasonable for an analog device. The rolloff on your frequency plots for instance looks suspiciously like a digital filter, as does the almost perfectly linear IMD plot. Furthermore, you have strong IMD (mixing of two tones) but not THD (degenerate mixing of one tone with itself). That is a very unusual combination. What sampling rates did you use? Are you certain nothing was resampled?
Yes, quite sure. I used a samplerate of 48 kHz. And the distortions are visible not only with swept tones IMD but also with IMD + Noise or THD + Noise. I assumed that these are age related because when I got it two years ago it measured ok (including frequency response).
Yeah but your thd is still very low. So you have nonlinearity in one test but not another. That sounds like a digital thing. Did you use wave or flac? I wonder if its the sansa itself resampling for some formats… Did you try running at 44.1k? Also I guess doing a test of some other mp3 player would rule out weirdness with windows.
@saratoga wrote:
Yeah but your thd is still very low. So you have nonlinearity in one test but not another. That sounds like a digital thing. Did you use wave or flac? I wonder if its the sansa itself resampling for some formats… Did you try running at 44.1k? Also I guess doing a test of some other mp3 player would rule out weirdness with windows.
I used FLAC 16/48. If the Clip+ would resample it would be either a very bad resampler or one with improved impulses and worse frequency response. I didn´t try 44.1 and the next post on my blog is another mp3 player (Sony) that uses AAC & mp3. The Sony doesn´t show anything out of the ordinary - BTW, that one really has low THD.
But now I wonder: before I did several testruns for the Clip+ I installed Rockbox. Can that be responsible for the botched results? Hm, I´ll try using it without Rockbox this evening and get back.
Now I know what went wrong: Rockbox because it can´t handle 48 kHz on the Clip+ while the original firmware can. Seems that the Clip+ can only do 44.1 kHz, the original resamples 48 to 44.1 with a very good resampler, Rockbox’s resampler ■■■■■. Review will be updated accordingly.
Review changed. Guys, don´t use Rockbox with 48 kHz material!
@marlenesmusings wrote:
Review changed. Guys, don´t use Rockbox with 48 kHz material!
I never do…all my music is 44.1.
And I hereby retract my earlier harsh statement, after you’ve gone back and looked at everything over again.
@marvin_martian wrote:
@marlenesmusings wrote:
Review changed. Guys, don´t use Rockbox with 48 kHz material!
I never do…all my music is 44.1.
And I hereby retract my earlier harsh statement, after you’ve gone back and looked at everything over again.
Well, I was indeed moronic: I trusted Rockbox 
BTW, thank you to all for doubting my results. That made me doubt myself which - as it turns out - was good as I did it all again and more detailed this time.
@marlenesmusings wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
@marlenesmusings wrote:
Review changed. Guys, don´t use Rockbox with 48 kHz material!
I never do…all my music is 44.1.
And I hereby retract my earlier harsh statement, after you’ve gone back and looked at everything over again.
_ Well, I was indeed moronic: I trusted Rockbox _
Wait for it . . . .
@marlenesmusings wrote:
@saratoga wrote:
Yeah but your thd is still very low. So you have nonlinearity in one test but not another. That sounds like a digital thing. Did you use wave or flac? I wonder if its the sansa itself resampling for some formats… Did you try running at 44.1k? Also I guess doing a test of some other mp3 player would rule out weirdness with windows.
I used FLAC 16/48. If the Clip+ would resample it would be either a very bad resampler or one with improved impulses and worse frequency response. I didn´t try 44.1 and the next post on my blog is another mp3 player (Sony) that uses AAC & mp3.
Not just a bad one, a simple linear interpolator. I was going to say, your frequency response looks suspiciously like our resampler. Let this be a warning: never assume, always measure.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but not handling well 48 kHz is a price for more accurate pitch and replay rate of rockbox.
@temp wrote:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but not handling well 48 kHz is a price for more accurate pitch and replay rate of rockbox.
No, all sample rates should be equally accurate. We just have to run the playback engine at one specific sample rate if you want things like gapless playback, and since everything uses 44.1k, we use that.
