I have a 512 mb shaker, and can load all kinds of music on it. The problem is, I will have some songs that will not play in their entirety. I load the songs via drag and drop in windows explorer and they show to be fine, but when I try to play them, some songs will end prematurely. The player will the skip to the preceeding song, or on the rare occasion, the next song on the playlist. I can play the songs in winamp through the usb port and they play correctly to the end. WHAT is going on here???
@bleedfordblue wrote:
I have a 512 mb shaker, and can load all kinds of music on it. The problem is, I will have some songs that will not play in their entirety. I load the songs via drag and drop in windows explorer and they show to be fine, but when I try to play them, some songs will end prematurely. The player will the skip to the preceeding song, or on the rare occasion, the next song on the playlist. I can play the songs in winamp through the usb port and they play correctly to the end. WHAT is going on here???
is it happening when you play them on the shaker’s built-in speakers? or is it still the same even if you’re using headphones? if its only the former, try to listen to the particular song in your computer and check if it has a very low bass, because the shaker will skip it
I am having the same problem. The best was I can think to describe it is like if you hit the scan button on your car radio and it plays a station for a few seconds and then moves to the next one. Except it goes backward and plays the song before. I don’t thinks its the low bass thing b/c its on every song. I have sent an email to technical support but I am still waiting for an answer. Can anyone out there help?
Same problem here. I don’t know if it has to do with the encoder or if the card is fragmented. I loaded some songs onto it and had no issues. I then converted some wma files into mp3 using iTunes and had the skipping issue. It’s too early to tell if the same song will skip every time.
Does anyone have a resolution to this? My local walmart stopped carrying this. I am starting to believe this may have been the reason.
Wow. I have the same problem. The player doesn’t finish the song in its entirety, and will skip to the previous song instead (which will also not play completely), etc. I thought it was a preview or scan feature, but I checked the online manual (PDF) and there is no such feature. What gives? C’mon Sansa… somebody from tech support respond please. Thanks in advance.
Okay, so I have the same issue. I called tech support today to get an answer. Our Sansa Shaker (pink, 512mb) will skip mid-song to another song when using the built-in speaker. The unit also sometimes plays songs at half-speed (slow-motion sounding). I spoke with technical support and they narrowly-defined the issue to this:
Tech support summary:
The Sansa Shaker may skip if the song your playing has a heavy bass signal. Any song with heavy bass that is played through the built-in speaker may create excessive vibration, that causes the player to skip. The Tech Support agent says the vibrations affect the memory card. A low battery will increase the likelihood of skipping.
The official workaround is to reduce the bass signal on all your affected mp3 files. Use a third party program with a multi-band equalizer (not provided by Sansa) to reduce the bass signal, then re-encode or save the newly modified mp3, and transfer the modified files back into your Shaker. Or simply listen with headphones, to disable the built-in speaker, and the unit will not skip.
There is no upgradeable firmware on the Sansa Shaker, so no software workaround is available, and there is no offer to replace/exchange the unit because support says the unit is not defective. The unit is designed for children, so excessive bass is not advisable.
Testing the Sansa Response:
I tested this response by reformatting my SD card. Then I uploaded two versions of a song that repeatedly skipped; the original, and a modified version that had all bass signals below 225hz reduced to (-) infinity using a 20 band graphic EQ filter in Sound Forge.
The original continued to skip mid-song, and since there were only two songs on the card, it would skip to the modified version with a reduced bass signal. The modified version played all the way through. When playing both songs through headphones (disabling the built-in speaker), both songs played in their entirety, w/o skipping.
My summary:
I DO believe tech support defined the issue correctly. I DON"T believe this was an intended child-safety feature. This was a unforseeable flaw in the products design. If a childs hearing were at issue, then they wouldn’t allow the song to play in the headphones either, right? A loud song played at high volume in headphones will damage an ear just as effectively as an external speaker would. Its the decibel level that is damaging, not the type of speaker. This is just an excuse not to refund, or exchange.
Re-encoding your mp3 collection is impractical and time-consuming, not to mention difficult to someone who is not computer-saavy.
A simpler workaround for listening w/o headphones is to lower the volume when playing through the built-in speakers (reducing the vibration), or plugging the unit into computer desktop speakers (bypassing the built-in speaker). You can also place it on a soft cloth, wrap a loose rubberband around it, put a small thin piece of tissue in the battery compartment, or suspend it by a lanyard using the eyelet, to create a pseudo-vibration damper.
The unit playing at half-speed was never addressed.
Message Edited by deejay40 on 09-12-2008 01:42 PM
