Sansa Clip Zip Firmware 01.01.20

I completely agree with the assessement that track time and time elapsed is a critical feature that I couldn’t believe SanDisk left out.  Even my old, old SanDisk player had it!

I completely agree with the assessement that track time and time elapsed is a critical feature that I couldn’t believe SanDisk left out.  Even my old, old SanDisk player had it!

At this point, you are

After loading 01.01.20, now I can see the core icons (Music, Audiobook, Podcasts, FM, Recording, Stopwatch, Card, Settings) but not much else works.  Selecting <Settings>, for example, produces a colored screen with a fuzzy white horizontal bar across it.  Scroll up/down moves the bar up/down but no text appears.  <Back> returns to the core Icons.

   <FM> works and plays stations properly. 

   <Podcasts> shows the screen with h. bar, but sometimes shows a vertical white bar with arrows at top & bottom. 

   <music> and <Audiobooks> seem to load by drag & drop (Computer uses Win7), but nothing plays, even things that did before.

      <Settings> shows only the colored screen with H. bar.  

       It appears the download wasn’t correct or complete.  I have re-downloaded 01.01.20 several times and unzippede it, loaded it to device memory several times, but no changes.  Other than FM I have no functions now.

Any suggestions?

Format it and try again.

<SIGH>  Just did, I think.  Now I get continuous play (instead of repeating a track until I advance with the >> button), but still no text appears behind any of the root icons.  By ‘format’  did you mean just remove/reload 01.01.20 ?  Or should all the root display be removed (Audiobooks, Music, P…, etc)?  What about DevIcon?  Or should I go beck to the format function on Win7?

up… 1.1.18 is not much different.

Is there a way to have gapless playback on either the Clip+ or the Zip? It does seem some albums play through smoother than others, and that’s ususally on the Clip+.

FYI: The Jazz preset on each covers the most musical styles with the most balance, for lazy people like me. But it would be some kinda nice to have firmware that let you preset EQ for albums, songs, genres…

@noelp wrote:

Is there a way to have gapless playback on either the Clip+ or the Zip? It does seem some albums play through smoother than others, and that’s ususally on the Clip+.

It’s very close but there are still some clicks between some tracks. Unfortunately it’s as good as it’s going to get without usiing 3rd-party firmware called Rockbox. Unless you want to merge all the tracks together as 1 large file (which I have done on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon).

@noelp wrote:

 

FYI: The Jazz preset on each covers the most musical styles with the most balance, for lazy people like me. But it would be some kinda nice to have firmware that let you preset EQ for albums, songs, genres…

I don’t find the Jazz setting has any bass to it personally. Even less than running no EQ at all, which is the way I run mine. Of course, a lot depends on the head/earphones you use too, besides your personal listening preferences.

But I agree, some user-defined custom presets would be nice for different music. Unfortunately, we’ll never see that from SanDisk. I do believe that is possible with Rockbox though; I think you have to set up and run a .cfg file.

Hey. So far Rockbox has been confusing to me. Not a computer guy, but have forced some valuable self-teaching on myself the past few weeks. Rockbox came to a point where I was to run certain programs/necessaries but all it would do is give me the .exe to keep going in circles.

Jazz has the bass for me, who admittedly doesn’t like as much of that as treble – but what i find is the bass sounds cleaner, punchy/crisp, and that’s wayyyy better than, e.g., most of the settings on my Cowon i9, which is like you’re in a hollow tunnel. Even for commuting I prefer the balance of the Sansa jazz set.

Thanks for reply. Today my idea (since I spend so much time w/ the new Cowon toy switching setting five times per song or something, runnin down dat batt, just trying to get everything in my mind), this idea now is, Why can’t Someone work on a variable EQ, one setting that adjusts to every sound. Like the variable bitrate, somewhat, I’d imagine.

Just updated a new player, I found I could not get playlists to work, looks like this was due to the firmware defaulting the USB mode to MSC - this isn’t useful for most people I think. Note - I used the manual method as the windows updater utility didn’t do anything, failed to install (silently).

@steveuk wrote:

Just updated a new player, I found I could not get playlists to work, looks like this was due to the firmware defaulting the USB mode to MSC - this isn’t useful for most people I think. Note - I used the manual method as the windows updater utility didn’t do anything, failed to install (silently).

No, updating the firmware reverts the settings back to Auto Defect which connects by defalut in MTP mode whenever possible. You should never use your player in this mode. Manually select either MTP or MSC.

You may disagree, but MSC mode is overwhelmingly the preferred USB connection mode for the vast majority of people. the only reason MTP even exists is to ‘sync’ up with Windows Media Player and transfer permission codes on DRM-crippled files.

What’s up SanDisk? Here it is, August 2013. I bought a Sansa Zip Clip only a few months ago, and added a 32GB SD card. It’s a nice compact, high capacity product. Sansa Zip Clips are still sold everywhere. But there have been no firmware updates since April 2012. When will the next firmware update be released? Or have you stopped updating the firmware? For myself, one big pain-in-the-neck is the 100kb limit on album art size. And, no, it hasn’t been fixed despite the un-sourced claims elsewhere in the forum. I have hundreds of albums, most with album art larger than this. Large album art is needed for quality display on computer flat panels. Please release a firmware update that fixes it so the zip clip can show album art of at least 300-400kb in size. 

 

Thank you.

I don’t think they’re still doing firmware development, and I definitely wouldn’t expect them to add new features at this point.

@crazyllama wrote:

What’s up SanDisk? Here it is, August 2013. I bought a Sansa Zip Clip only a few months ago, and added a 32GB SD card. It’s a nice compact, high capacity product. Sansa Zip Clips are still sold everywhere. But there have been no firmware updates since April 2012. When will the next firmware update be released?

Guess you didn’t see the latest update, 01.01.21 released 3 weeks ago.

@crazyllama wrote:

Or have you stopped updating the firmware?

Pretty much, yes. Except for the minor release indicated above.

@crazyllama wrote:

For myself, one big pain-in-the-neck is the 100kb limit on album art size. Large album art is needed for quality display on computer flat panels.

But not for a postage stamp-sized screen on a Zippo lighter-sized mp3 player.

@crazyllama wrote:

 

Please release a firmware update that fixes it so the zip clip can show album art of at least 300-400kb in size. 

 

I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

If they let the player display large album art files then those who use embedded album art will complain that the database exceeded its limit with a relatively small number of songs.

Seriously, guys, how do I get my clipzip to work with my Mac? Instructions below are a joke.

I’ve set it to MSC, but now what? Not showing up on iTunes, or anywhere for that matter.

All help appreciated.

I don’t think its going to show up in iTunes because its not an iPod.

You might try downloading and using the freeware Hidden Cleaner (or KopyMac, if you still can find it around anywhere)–good software for transfering files from a Mac to a non-Apple device.  Apple, unfortunately, chose to hinder and not help the connection of Macs to non-Apple devices–hmmmm, wonder why?   ;^)

@sherrin518 wrote:

Seriously, guys, how do I get my clipzip to work with my Mac? Instructions below are a joke.

I’ve set it to MSC, but now what? Not showing up on iTunes, or anywhere for that matter.

All help appreciated.

Check this out:

http://guyscharf.wordpress.com/mp3-on-macintosh/

It might help you. :smiley: