Audio files on SD card are segregated from the main device. Why?

Music, audio books and podcasts I have stored on my SD card cannot be played from the main menu and have to be separately accessed from the Card menu. That’s a real pain. With my other Sansa devices, it didn’t matter whether files were saved on the SD card or the internal memory – they were all accessible from the main menu areas.

I see a similar issue has been mentioned here in relation to playlists - I just wanted to point out that the problem applies to all files stored on the SD card. This is a serious issue because I suspect most people store most of their music and podcasts and audio books on the card rather than on the device itself, whose storage maxes out at 8Gb.

One could put all their music on card memory, however the database for card memory maxes out at 2,000 songs. Apparantly though, if there are more than 2,000 songs on the card, people have said they are accesible via the folders menu. I guess the Sport has real folder navigation, unlike previous Sandisk players, which recontructed the folder browsing from the music database.

I guess I can undestand Sandisk positioning the Clip Sport and Clip Jam to be a basic $50 or under player to compete against the Ipod shuffle. What many of use want though is a $99 premium player positioned to compete against the ipod Nano. We want the player to have 40+ hours of battery life, database capacity for 20,000 or more songs, and integration of card and internal memory. If it also has a second card slot, and/or HD radio, and/or is built with an aluminum or magnesium case, that would be a great bonus.

@johnmacg wrote:

Music, audio books and podcasts I have stored on my SD card cannot be played from the main menu and have to be separately accessed from the Card menu. That’s a real pain. With my other Sansa devices, it didn’t matter whether files were saved on the SD card or the internal memory – they were all accessible from the main menu areas.

 

That is correct. The internal and external memories cannot be merged into 1 database on the Sport as it is on all other SanDisk players. The Sport is a limited feature and function player due to the hardware used. This isn’t going to change. If this doesn’t fit your needs and/or wants, best to return it and buy a Clip+ or Zip (still available).

@jk98 wrote:

What many of use want though is a $99 premium player positioned to compete against the ipod Nano. We want the player to have 40+ hours of battery life, database capacity for 20,000 or more songs, and integration of card and internal memory. If it also has a second card slot, and/or HD radio, and/or is built with an aluminum or magnesium case, that would be a great bonus.

Translaton: “Many of us” and “We” means “me”.

:stuck_out_tongue:

“Translaton: “Many of us” and “We” means “me”.”

You wouldn’t want those things in an mp3 player?

I am thinking about buying an unlocked cell phone to use as a music player. It will be much larger and heavier than a Clip Sport. I have no idea what the battery life would be for music. Trying to figure that out is not so easy. Also figuring out what sized scren one to get is a question. I like putting a player in my shirt pocket, however I am afraid of possible radiation from a cellphone in my shirt pocket. Yes, I could put it in airplane mode or whatever to turn off the WIFI and cellular signals, however I might worry that they aren’t completely off and there is quite a bit of radiation coming out. When I carry a cellphone, I try to keep it a good distance  away from my vital organs. I have no fear of using a Clip+, Clip Zip, or Clip Sport while it is in my shirt pocket.

So many mention getting a unlocked cellphone with Android as an alternative to using an mp3 player. while pricewise it might be, but in terms of size, weight, and possible radiation a cell phone might emit, a cell phone isn’t really a good replacement for an mp3 player. Plus a small lightweight clip on player is so versatile.

When merging the internal and external memories, I would have thought the limiting factor would be more software than hardware. Sansa already has the code to do this - it would cost them very little to combine the two databases as on other models. Just as the Sport re-uses most of the other software from earlier models.

The limit of 20,000 files on my SD card isn’t a problem for me.

“When merging the internal and external memories, I would have thought the limiting factor would be more software than hardware. Sansa already has the code to do this -”

The Clip sport and Clip Jam use a different processor than the Clip+ and Clip Zip. The processor on the Clip Sport and Clip Jam is much less powerful. The code for the newer players is different. 

The UI on the sport seems similar to that of the Clip Zip, however I’m sure the code to implement the UI is very different.

Perhaps they did have to rewrite the code to suit the new processor, but it’s not as though they didn’t already know how to write code that would allow the databases from the SD card and the device to be combined. They also knew how to prevent podcast files from repeating. This is hardly rocket science if you already know the procedure and you own the code. If they could mimic other aspects of the earlier firmware, it seems curious that they forgot about merging databases and preventing repeating.

Your statement that the processor on the Sport is much less powerful than on the predecessor models is interesting, considering that the Sport’s startup and refresh times are significantly faster than on the previous models. That is great and it was certainly needed. You’d really wonder why they’d go to the trouble to fix such sluggishness and then spoil their efforts by degrading the firmware functions.

It’s slack. No other word for it.

“Perhaps they did have to rewrite the code to suit the new processor, but it’s not as though they didn’t already know how to write code that would allow the databases from the SD card and the device to be combined.”

It is not a matter of that.  To be reasonably responsive, the full song database needs to be in ram. The Clip sport and Clip Jam probably have much less ram than the Clip+ and Clip Zip. i don’t know if these players have the maximum ram the processor can support, or if Sandisk decided to skimp on the ram. Perhaps the ram was kept small not just for cost savings, but for power savings as well? 

Have you ever done any programming of computers?  If so, you would have an understanding of the constraints.  Add to those the need to keep power cosumption low, as they want long battery life from a small battery. There are a number of tradeoffs that need to be considered in the design. You and I might not agree with all the decisions they made in dealing with the tradeoffs. If it were up to me, I would have used a very low power monochrome display like a digital watch uses. These displays can operate for a few years on all the time using the power of a tiny button battery. I would want the display on all the time the player is on, which would be a small fraction of the time that a digital watch has its display on. I would not have skimped on the database capability though. I find it amazing how much capability Rockbox on the Clip+ and Clip Zip offers. It seems obvious though that Sandisk is much better at designing mp3 hardware than software. I would love it if Sandisk outsourced its player firmware design to Rockbox, and Rockbox came as the default firmware with the player. Of course this would likely mean giving up all capability to play any protected files(including Audible).

“our statement that the processor on the Sport is much less powerful than on the predecessor models is interesting, considering that the Sport’s startup and refresh times are significantly faster than on the previous models.”

The size of the database is its length times its width. With a much smaller database, the database refresh requires so much less processing. Getting rid of support for protected WMA files, and getting rid of MTP mode also greatly simplified the firmware.

@jk98 wrote:

What many of use want though is a $99 premium player positioned to compete against the ipod Nano. We want the player to have 40+ hours of battery life, database capacity for 20,000 or more songs, and integration of card and internal memory. If it also has a second card slot, and/or HD radio, and/or is built with an aluminum or magnesium case, that would be a great bonus.

^ +1.   :slight_smile:

What really pisses me off is that the Sport is not marketed as a reduced-feature model. I bought it in good faith and found it doesn’t have basic features which have been part of the Sansa lineup since whenever. (I’ve been using then since the one before the original Fuze model and I’ve had every one since. For me, the original Fuze was the most useable ever - pity it was so flaky. The second, larger  Fuze with touch controls was the worst ever, before the Sport came along.)

Exchanging my Sport for  a Zip or Clip+ is not an option for me, because I don’t have the original packaging. (It was bought for me by an American friend and posted to my country with other stuff.)

Your suggestion that the inability to combine the device and SD card databases is because the Sport may be starved of RAM makes sense - though not _common_ sense. Devices at least as far back as the Fuze combined their databases, and RAM was much more expensive then. At today’s prices, for a company that actually makes RAM to be using less, is penny-pinching to the extreme.  

While there is a tenuous excuse for the database issue, I can’t think of a single excuse for making ‘repeat’ the default and only play option for podcasts. Like - why would you want to listen through a bunch of podcasts and then go back and listen to them all again? Music tracks yes, but podcasts no. 

I guess I just have to toss my Sport in the wastepaper basket and buy another Zip. 

The Sport doesn’t have any DRAM at all, which is probably a pretty big cost savings. Instead it just has some tiny bit of SRAM on the CPU die directly. For simple chips like these that can be made on ancient semiconductor fabs, the cost of the silicon itself is very low, but the cost of assembling all those wires and packages into dies and boards isn’t free, so getting rid of things like memory chips is probably a big deal for reducing costs.

As for the database, thats really confusing.  2000 ID3v1 tags (not even including file paths) would take up more RAM then the entire player has, so probably the database is stored on flash memory.  I guess the 2000 entry limit is probably just someone assuming that no one would want more files than that.  

“Your suggestion that the inability to combine the device and SD card databases is because the Sport may be starved of RAM makes sense - though not _common_ sense.”

It isn’t just the cost of the ram, but how much ram the processor can access, and the power consumption of the ram. The Sport has around the same battery life as the original fuze, but is much smaller, and so is its battery.

It is about size, weight, battery life, and cost.

'While there is a tenuous excuse for the database issue, I can’t think of a single excuse for making ‘repeat’ the default and only play option for podcasts."

It was likely just a bug in the firmware. it seems like it should be simple to fix.

I guess I won’t throw the Sport out just yet. I can’t use it though. I’ll check every couple of months to see if they’ve updated the firmware and solved the podcast repeating problem. From what you say the separate databases issue can’t be fixed in firmware, but I could live with having to go to my SD card menu to access files if I really had to. It’s messy though.

I’m sure it could be fixed in firmware, they’re just not going to because its difficult.