Can anyone understand what each button does?

I first owned another company’s model of MP3 player called an Eclipse,

which costs only $20.  I loaded my MP3 files, ripped using Microsoft

Windows Media Player.  I’ve got about 10 various artists, each with

one or two CD albums, from which I ripped just my ‘favorite’ tracks.

Everything worked fine.  The only two drawbacks were that the battery

life on one charge was only about maybe two hours.  And, it’s

tiny dispay window showed track names only…no images of album

covers.  And the super-small font used for track-names was almost

too small to read them, esp for a 70 year old man.  :)

So, this Christmas I spent bigger bucks ($40 !?) and got this

SanDisk Clip Sport, 4-GB model.

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Ok, my first issue:

Both the Eclipse and this SanDisk Clip Sport have a very similar

BUTTON LAYOUT…and I find both units very HARD to understand

or think about.  Bottom line, so I end up just hitting various buttons

until the right thing happens!

But, whoever came up with this existing triple-use for each button

(or whatever the scheme is ?!), well, I just don’t really understand

it at all!  It seems to be ‘context-dependent’…i.e what a button does

seems to depend on where you are now and what OTHER button

you pressed before getting here.

It took me 10 minutes of randomly pressing buttons, before I finally

notice that there is also an FM radio inside (that I don’t plan to use).

And, something about ‘books’ and other goofy stuff I’ll also never

use.

And, I see no real IN-CONTEXT documentation or use-cases or

whatever anywhere!  Yikes!  What were they thinking???

Seems like some variant of 'reverse-Polish-notation!

What am I missing?

Ok, I finally learned there is some internal operation, now

that my MP3 files are loaded, to create ‘playlists’.  So, is

there CLEAR documentation somewhere on what buttons

to press, and in what order, to create a playlist?

[I really didn’t want to HAVE to create playlists…I would have

been happy to just choose ‘random’ and/or ‘shuffle’, and have

it move thru my various files.  But, I’m not convinced that that

is working as they (hopefully) intended.

Ok, what am I still missing?

Just call me “Totally Confused”.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14334/~/sandisk-clip-sport-support-information-page

After updating the firmware (to fix the problem I posted about in another thread,

about only being able to listen to tracks from the first album of the first artist),

the player is now behaving normally.

That, in turn, has resolved the confusion with the buttons not working normally.

So, I’m all set now.  Thanks.

How do I open the file I want? There nmust be a simple way to navigate buyt it seems hit-and-miss. At this moment My Clip Sport opens in Radio mode. None of the buttons will get me to my Music files. At other times the music file oens and I can (with difficulty) navigate to my list. How does one easily reach items that do not come up at the start?

@artfulblue wrote:

How do I open the file I want? There nmust be a simple way to navigate buyt it seems hit-and-miss. At this moment My Clip Sport opens in Radio mode. None of the buttons will get me to my Music files. At other times the music file oens and I can (with difficulty) navigate to my list. How does one easily reach items that do not come up at the start?

Have you read and/or consulted the User Manual so you understand how the player works?

As ‘artfulblue’ mentions, reading the manual should help.

That said, tho, after reading it, I was still a bit confused for a month or so, until by trial and

error, and piecemeal learning, the buttons have finally become much clearer now.

So, here’s my take of how to think about its overall operation. Note that a few buttons

have two totally different usages, depending on your “context” (i.e. what you’re tying to do).

So, the big red bar in the middle is used

   (1) To power the unit ON and OFF, by HOLDING it down for 3 or 4 seconds!

   (2) Is also a select-and-go-to-next-step button (e.g. to select a given VERTICAL-LIST

          word, such as “shuffle” or “artist”, etc.

[To vertically scroll up/down a list of items, use the ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons that are above

and below that big red bar.]

[ The ‘left’ and ‘right’ buttons have two different usages, too.  (1)To go to next/previous song

in the queue, and (2) horizontally scroll between major functions at the top level (eg. between

“Music-folder” and “FM-radio”, and “Settings”, etc).]

The ‘back-arrow’ button is alot like the BACK button on a browser…to 'bail out of the current

selected context to get UP-a-LEVEL.

Ok, as an example scenario of listening to music files (once you’ve selected the MUSIC folder),

you’ll see a vertica list, starting with a choice of 'Shuffle".  If you select that, you’ll be shuffling

(randomly pllaying) from the full list of all your music(e.g. MP3) files.  But, if you go down past

that firs ‘shuffle’ choice, you could then select some specifiic “Artist”, and then you’d be be

shuffling thru all the ALBUM’s files for just that one artist. But you instead, go below a given

artist, you could then select a specific album-name for that artist, and then shuffle just among

the tracks(songs) from that specific album).

Hope this gets you going.  Just try/practice for a few days…each time you start a new

listening session.  e.g. Today, I’m gonna listen to all my ripped tracks from Bob Dylan’s album

called “Blonde on Blonde”.  Tomorrow, trying drilling all the way down thru all your Neil Young

albums, till you get to the “Harvest” album, select that album, and then scroll down to just

the one song named “Old Man”, and listen to just that one song.

After a few such tasks/trials, it should finally become clear how to do any/every listening

scenario that might want to do.

Like so much of new tech. (at least tech. that is not ridiculously poorly designed):  with use, our fingers learn the system and develop a form of muscle memory.  :slight_smile: