Clip plays music slowly, lower pitch.

@tnmats wrote:
Thanks Sandisk.  I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of your products over the last 5 years, MP3 players (two of them), countless USB memory sticks for myself and co-workers (I have the office purchasing card), SD and Compact Flash cards, card readers.  Never again.  You’ve lost me as a customer.

Same here. I’ve bought three Sansa mp3 players. Never again.

@tnmats wrote:
Thanks Sandisk.  I’ve bought hundreds of dollars of your products over the last 5 years, MP3 players (two of them), countless USB memory sticks for myself and co-workers (I have the office purchasing card), SD and Compact Flash cards, card readers.  Never again.  You’ve lost me as a customer.

Ditto.

I was one of Sandisk’s most obnoxious supporters, but no more.  I sold my last Sansa product, a Clip+ yesterday…and have moved on.

From this point on, my participation in this forum will be nil.

I’ll start by saying this issue, and Sansa’s current stand on not giving the same fix that Fuze got, are a blemish on the company’s reputation.

But… other than that, the things they DID do right still make both my players preferable to the equivalent offerings from the fruit company: FM on both (just now coming to Nano), Having a display at all on the small one (still none on shuffle AFAIK), memory slot, ogg files, rockboxable (at least Sansa doesn’t actively block it like Apple does).   

@donp wrote:

I’ll start by saying this issue, and Sansa’s current stand on not giving the same fix that Fuze got, are a blemish on the company’s reputation.

 

But… other than that, the things they DID do right still make both my players preferable to the equivalent offerings from the fruit company: FM on both (just now coming to Nano), Having a display at all on the small one (still none on shuffle AFAIK), memory slot, ogg files, rockboxable (at least Sansa doesn’t actively block it like Apple does).   

Preferable to the fruit? I’d agree with that. I was a Sansa defender for a long time, and never could hear the off-pitch sound with my untrained ears. But their stance on this, I morally object to. As you say, donp, they did apply a fix to the Fuze…so why the heck not do it to at least the new Clip+?

I would not have been surprised at their abandoning the original Clip, given that I understand that’s what happened with the e200 series when the Fuze was brought onto the scene. But to come out and say it will not be addressed on the brand new player? Not cool…

at least they admit they arent gonna fix/do **bleep** to the player, look at the ABI forums and the ME rep, he acts like ms is going to listen to customers and update the zune’s to do what customers want…we all know thats a flat out LIE…it might somehow hurt the “really cool and exciting zune ecosystem experiance”

@marvin_martian wrote:

… But to come out and say it will not be addressed on the brand new player? Not cool…

My interpretation of the, erm, announcement is that they knew about the speed problem and decided to stick with the hardware they have, knowing that it’ll be less than perfect. Remember, playback speed isn’t perfect on the Fuze even after the software update because of the hardware limitations (and aren’t they built on the same chip?). Better, yes, but perfect? No. So anyway, they stuck with their Clip+ plans because changing the hardware around at that point was more expensive than losing the vocal minority of forum members (a minority of Sansa owners as well) who 1. could hear the difference, and 2. cared about the Clip-sans-plus speed issues. 

I imagine they will still address it in Clip+ firmware in the next couple of months, if it’s even an issue (I haven’t read through the Clip+ threads yet). There’ll be other bugs to fix as well, I’m sure. It is the nature of new software.

I think that Sandisk just doesn’t want to do anything more with the Clip and didn’t plan to since when there were plans for the Clip+.  This flatly contradicts statements by Sandisk itself here in the Clip forum in Feb. and March this year that a new firmware would be coming out for the clip “this quarter” (Sandisk’s words). 

I think someone else here called this throwing the Clip customers “under the bus”.  Maybe not that dramatic and I know that plans change over time, but this certainly is not honorable.  And Sandisk says that it lives by customer goodwill.

@sansaconcerns wrote:

I think that Sandisk just doesn’t want to do anything more with the Clip and didn’t plan to since when there were plans for the Clip+.  This flatly contradicts statements by Sandisk itself here in the Clip forum in Feb. and March this year that a new firmware would be coming out for the clip “this quarter” (Sandisk’s words). 

Not exactly “SanDisk’s words”. Actually a former SanDisk employee.

Things change . . . and SanDisk and its customers have to change accordingly. Obviously, the suits think they know what is best for the company in its current state. History will tell whether they are right or wrong. All we can do as consumers of these products is go with our gut; if we feel we need a higher quality mp3 player than what Sandisk is willing to offer, then so be it.

You’re not gonna believe this! I finally decided to do my own pitch test and my clip is FASTER than WMP on the computer. I don’t know if matters but I did the test with an audiobook mp3 file.

@csp wrote:
You’re not gonna believe this! I finally decided to do my own pitch test and my clip is FASTER than WMP on the computer. I don’t know if matters but I did the test with an audiobook mp3 file.

 V1?

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48208

It’s a V2, but I realized that the file I did the test with was 48 kHz, not the blamed 44.1. I did a test with another (44.1) file and of course it was slow.

@csp wrote:
It’s a V2, but I realized that the file I did the test with was 48 kHz, not the blamed 44.1. I did a test with another (44.1) file and of course it was slow.

Out of curiosity, how slow?

I just tested my V2 Clip (8GB version) with a 1kHz test tone.  It’s freq. output is 988Hz, which is 1.2% slow.  That is relatively easy to hear when listening to music that’s familar to you.  The tone was mono, 128kb fixed, 44.1kHz sampled.

I tested a Creative Zen Nano 1GB that I also own with the same MP3 file.  The Creative is comparable in many ways to the Clip as far as functionality goes.  What it lacks is the nicer display, memory capacity and tag organization.  It can do things the Clip can’t do, such as MP3 encoding of a WAV file on the fly.  Both have FM radios, both have ability to record from an internal mic, both have 5 band equalizers.

The Creative plays the same 1kHz tone as 1.0003kHz.  Not shabby for such a small package.  How Creative got it right and Sandisk didn’t is beyond me.  Maybe it’s the lack of rechargable battery in the Creative?  It runs off a single AAA battery, good for 20 hrs. of MP3 play time.

My test merely consisted of listening to the Clip and the computer at the same time, with the same file started simultaneously, so it wasn’t very elaborate, but only after a few seconds I could hear the Clip being the slower of the two. I must admit that it was very disappointing, however, I don’t think I would ever have noticed the pitch bug, if I hadn’t read about it here.

csp wrote: I must admit that it was very disappointing, however, I don’t think I would ever have noticed the pitch bug, if I hadn’t read about it here.

So why was it very disappointing if you couldn’t hear it?

Has anyone ever said what’s going here?  Apparently the Clip needs to resample everything to 48khz and doing this on the fly it’s not being accurate…the orginal Soundblaster Live had to resample at 48khz and cut the high frequency response.

This pitch issue never bothered me at I LOVE my Clips

I like the Clip+ I just bought even more.


@csp wrote:

My test merely consisted of listening to the Clip and the computer at the same time, with the same file started simultaneously, so it wasn’t very elaborate, but only after a few seconds I could hear the Clip being the slower of the two. I must admit that it was very disappointing, however, I don’t think I would ever have noticed the pitch bug, if I hadn’t read about it here.


My test was with electronics lab equipment, including for measurment a Tek DPO7104 1GHz oscilloscope.  I’m confident in the measurements I took.  It just verified what I was hearing all along, way before I ever found this forum.

tnmats,

Man, I am jealous!!  Can I borrow your Tek?  The 7104 is a nice rig, for sure.

µsansa 

@microsansa wrote:

tnmats,

 

Man, I am jealous!!  Can I borrow your Tek?  The 7104 is a nice rig, for sure.

 

µsansa 

It’s my employer’s electronics lab.  I use the 'scope with other nifty expensive toys to evaluate the analog/mixed signal ICs I design (power managment chips).  The 7104 is the best scope in the lab; the Tek 3104 AFGs we have are also nice pieces of gear too.  The biggest toy in the lab is an IC probe station with a 3 color laser system for making surgical cuts in metal and passivation.  Cool toy for sure and is great for impressing visitors.  When I take measurements I’m pretty sure I’m getting good results with the lab gear at my disposal.

The Pitch/speed problem and Sansas response to it, is reason enough to avoid purchasing Sandisk products.

Don’t reward failure. :angry:

Sansa=Fail

Shame on you Sansa, you took our money and sold us a defective product.

When we told you about it, you made us wait and then told us to pound sand.

shame… on… you…Sansa

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