Radio gets distorted after a few minutes of listening

My new sansa clip+ has an excellent radio reception but after a few minutes of listening the radio gets distorted. I need to reboot the clip every couple of minutes in order to keep listening to the radio.

Is this a hardware problem - should I send the product back? Or is there some way to fix this with software? I have the latest firmware on my sansa clip.

There are no software ways to tweak the radio reception. So if this issue is not related to your location/environment or antenna (which is the headphone cord), ask either your seller or Sansa for exchange.

@radio wrote:

My new sansa clip+ has an excellent radio reception but after a few minutes of listening the radio gets distorted. I need to reboot the clip every couple of minutes in order to keep listening to the radio.

 

Is this a hardware problem - should I send the product back? Or is there some way to fix this with software? I have the latest firmware on my sansa clip.

Hardware issue. Take it back.

Does this occur with all stations?

Have you tried using it in a different location a few miles away? Does the same thing occur?

Some areas have reception problems due to being very close to a very strong radio transmitter.

Have you tried it with a few different headphones? The headphone cord is the FM antenna.

@jk98 wrote:

 

Have you tried it with a few different headphones? The headphone cord is the FM antenna.

+1

it might be a problem with the earphones. I did had a problem with FM radio and it was because of bad earphones.

Return it to your seller, if convenient.  Or call SanDisk customer service for a replacement. 

Thank you for all your answers! Yes, it is probably a hardware issue.

@jk98 wrote:

Does this occur with all stations?

 

Have you tried using it in a different location a few miles away? Does the same thing occur?

 

Some areas have reception problems due to being very close to a very strong radio transmitter.

 

Have you tried it with a few different headphones? The headphone cord is the FM antenna.

Yes, with all the stations that I have tried. I haven’t tried different locations but as the reception doesn’t seem to be the actual problem here I don’t think the location would make very much difference anyway.

The reception is perfect for the first minute or so after turning the player on. Then the radio starts crackling (the sound gets distorted, not just the normal crackling due to bad reception). After rebooting it’s perfect again but only for a moment. Like it would get a bit lazy after a moment of listening. And after a few reboots it feels like the player would “warm-up” and I start to get a few more minutes of good listening.

Hi

Do you still have the same problem? Or how did you solve it?

I have exactly the same issue with a clip+ I recently purchased.

I’m wondering if it’s really hardware, because it’s like th actual frequency is drifting slowly while the displayed frequency is still the same. I do not need to reboot, just go back to my preset and it’s ok again.

But in average, the radio is bad, while the Clip1 was perfect from that point of view as well. :frowning:

Cheers

I’ve got the same problem also. The frequency will not stay locked and drifts away. It takes only about two minutes for it to drift so far away that nothing can be understood. I found that if I tune up and then back down to the original station I can get reception but then it only lasts for another two minues when I have to do it all over again. Sansa customer service is no help whatsoever. In fact they only showed me how ignorant and stupid they are. We had quite an email exchange and they had the nerve to tell me that replacing this unit would not make things better. Oh really! Does that mean that ALL their units have this same malfunction? Then they said that this is standard performance of small players. I should post the entire email exchange for all of you to see how stupid and unhelpful they are. The bootm line is…the radio receiver in the Clip+ is absolute ■■■■…so is customer service.

I have this same problem, with this my second sansa clip+ 8gb.  The first one I had did not have this problem.  If I manually retune the station it clears up for a couple minutes, then goes static again.

I love my sansa clip, but when it comes to the radio reception, It stinks. I Hate having to change the radio tuner up and down every five minutes because the frequency gets distorted. Especially annoying when trying to record my favorite radio shows, only to find when I come back to listen to it later, it is all distorted after five minutes. Hope they fix this issue on new models!!

It’s a generic problem with what I understand is a subset of clip+'s depending of which of two chips were used. I had the same problem and since I use the fm about 10x more than for music I sprung for a clip zip at a good price from Amazon.

You don’t have to re-boot, simply press one of the frequence buttons (left or right), then reverse, very fast but a pain nevertheless.

My take is this is heat related, as unit warms up it drifts. It can do this only for a short period of running indoors to continual problem when outside in cold weather. Rest assured the clip zip has none of these problems, although any other upgrade feature on the zip is minor but it’s a nice unit with an improved menu layout.

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