Sansa Clip Pitch Issue Workarounds

Hi everyone.

I just bought an 8gb Clip in europe (and payed the full retail price; same price as clip+ but the clip+ aint here in stores yet so…) and then I’m reading Sandisk’s Ridiculous statement about their cutting off the support (I seriousely hope this isn’t their final decision.). I can’t believe I’ve bought something defective right out of the box and taht the maker doesn’t even accept fixing it!! I can’t return the thing 'cause I’m not in europe anymore and anyway I have to stick with it. now, I’m new to the whole clip thing;( just got this because of clip’s very good (and now non-existant) SQ reputation.) So please help me out with my questions:

1- from what firmware version did the pitch issue begin?

2- can I downgrade(or should I say upgrade!!?) the firmware to a previous one without this problem? if so, where am I gonna find the firmware files? does that pitch bug-free firmware support FLAC?

3- is it possible that the Clip+ fixed firmware get hacked for use in Clip in the future? or even be compatible as is?(considering the hardware similarities and all)

4- what softwares do you recommand for fast and easy (preferably batch) conversion of 44.1 to 48 khz Mp3 and FLAC files? what’s the toll on SQ because of the conversion?

thanks

Message Edited by Chaotichead on 09-24-2009 03:50 AM

Message Edited by Chaotichead on 09-24-2009 03:56 AM

it has been around since the clip was released. I like most other never even noticed it until it was brought up here. the SQ IMO is still great despite being slightly off pitch which again i never noticed. other posts on here say it is even less noticeable if the files are at 48kHz sample rate.

First, you may want to try the player out and see if you notice any pitch issue and if it is an issue for you.   

Thanks for the reply, I agree on SQ being great but the pitch IS annoying me (in addition to being absolutely unacceptable from a musical standpoint). I hope it gets unnoticeable at 48khz, that’s why I asked for a good software for converting it in my questions.

I had a choice between Clip and Fuze when buying it but I didn’t get the Fuze because of its special cable. it’s invconvenient and if I lose/damage it(which has happened before) I have no way of finding a replacement making it totally unusable (there are no sandisk customer centers in my country and I can’t shop online). it makes you ask why do these companies make such decisions; making your device incompatible with everything else on the market even other ones with physical compatibility (e.g. apple’s 30 pin cable which I can easily find here). is it supposed  to make your product special?! (yeah sure, specially trashy)

Message Edited by Chaotichead on 09-24-2009 09:48 AM

Most encoders like lame or oggenc support resampling, so if you use say foobar2000 to convert the music it’s no problem to pass the new samplerate as a parameter. If your encoders don’t support resamplign you can use foobar’s DSPs to do the resampling beforehand. For linux you’d probably have to decode them yourself first, or pipe the output to the encoder.