Before buying: songs playing at a slower speed?

@mp3geek wrote:

So far no one participating in this thread has performed the tests I developed to measure the speed. Perhaps I should propose the measurements in another more busy user forum. I only picked this one because there is a remote chance that errors and bugs in the firmware exposed here might find their way back to the developers who could fix them… but then I am a dreamer aren’t I?

I noticed the same thing with Clip, although it’s even slower in my case - about 2%. 1 second for every minute of the track. FLAC, OGG, MP3, WAV - all made from my own CDs and all play with the same speed. I’m gonna have it replaced on Monday as defective. Hopefully a new one will play better.

bungle:  The Clip has the same processor chip as the Fuze so it would make sense that the same issue would exist.

Clearly we are talking about two separate issues here:

1.  Troublesome semi-currupted mp3 files which paly extremely slowly on the Fuze and perhaps not on other players or PCs.   This issues seems to be easy to fix.  Sansafix indicated that the laterst firmware upgrade had included measures to reduce this problem.

and…

2.  The 1% or 20 cents slower speed that appears to be generally true of these devices.  This is clearly not the same issue as no. 1.

Thanks arranger and mp3geek for bringing this up.

And thanks to mp3geek for doing such objective research and reporting on these issues.

I’ve though all alnong that Sansa should start paying you extreme devotees like Conversion, Neutron and Tape, a retainer to dog the subtleties in their software.

Still, you have to admit that for under $100 there’s a lot of engineering and a lot of product (and pretty good support) in the Fuze.

Sansafix:  Any sense of what Sansa thinks of this?  Is it possible that it may be addressed in future firmware upgrades?

Thanks all.

@blackdog_sansa wrote:

bungle:  The Clip has the same processor chip as the Fuze so it would make sense that the same issue would exist.

Clearly we are talking about two separate issues here:

 

2.  The 1% or 20 cents slower speed that appears to be generally true of these devices.  This is clearly not the same issue as no. 1.

Hmm, so you mean that’s just the way they work? Because that would mean, my replacement wouldn’t change anything…And I really think Meshuggah played with 1% slower speed is a disaster :wink:

I also wonder, if this issue could be solved through firmware upgrade (but something tells me, it couldn’t)

thanks

bungl wrote:

I also wonder, if this issue could be solved through firmware upgrade (but something tells me, it couldn’t)

 

Might be. Rockbox has a ‘pitch correction’ adjustment, so it’s possible it can be corrected via firmware, but as I’m not a software developer or programmer I’m just speculating.

@tapeworm wrote:


@bungl wrote:

I also wonder, if this issue could be solved through firmware upgrade (but something tells me, it couldn’t)

 


Might be. Rockbox has a ‘pitch correction’ adjustment, so it’s possible it can be corrected via firmware, but as I’m not a software developer or programmer I’m just speculating.

 

Yeah, I’ve read about it too, but it’s still far away from being usable on v2…I’m not that kind of programmer, so I can only speculate as well…

My question was rather regarding sansa firmware. I wondered if THEY are going to solve this via firmware, because I love this little player. It’s just this speed that drives me crazy.

It would be good to get an official word if this is a bug or a feature, because some people here claimed, that the slower playback is a common thing and one should get used to it. I hope they were joking - after all, it’s a MUSIC player. I would understand, that some filetypes are not supported, or the quality is a bit lower etc., but in my view, a correct playback speed is essential… I would exepect this 1 thing from $5 mp3 player too. Or else sandisk should add a note on this extra feature in the official info:

* includes an innovative music playback feature - all your songs play 1% slower!

Doom Metal fans could have been interested, though :wink:

Message Edited by bungl on 01-31-2009 01:59 PM

Message Edited by bungl on 01-31-2009 02:00 PM

Ha, Ha… I’m sorry but I find this thread quite amusing.  There are many playback devices that inherently play fast or slow, and at multiple times the cost of the fuze.

I have a $12,000 turntable at home that plays 1% fast, and that is the way the device was designed.  

If I have to have perfect speed or perfect pitch, I run my devices “live” through my sound laboratory software that corrects any problems “on the fly”.

@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

Ha, Ha… I’m sorry but I find this thread quite amusing.  There are many playback devices that inherently play fast or slow, and at multiple times the cost of the fuze.

 

I have a $12,000 turntable at home that plays 1% fast, and that is the way the device was designed.  

 

If I have to have perfect speed or perfect pitch, I run my devices “live” through my sound laboratory software that corrects any problems “on the fly”.

I love me Some Pro Tools! Only method I’ve ever found to play perfect

Playing mp3 files from numerous sources including downloads from Amazon, rips from .wav files and CDs, swapped grey market files, home studio generated files ALL play fine on the following:

WinAmp or WMP on XP PC

CDeX

n-Track

Tascam DAW

CDR mp3CD

DVR mp3DVD

Sony NWZ-e438f

The same files ALL play slow and off pitch on the following:

Sansa Fuze

Sansa Clip

It shouldn’t take a $12000 turntable to get reliable playback (and at that price, by the way, I wouldn’t take 1%, either.)  When you spend your life loving and pursuing ‘the sound,’ you don’t accept sub-standard reproduction.  If everyone accepts this type of fault, another nail in the coffin of art appreciation will be set.  Think of it as selecting a color of paint or fabric for your living environment and finding that the manufacturer has decided that they can alter it to simplify their offerings to you.

My advice:

Don’t accept substitutions for the sound you expect.  Demand accurate reproduction.

@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

Ha, Ha… I’m sorry but I find this thread quite amusing.  There are many playback devices that inherently play fast or slow, and at multiple times the cost of the fuze.

I agree, and I’m a musician.  Even live music isn’t always the exact same speed or pitch for every session.

@arranger wrote:

My advice:

Don’t accept substitutions for the sound you expect.  Demand accurate reproduction.

From a pocket-sized device that cost less than $100?  Dream on.

People like mp3Geek and Arranger have done serious testing and discovered a consistent defect. Other cheap mp3 players don’t have that defect. It is really now up to SanDisk to remedy it. mp3’s may never be “accurate” in reproducing all the nuances of timbre, but pitch and timing should be precise.

No one from SanDisk has yet responded to this serious problem. Now’s the time. Hello? 

@black_rectangle wrote:

People like mp3Geek and Arranger have done serious testing and discovered a consistent defect. Other cheap mp3 players don’t have that defect. It is really now up to SanDisk to remedy it. mp3’s may never be “accurate” in reproducing all the nuances of timbre, but pitch and timing should be precise.

 

No one from SanDisk has yet responded to this serious problem. Now’s the time. Hello? 

You find me a pocket size player for less than $100 american and I will take them to the Recording studios were I work and have the owner (Trust me he is the best in the business) test them to see how accurate they are. Unfortunalty accuracy like Arranger wants is not possible in a player like this. Now if you wanna drop $1000 for a player yeah it better be on the ball, but for $60(What I paid for my Fuze) some speed or pitch difference is acceptable. And Also BTW how many thousands of people listen to the player and are happy and will never ever notice this “ISSUE” 90-95% if not more? If only 4 people think it is a really big problem is it a problem at all?

@arranger wrote:

Playing mp3 files from numerous sources including downloads from Amazon, rips from .wav files and CDs, swapped grey market files, home studio generated files ALL play fine on the following:

WinAmp or WMP on XP PC

CDeX

n-Track

Tascam DAW

CDR mp3CD

DVR mp3DVD

Sony NWZ-e438f

 

The same files ALL play slow and off pitch on the following:

Sansa Fuze

Sansa Clip

 

It shouldn’t take a $12000 turntable to get reliable playback (and at that price, by the way, I wouldn’t take 1%, either.)  When you spend your life loving and pursuing ‘the sound,’ you don’t accept sub-standard reproduction.  If everyone accepts this type of fault, another nail in the coffin of art appreciation will be set.  Think of it as selecting a color of paint or fabric for your living environment and finding that the manufacturer has decided that they can alter it to simplify their offerings to you.

 

My advice:

Don’t accept substitutions for the sound you expect.  Demand accurate reproduction.

You completely missed my point.  My $12,000 turntable (which is still considered one of the finest ever made) still isn’t completely accurate and it’s many, many times the cost of the fuze.  Also, the fuze isn’t meant to be a perfectly accurate, portable playback studio.  It’s a portable media player, and never intended to be the perfect playback medium.

Like CB, I also paid $60 (American) for both of my 8GB fuzes, and still am amazed at how much functionality it has for the money.  In any manufactured product there is a cost/benefit ratio that has to be calculated.  I’m sure perfect sound reproduction is possible from the Fuze or the Clip, but is it worth the time and expense when only a fraction of all owners have an issue with it?

You can demand anything you desire, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.

@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

My $12,000 turntable (which is still considered one of the finest ever made) still isn’t completely accurate and it’s many, many times the cost of the fuze.  Also, the fuze isn’t meant to be a perfectly accurate, portable playback studio.  It’s a portable media player, and never intended to be the perfect playback medium.

My $100 CD-player is not completely accurate (for sure), but still much more accurate than the clip, so neither do I get your point about a $12,000 turntable.

I don’t think anybody complaining here expects a perfect timing portable playback studio. But IMHO 2% is a noticable margin and thus annoying (at least for some). 

Sansa players are not the state of the art when it comes to timing in their price segment as some of you try to paint them.

But anyway, I don’t believe it’s a feature but just a defect of some of the units and I hope a replaced one will be more accurate (again - not perfect, just more accurate).

Message Edited by bungl on 02-01-2009 04:40 AM

@bungl wrote:


@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

My $12,000 turntable (which is still considered one of the finest ever made) still isn’t completely accurate and it’s many, many times the cost of the fuze.  Also, the fuze isn’t meant to be a perfectly accurate, portable playback studio.  It’s a portable media player, and never intended to be the perfect playback medium.


 

My $100 CD-player is not completely accurate (for sure), but still much more accurate than the clip, so neither do I get your point about a $12,000 turntable.

I don’t think anybody complaining here expects a perfect timing portable playback studio. But IMHO 2% is a noticable margin and thus annoying (at least for some). 

Sansa players are not the state of the art when it comes to timing in their price segment as some of you try to paint them.

 

But anyway, I don’t believe it’s a feature but just a defect of some of the units and I hope a replaced one will be more accurate (again - not perfect, just more accurate).

Message Edited by bungl on 02-01-2009 04:40 AM

Yeah, I agree…2% is getting pretty off speed; even for a portable device.  Just like any manufactered device, not all units are up to spec.  The solution in your case would be to exchange the problem unit with another, as you noted…

@black_rectangle wrote:

People like mp3Geek and Arranger have done serious testing and discovered a consistent defect. Other cheap mp3 players don’t have that defect. It is really now up to SanDisk to remedy it. mp3’s may never be “accurate” in reproducing all the nuances of timbre, but pitch and timing should be precise.

 

No one from SanDisk has yet responded to this serious problem. Now’s the time. Hello? 

The level of precision they are demanding doesn’t exist in consumer electronics.  The average consumers don’t notice or care if their song is 1 or 2 seconds longer, or 20 cents below pitch.  20 cents to them is two dimes.

As for it being “serious testing”, they’ve only tested their own players, and only Sandisk ones, so they can’t say every Sandisk player is “defective”.  Since a lot of other brands of players are based on the same or similar chips, it stands to reason they would all have the same “level of precision”.

They need to get over this, and themselves, and move on.

I have worked in recording studios since i was 13 years old. I am an excelnt judge of quality (From what I have been told). I hear the 20 cents difference on my fuze on 3 songs. 2 of which are songs I wrote, the third is a song called Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show. Thats it, From multilayer mixes on top of the line equiptment, to sings I took off of an old mix tape, everything else is fine. And The thing is no one I have asked can hear any variance in the 3 songs I hear it in. This is my challange. You give me the information about players that you think are better and I will test them. My boss is perfect pitch and “golden ear” (he can tell you if when a band on the radio recorded a song the lead singer drank booze or water just based on sound) and I will have him compare, and we will see what happens.

All I can go by is my 2 Fuzes; that were purchased months apart from different vendors.  Both of mine are off less than 1%.  I routinely have to check all my equipment for speed deviations, and since I deal with a lot of old mechanical devices, I try my best to restore or reproduce a given a piece of music as accurately as I can.

I’m kind of like CB’s boss.  I have a good ear and it pains me if things are way off.  To my ears the less than 1% speed issue with my fuzes isn’t noticeable.  But, that’s me.

If it bothers a person that much, you could run your files through a speed/pitch correction utility to compensate for the speed difference.  In my business, it is a must because I am often called to restore a recording that was produced at an incorrect voltage or maladjusted machine.

I know this in’t a cure for the original issue, but I see it highly unlikely that anything drastic will be done to the Fuze or Clip in regards to speed playback.

 

The level of precision they are demanding doesn’t exist in consumer electronics.  The average consumers don’t notice or care if their song is 1 or 2 seconds longer, or 20 cents below pitch.  20 cents to them is two dimes.

 

As for it being “serious testing”, they’ve only tested their own players, and only Sandisk ones, so they can’t say every Sandisk player is “defective”.  Since a lot of other brands of players are based on the same or similar chips, it stands to reason they would all have the same “level of precision”.

 

They need to get over this, and themselves, and move on.

 

 

So what level of precision does “consumer electronics” have?

 I made 1000 Hz  and 1002 Hz wave files in cool edit, converted to flac and ogg/vorbis for the players, and burned to 2 CD’s.  Playing 2 sources at the sime time will give a beat frequency equal to the difference in the tones’ frequencies (as anyone who’s tuned 2 instruments against each other knows).  The 1002 hz file was a sanity check to make sure I could hear the beat when 2 sources are known to be off… worked in all cases.

 Playing Cool edit against foobar on the same PC, flac, wav, or ogg, no beat (everything consistantly in tune) 

CD player vs DVD player (both fairly cheap consumer models, different brands and about 20 years apart in age) - roughly 30 seconds per beat  (1/30 hz), for an difference of 1 part in 30,000 or 0.003% 

CD player or Cool Edit vs  Sansa E200 (rockbox playing flac)- beat of ~1/3 Hz, error 1 part in 3000, or 0.03%.

Cool Edit vs Neuros player (playing ogg file) - Also about 1/3 Hz, so 0.03%

 Cool Edit vs Clip (playing flac) - beat of 7 Hz, error about 1 part in 140 or 0.7%   I checked this one by generating a new wave of 1007 Hz, which was in tune with the Clip playing the “1000 Hz” file.

So the Clip’s pitch error (and presumably play speed error) is over 20x worse than my other portables, and 200x worse than the difference between my CD player and DVD player.

So the typical standard for consumer electronics (including an older Sansa model) really is a lot better than the current lot.

 Another poster mentioned his multi thousand dollar turntable being off in speed.  The one I got used for $150 has adjustable pitch and the strobe pattern on the platter just stands still after adjustment.

 

Message Edited by donp on 02-01-2009 03:21 PM

@donp wrote:


 

The level of precision they are demanding doesn’t exist in consumer electronics.  The average consumers don’t notice or care if their song is 1 or 2 seconds longer, or 20 cents below pitch.  20 cents to them is two dimes.

 

As for it being “serious testing”, they’ve only tested their own players, and only Sandisk ones, so they can’t say every Sandisk player is “defective”.  Since a lot of other brands of players are based on the same or similar chips, it stands to reason they would all have the same “level of precision”.

 

They need to get over this, and themselves, and move on.

 


 

So what level of precision does “consumer electronics” have?

 I made 1000 Hz  and 1002 Hz wave files in cool edit, converted to flac and ogg/vorbis for the players, and burned to 2 CD’s.  Playing 2 sources at the sime time will give a beat frequency equal to the difference in the tones’ frequencies (as anyone who’s tuned 2 instruments against each other knows).  The 1002 hz file was a sanity check to make sure I could hear the beat when 2 sources are known to be off… worked in all cases.

 Playing Cool edit against foobar on the same PC, flac, wav, or ogg, no beat (everything consistantly in tune) 

CD player vs DVD player (both fairly cheap consumer models, different brands and about 20 years apart in age) - roughly 30 seconds per beat  (1/30 hz), for an difference of 1 part in 30,000 or 0.003% 

CD player or Cool Edit vs  Sansa E200 (rockbox playing flac)- beat of ~1/3 Hz, error 1 part in 3000, or 0.03%.

Cool Edit vs Neuros player (playing ogg file) - Also about 1/3 Hz, so 0.03%

 Cool Edit vs Clip (playing flac) - beat of 7 Hz, error about 1 part in 140 or 0.7%   I checked this one by generating a new wave of 1007 Hz, which was in tune with the Clip playing the “1000 Hz” file.

So the Clip’s pitch error (and presumably play speed error) is over 20x worse than my other portables, and 200x worse than the difference between my CD player and DVD player.

So the typical standard for consumer electronics (including an older Sansa model) really is a lot better than the current lot.

 Another poster mentioned his multi thousand dollar turntable being more than 1% off in speed.  The one I got used for $150 has adjustable pitch and the strobe pattern on the platter just stands still after adjustment.

 

 

I don’t want to get too far off topic… but I feel the need to set the record straight.  I did NOT say my $12,000 was MORE than 1% off-speed; it is just about 1%.  Oh, sure those adjustable pitch turntables sure look pretty, but aren’t any more accurate.  Turntables, by their inherent design and nature are not going to get much more accurate than 1/2-1%…slow or fast.

These forums just slay me… People hear (or read) exactly what they want, no matter what is written…

Believe or hear want you want, but I am very satisfied with the sound reproduction with my fuzes…:smiley: