Before buying: songs playing at a slower speed?

@arranger wrote:

I don’t think that any special sample rate exists that will magically play at the correct speed on the Fuze.  

 

 

 

Possibly, let’s find out for sure by determining the sample rate of an MP3 that plays correctly. 

 


Arranger wrote: 

And if it did, it would certainly play fast and at a sharp pitch rise on any other standard playback devices.

 

 

No, not necessarily.

 


Arranger wrote: 

 

44.1 khz is very common in the consumer market and it’s likely that >98% of the tracks people listen to are CD rate 44.1 at 16bit.

Of course anything ripped from a commercial source will be 44.1kHz if not converted to another sample rate, but 

there are plenty of people who rip audio who don’t know anything about sample rate.  They may unwittingly have their ripping software set to downsample or upsample.

 

 

 

 

 

Arranger wrote: 

 

 

I also can’t imagine having to convert all of our music using some third party application just to be able to play music on the Fuze and have it sound the way the artists and producers intended it to be heard.

 

  

Agreed, that would be incredibly stupid.  Whatever the problem is, it should have not happened in the first place.  Blame our system of industry, where greed comes first, and everything else is considered incidental.

@maxplanck wrote:

… it should have not happened in the first place.  Blame our system of industry, where greed comes first, and everything else is considered incidental.

 

Amoung other things I write software for user devices for a living, though the machine are quite a bit larger than a Fuze.  Things like this happen all the time, especially subtle problems like this that are not apparent at first glance to the rather inexperienced software quality assurance guys - ours are mostly from India. What counts is accepting that an error was made and getting a fix to the customers in a reasonable time.

Sure, but the reason the problem occurs in the first place, in your example, is because the company cheaped out on Quality Assurance.

Compare the dollar cost of implementing a decent QA process to the dollar value of the average number of man hours wasted by an end user dealing with this problem, multiplied by the number of end users. The loss is enormous. Therefore the cost to society of these greed driven business practices is enormous. Management and shareholders don’t care because they benefit, but we should.

Message Edited by maxplanck on 02-14-2009 09:49 PM

 

(Link removed, found in Off Topic forum currently)

LOL 

Please note that the linked video contains multiple expletives, not really appropriate here, folks, though it was amusing.  We need to keeo it clean, as the forum is open to all.

 

µsansa

Message Edited by microsansa on 02-15-2009 11:58 AM

@maxplanck wrote:

 (Link removed.  Agreed, Tapeworm.)   -µsansa

LOL 

Enough already! You’ve spammed this same link in 3 different places already; none of which is appropriate!

I suggest you cease & desist or you will be planting this filth on a differnt forum! :angry:

Message Edited by microsansa on 02-15-2009 11:59 AM

c’mon, have a sense of humor already.  Filth?  This is one of the more realistic things I’ve seen recently.  Reality is often filthy, does that mean we should ignore it?

Message Edited by maxplanck on 02-15-2009 12:01 PM

No But keep in mind, there are youngsters on here. Some as young as 13(My cousin whom I registered and monitor). For me thats an awesome video, but its not appropriate for my 13 year old cousin.

 You know this is just about the stupidest thread i’ve seen on these boards.Most people (except apparently those with infallible internal clocks) would never notice a  one second variance in the speed of any given song.Who cares,besides which,i really tend to doubt that this supposed “flaw” even exsists.Life is way to short to let this little of a problem hang me up.Like somebody else posted,i can live with it. 

@shmince wrote:
 You know this is just about the stupidest thread i’ve seen on these boards.Most people (except apparently those with infallible internal clocks) would never notice a  one second variance in the speed of any given song.Who cares,besides which,i really tend to doubt that this supposed “flaw” even exsists.Life is way to short to let this little of a problem hang me up.Like somebody else posted,i can live with it. 

*applauds*

@shmince wrote:
Who cares,besides which,i really tend to doubt that this supposed “flaw” even exsists.

 

Translation: Prefer disbelieving others to trying it your self.  Though, as I said, mine is a Clip, it’s pitch accuracy was 20x further off than any of the 5 other players I tried.  If this is just a lack of calibration, then some will be closer. 

Message Edited by donp on 02-15-2009 04:06 PM

@donp wrote:


@shmince wrote:
Who cares,besides which,i really tend to doubt that this supposed “flaw” even exsists.


 

Translation: Prefer disbelieving others to trying it your self.  Though, as I said, mine is a Clip, it’s pitch accuracy was 20x further off than any of the 5 other players I tried.  If this is just a lack of calibration, then some will be closer. 

 

Message Edited by donp on 02-15-2009 04:06 PM

Actual Translation: This Thread is 9 pages long. I know it wont matter to those of you who beat this drum to death but I, on a whim asked some of my Friends in the music Business whose music I have on my Fuze to listen to the songs and they hear ZERO Difference. And they wrote words and the music, recorded the songs, Mixed and mastered the album, and have played them thousands if not millions of times. If they dont hear a difference then one is not there. Perfect pitch and a degree in music from Juilliard, as well as 15 years as a professional musician is more than enough proof for me. Let it go already.

For musicians who use the Fuze, it’s a major issue, really a complete dealbreaker that makes the device useless for them if they can’t get the music to play at the correct pitch.

It amazes me how people cling to the anachronistic belief that “bad words,” in and of themselves, are harmful to anyone. Heaven forbid that a child hears a word that describes how s/he was created. We can’t have our children being too knowledgeable about the natural world around them, that would be “bad.”

Or heaven forbid that children hear a word that describes a material that everyone is well familiar with, which comes out of our rear ends every day.  

Words in and of themselves don’t harm people, it’s the way in which they’re used that can be harmful. To curse in frustration at pathological business practices doesn’t harm anyone, and in fact helps society by bringing attention to the problem of pathological business practices. 

When words are used in a threatening or demeaning manner, that is harmful to children and should be avoided.  I find it quite idiosyncratic that many people who would not use a “bad” word in front of a child, would not hesitate to threaten or demean that child if they “misbehave.”  Or that “bad” words are considered unsuitable for children to hear in media regardless of their context, while violence in media is considered suitable so long as the depiction of violence is sufficiently unrealistic (i.e. less gory with less harmful consequences than if the violent act were actually performed).

Message Edited by maxplanck on 02-15-2009 01:26 PM

@conversionbox wrote:


@donp wrote:


@shmince wrote:
Who cares,besides which,i really tend to doubt that this supposed “flaw” even exsists.


 

Translation: Prefer disbelieving others to trying it your self.  Though, as I said, mine is a Clip, it’s pitch accuracy was 20x further off than any of the 5 other players I tried.  If this is just a lack of calibration, then some will be closer. 

 

Message Edited by donp on 02-15-2009 04:06 PM


Actual Translation: This Thread is 9 pages long. I know it wont matter to those of you who beat this drum to death but I, on a whim asked some of my Friends in the music Business whose music I have on my Fuze to listen to the songs and they hear ZERO Difference. And they wrote words and the music, recorded the songs, Mixed and mastered the album, and have played them thousands if not millions of times. If they dont hear a difference then one is not there. Perfect pitch and a degree in music from Juilliard, as well as 15 years as a professional musician is more than enough proof for me. Let it go already.

The files that you played for your friends weren’t experiencing the “slow/low pitch playback” problem.

Message Edited by maxplanck on 02-15-2009 01:23 PM

I’m late to the party.    Can someone make available one of these slow rate songs.  I’d like to download and do some testing.    Please :slight_smile:

If you read all the way back… The OP asked about a review which said there was slow playback, but it rapidly evolved when several people reported EVERY song plays back slow. If Certain tracks were an issue then thats something that can be resolved. But If every track plays slow then you have the issue that takes up most of this thread.

I finally read everything.  Interesting subject.    mp3geek did some nice tests.   Glad I don’t notice any tone difference :slight_smile:

I’d be interested in knowing more about the timing source used in the fuze/clip.

Now I’d like to test my devices and see how they rate.

I’ve spent my life (all 50 years of it, anyway) surrounded by top music professionals.  With myself, many of my international orchestra colleagues have watched music go from acetate discs to stamped vinyl to tape to CD to data streams.

All - every one - of my 900+ mp3s play slow and off pitch on the Fuze.  Again, they have come to me from countless odd sources.  They’re all off.

If I or any one of my colleagues played that far off pitch and speed they’d be fired in a minute.  When you practice a song over and over thousands of times, you own it and nothing will match the cadence and pitch that exists in your embedded mind.  You can be ‘close’ and find it acceptable, but the Fuze (mine anyway) isn’t so.  Any musician worth his/her ear will hear the defect on this particular Fuze.  If others have not heard it on their own players, then there is a variation to the defect that is not present in all Fuze players.

Digital replication should be extremely accurate.  That’s about the only thing going for it, because the medium and compressed formats already strip most tracks of their real souls.

When music is reproduced the way the artists intend for it to be, the public is treated to something special.  When the reproduction is compromised, the public has been cheated of that very special thing.  Consider viewing a reproduction of the Mona Lisa under fluorescent illumination through a telescope.  That’s not the real thing and it becomes difficult to appreciate its beauty.

Message Edited by Arranger on 02-15-2009 05:01 PM

Hey Arranger Great Post and you are right. Do you have a V1 fuze? I wonder if you and the few others who have this defect got Fuzes from the same batch… Its not like this solves anything but it would be interesting to know.

@donp wrote:


 

 

 


 

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.

 

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

  

*applauds*

Mine has firmware 2.01.17 and was bought in December at a high volume discount store - if that helps.

@conversionbox wrote:
Do you have a V1 fuze? I wonder if you and the few others who have this defect got Fuzes from the same batch… Its not like this solves anything but it would be interesting to know.