Before buying: songs playing at a slower speed?

@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.

So a V2 fuze… We will see what the others have.

Has anyone checked if the difference they are hearing has anything to do with firmware vision? When I went from v01.01.11A to v01.01.22A on my 8GB Fuze  I thought there was a difference in sound quality, volume and pitch but the more I used it with the new firmware the more I got use to it…  I just got another 8GB Fuze with firmware v01.01.11A so when I have the time I will compare the two as best I can…  I do have two Set’s of the same Sony ear buds too. That will help…  I’ll post if I ever get   the time to do the tests… I have to admit I did not read all the posts about this so someone may have already done this test already… I must say I still enjoy the Fuse in any case… All that music in one small case with so many options!! I love it!  George   

@maxplanck wrote:

 

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

Except for the first (one sentence) paragraph about musicians and Fuzes, how exactly is this rant about ‘bad words & children’ on-topic or relevant to this discussion?

What’s amazing is that some will use any excuse to jump on their soapbox to further promote their own agenda, whether it has anything to do with the conversation or not.

Mine was a 2.01.17 purchased just before Christmas at Radio Shack.

My fuze was replaced by a new Sony NWZ-e438f that reproduces tracks precisely on pitch and at identical speed to the same tracks played on all of my other devices.

@arranger wrote:

Mine was a 2.01.17 purchased just before Christmas at Radio Shack.

 

My fuze was replaced by a new Sony NWZ-e438f that reproduces tracks precisely on pitch and at identical speed to the same tracks played on all of my other devices.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we have the First step in the solution to the problem. The 2 people who have most activly pursued a solution to this issue, both have V2 fuzes. Is this the case for others who have this issue? My Guess is that it is. Does anybody know a way to tell what batch the fuzes are from? I wonder if they were all made at the same time?

@niko_sama wrote:

I finally read everything.  Interesting subject.   

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 found my wife’s Chromatic tuner again and you guys sparked my interest so I made a few new test files using Audacity and tested them. The results are shown below.

  1. 440 Hz sine wave at 44100 sample rate encoded with LAME MP3 - 20 cents slow

  2. 880 Hz sine wave at 44100 sample rate encoded with LAME MP3 - 20 cents slow

  3. 440 Hz sine wave at 48000 sample rate encoded with LAME MP3 - dead on

  4. 440 Hz sine wave at 22050 sample rate encoded with OGG         - dead on

  5. 440 Hz sine wave at 96000 sample rate encoded with OGG         - dead on

There seems to be a pattern here. Does anyone want to comment.

Note that the real time clock is about 5 minutes slow - but I set it about a month ago.

p.s. I can hear a clear difference in pitch between these files.

Message Edited by Mp3Geek on 02-15-2009 07:00 PM

Wow, great work.  Could it be that Sandisk made a simple error and set the Fuze to play tracks normally recorded at 48kHz?  That would be quite a blunder, but one that might be easy to refirmware.

Great effort.

I’ve always been a proponent of replicating a problem, and working on a solution.  This gets me into trouble every time.

I love it, of course.

Looks like we see some correlations in the above posts too.  Remember, not every single issue is going to pop up during QA, as there are so many variables in that equation.

Perhaps, we can get some more confirmation of the rate and device revision.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: