mp3 players...where have they gone

  On 2/6/2015 at 3:24 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

I'm on my 3rd Sansa Clip and still rockboxin it like a boss. Prolly should buy another one just to have when they stop makin' em

I think they're already out of production and the ones still for sale are the remaining stock being sold off, retailers are starting to run out of them.

The new Clip Sport (which I got a couple of weeks ago) isn't Rockboxable and will probably never be. Thanks to the rise of smartphones, soon there may not be a new Rockboxable player left on the market. Despite being physically larger and having a color screen, the hardware and build quality on the Sport are obviousy a downgrade from my old Clip+, it was pretty disconcerting at first. It's still brilliant for what I do with it (playing a small and always changing collection of files), but those who like to pimp it with SD cards to keep huge libraries etcetera are going to run into limitations quickly, it's not at all like the old Clips in that respect.

Thanx for the clip protip

*pours some out, ejects micro sd card*

TBH I can take or leave the rockbox (nice but I can live without it), but yeah the micro card thing is pretty sweet. Just hope someone (sansa, iriver, or whoever) keeps making halfway decent mp3/music players that are usb mass storage (no mtp bullshit) and have expandable card slots. I use my clip in much the same way, generally keep a constant rotation of my library on the 4 gb model + 8 gb card, with the stuff im into at the moment staying in heavy rotation... for me at least this seems to strike the best balance between having too much vs too little music on hand at any time

  On 2/16/2015 at 3:34 PM, QQQ said:

 

  On 2/6/2015 at 3:24 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

I'm on my 3rd Sansa Clip and still rockboxin it like a boss. Prolly should buy another one just to have when they stop makin' em

I use one of these too but the headphone connection is iffy and needs to be held in a particular position so I only use it when running now. I used to have the bigger version (non-clip?) that I preferred because the clip is teeny tiny.

 

Sorry to hear about yr dodgy clip but yeah it's tiny alright. I dropped mine while on an airplane once and never saw it again (though someone might've probably nicked it)

I have a Sony Walkman 16gb mp3 player from a few years ago. Works fine and is reliable. Strange thing though -- it has a noticeably thin sound on anything played through it (and it's not my mp3s). I did a side by side, same track comparison with my friend's old Ipod classic to make sure I wasn't crazy. It was really truly noticeable. Like the low mids or high bass had been scooped or something. Best way I can put it is that it's like any track you play through it has no body. Maybe they've fixed that in subsequent versions or maybe I have an importing setting wrong, I don't know.

My beaten up Sansa no-longer-sporting-a-Clip Sport died on me two days ago.

Tried all the reset maneuvers of pushing buttons for 20 seconds etcetera, plugged it into USB and disconnected it a thousand times, nothing. Saw it lying there just now and thought what the hell, I'll plug it in one more time.

Sure enough, that resurrected it. Not sure whether to be happy or annoyed though, as in the meantime I'd ordered exactly the same one and it's already on its way here. Guess I'll have a spare from now on.

FML my nth sansa clip died on me (power button on the top borked & couldn't be pressed, and now I found they don't make em anymore and read that the newer model is shite.  Anyone got any recs for a replacement?

On the plus side I was able to yank the micro sd card out and plug it into my phone, and with the player I've been using for streaming over lan (UPnPlay) it's also pretty easy to browse and play local files as well.

i've gradually transitioned to offline spotify on my smartphone, but man I miss my Ipod.

I thought I lost it but I'm pretty sure my then deadbeat druggie coworker stole it to pawn it off

i have been seriously struggling to find an mp3 player since my ipod that my mum and dad gave me for christmas two years ago broke. currently settled on a 20 bush one, it has the volume, but you have to click through every tune individually. why on earth you would even design an mp3 player with 16gb of space and no way to scroll by folder i have no idea. 

also, when it shuts down it says ''goodbey''

sony mp3 players are completely useless without very loud headphones or a headphone amp. again, i have no idea why they even make them. i use cheap, 40 quid sennheisers when im out the house, and you can barely hear classical music on a sony mp3

  On 8/12/2017 at 4:36 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

FML my nth sansa clip died on me (power button on the top borked & couldn't be pressed, and now I found they don't make em anymore and read that the newer model is shite.  Anyone got any recs for a replacement?

 

On the plus side I was able to yank the micro sd card out and plug it into my phone, and with the player I've been using for streaming over lan (UPnPlay) it's also pretty easy to browse and play local files as well.

I'm on my second one of the newer model (Clip Sport), while different from the previous generation I don't think there's anything else that comes closer. I don't use cards though, only internal memory. I remember something about the new model not being great with memory cards for some reason.

Goodbey *starts wagging tale and sniffing the nearest crotch*

Was this mp3 player made in Japan?

  On 8/12/2017 at 7:44 AM, manmower said:

 

  On 8/12/2017 at 4:36 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

FML my nth sansa clip died on me (power button on the top borked & couldn't be pressed, and now I found they don't make em anymore and read that the newer model is shite.  Anyone got any recs for a replacement? On the plus side I was able to yank the micro sd card out and plug it into my phone, and with the player I've been using for streaming over lan (UPnPlay) it's also pretty easy to browse and play local files as well.

 I'm on my second one of the newer model (Clip Sport), while different from the previous generation I don't think there's anything else that comes closer. I don't use cards though, only internal memory. I remember something about the new model not being great with memory cards for some reason.

The newer model isn't as great as the old one, more lightweight and generally has a cheap, plastic feel to it. But hey you get used to it, and yeah it's probably still the closest you'll get to the old one. I bought two, so have an extra should this one suddenly conk out

  On 8/12/2017 at 8:55 AM, Echolalia said:

Goodbey *starts wagging tale and sniffing the nearest crotch*

  On 8/12/2017 at 10:39 AM, AJW said:

 

  On 8/12/2017 at 7:44 AM, manmower said:

 

  On 8/12/2017 at 4:36 AM, Bob Dobalina said:

FML my nth sansa clip died on me (power button on the top borked & couldn't be pressed, and now I found they don't make em anymore and read that the newer model is shite.  Anyone got any recs for a replacement? On the plus side I was able to yank the micro sd card out and plug it into my phone, and with the player I've been using for streaming over lan (UPnPlay) it's also pretty easy to browse and play local files as well.

 I'm on my second one of the newer model (Clip Sport), while different from the previous generation I don't think there's anything else that comes closer. I don't use cards though, only internal memory. I remember something about the new model not being great with memory cards for some reason.

The newer model isn't as great as the old one, more lightweight and generally has a cheap, plastic feel to it. But hey you get used to it, and yeah it's probably still the closest you'll get to the old one. I bought two, so have an extra should this one suddenly conk out

 

Hmmmm my ClipSport. I had heard some good things about Sandisk players so bought one for a more casual listening (jogging, wandering in forests like a true hippie, taking the doge to poopoo etc.) a couple of months ago and boy it kept me "entertained" for the first couple of weeks. Although I always try to get as much info about the things I'm about to get, there came few surprises.

First I had major problems of transferring files to 32 GB sandisk card. After spending a couple of hours transferring the tunes I was thrilled with my new toy having some nice songs, but instead of immediate joy it ended up giving me only some transferring error notes. After some googling I found out, that for some reason unknown to anyone the maximum amount of songs per card and internal memory is limited 2000 (max 4000 overall that is).

So keeping that in mind, tried transferring some tunes but surprise surprise, again some error in transferring. The card had worked perfectly in my Sony (naturally had formatted it with my computer as well as with sansa and with everything) so it couldn't be a bad card. Well, googlin' again and it turned out that the Card must be class 4 at tops so therefore my fancy class 10 was too fast.

How about sorting my library....since it's fat32 and ClipSport doesn't do any kind of sorting, I had to Google some old fatsorter and found a recommendation for one, but which was deleted from several freeware databases. Ended up finding a working link after some digging .....but it doesn't work perfectly and does only part of the job it's meant to. Sometimes the player can't see the difference between albums with similar names such as SAW 85-92 & SAW II or my albums of AFX soundcloud 01,02,03 etc. so they are lumped together on the album's list. Organized properly as albums in the folders menu but there the track positions have gone totally haywire instead in spite of the fatsorter; they're not in numerical order nor organized alphabetically. Also there are some desktop etc. file types between the songs which fortunately don't affect in playing the songs, but which can't be seen on computer and therefore I can't delete them.

Can live with it now but if I knew all that now, would have ended getting something else, FiiO M3 perhaps. My classy Sonys will not leave home. They for one are perfect for me. Easy as hell to use.

TL:DR

Getting a Sandisk clip sport, know this

1. Card and Internal memory limited to 2000 songs per memory type (4000 max that is.)

2: Card should be 32 GB Class 4 max (sandisk preferably)

3. People with even mild OCD, for your own sake, go for some other product/manufacturer instead.

I have a clip sport, using it with a 180GB sd card without any problems. Just use the Folder > External Card menu, instead of the regular Music menu.

I miss rockbox dearly though.

There's a player currently available as new called Xduoo X3, it has 2 micro SD slots and there's a rockbox port for it. Only thing keeping me from getting it is the allegedly pretty poor battery life (8 hours or so).

Oh wait, it seems I got confused by that "newer model" part on AJW's post since my post was about ClipSport+. Sorry folks, can't edit my original post with this account. Automatically just assumed we were talking about that "newest model". If my memory serves me right Sandisk had to make some sacrifices in order to increase the battery life from previous models. I had read good reviews about Sansa and Sport but since Sandisk has stopped making those ClipSport+ was the only option. Couldn't have believed that they had compromised that much to get a better battery life and keep the costs low. So compared to its predecessors this one seems to be a let-down. And imho a bit misleading to use partly the same product name as it's highly rated predecessor when there are so many fuck-ups and alterations which have actually made the product worse.

Yeah I usually use the folder menu but like I said despite the fatsorter it's partly messed up with wrong order of songs and albums and then there are those desktop files etc. :( Thanks for the Xduoo hint though. Not a gear head but I've got my soft spot with headphones and DAP's / mp3 player.

I'm not clued up on the "Sport Plus" but they are also still making, or at least selling, the Sport and Jam models.

To be clear my post was comparing the regular SanDisk Clip Sport as the newer model to (and arguably downgrade from) the discontinued Sansa Clip+.

The Clip+ had its own problems though, and what both models have in common is they all die after a couple of years in my hands anyway. 

Strange, I read from everywhere that all the previous models had been discontinued. I bought my Sandisk from Finland and so didn't use Amazon or ebay and it was the only model available. Ironically the main motivation was to get an easy and quick player for everyday use. So when it turned out to be what it is, it was a little frustrating to say the least. And the fact that there wasn't any info about the card class in the manual and the max song limit was only vaguely mentioned in the sandisk help site got me scratching my head. But I cope now with the piece. Battery life is fine and it's not the end of the world if an album has a little unusual track positioning. I play it much on shuffle anyway. The half-arsiness is only little frustrating.

But as I've said previously I've been totally satisfied with Sony. Currently using NWZ-A15 (16 GB internal memory + memory card max 128 GB) and have been keeping my eye on new NW-A35. FiiO has also received mainly positive-only response. I don't know how damn loud you people listen to your music since I haven't been annoyed by the volume limitations on Sony walkmans (it's an EU thing right?). Also, 50 hours battery life is a big plus. I'm a dinosaur since I'm not interested of streaming at all and not really fond of the idea of using phone as a DAP in general. I must charge my phone all the time anyway and I even barely use the piece, let alone I would have to use it to play my music files.

i have this thing:

no issues with it

I just dug out my ipod classic and took it for a spin with the usb thing in my car and it was the business. There was something strangely liberating about an ipod chock full of fresh crispy pirated tunes, the open road, the wind in your hair, on the run from the fuzz with nothing left to lose. Trust no one. 

  On 8/12/2017 at 9:09 PM, zaphod said:

i have this thing:

 

 

no issues with it

what is this? my old ipod classic died and only being able to keep 7gb of music on my phone is killing me.

yes i realize that sounds insane.

  On 8/13/2017 at 7:50 AM, Lada Laika said:

 

  On 8/12/2017 at 9:09 PM, zaphod said:

i have this thing:

 

 

no issues with it

what is this? my old ipod classic died and only being able to keep 7gb of music on my phone is killing me.

 

yes i realize that sounds insane.

 

It's FiiO XSomething

mp3 is definetly becoming a thing of the past... I have owned two ipod classics but both of them died after one year of use. I still own a 2nd gen nano but it's battery life is crap.. and 8gb is waay to little... I wonder if one could replace the battery and mod it to have massive capacity but iunno

edit: regarding the post above.. shiiit 256 gb max?? for 160 £?! I'm fucking sold!

Also have a Fiio X1 and I love it. Mine is silver though.

use your smartphones to stream from your pc's noobs.

I love my Fiio X5! 2x128GB microSD baby! 

edit: also powers my HD650s so much better than any iPod I've tried..