Sansa MP3 player question

[root]

I have been using different variations of the Sansa Clip mp3 players for
several years. Sansa explicitly says that of those players that accept
a micro SD card, the maximum size of the card is 32GB. However, all the
players I have bought will, in fact, accept and address 64GB when these
devices are new.

In my experience the lifetime of Sansa players is only a couple of years.
The first thing that fails is the clip attachment. Shortly after the
clip fails something happens to the the circuitry that recognizes the
SD card. I thought the devices lost the ability to see the SD card. I
now find that those devices will still recognize a 32GB card after
once having been able to recognize a 64GB. In other words, it seems that
the high address bit of the circuitry fails in a way that Sansa knows
it will happen so they only advertise a 32GB capacity.

Does this seem in any way reasonable?

 

[Michael Black]

On Wed, 19 Jul 2017, root wrote:

I have been using different variations of the Sansa Clip mp3 players for
several years. Sansa explicitly says that of those players that accept
a micro SD card, the maximum size of the card is 32GB. However, all the
players I have bought will, in fact, accept and address 64GB when these
devices are new.

I've read that one limitation is that the firmware puts a limit on the
number of songs. I've wondered whether that means there is an absolute
limit, or if you keep file names short, you get more songs.

The device came out quite some time ago. I suspect it predates larger
memory cards, so they may have never thought they'd get so large.

I have a Sansa Fuze, the clip never broke off because there was no clip.
And I think maybe it specified some smaller memory card, maybe 16gig but
maybe smaller, simply because there was nothing larger in site when it was
released. Whether or not it can handle more is another question.

I have a 32gig and all seems fine.

One thing you might have checked was whether the player saw 64gig or just
32gig, from the start. It is possible they haven't got the extra bit.
The card works, but you never see the extra memory. That's speculation.
I have no idea why the larger cards stop working

Michael

 

[root]

Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

On Wed, 19 Jul 2017, root wrote:

I have been using different variations of the Sansa Clip mp3 players for
several years. Sansa explicitly says that of those players that accept
a micro SD card, the maximum size of the card is 32GB. However, all the
players I have bought will, in fact, accept and address 64GB when these
devices are new.

I've read that one limitation is that the firmware puts a limit on the
number of songs. I've wondered whether that means there is an absolute
limit, or if you keep file names short, you get more songs.

The device came out quite some time ago. I suspect it predates larger
memory cards, so they may have never thought they'd get so large.

I have a Sansa Fuze, the clip never broke off because there was no clip.
And I think maybe it specified some smaller memory card, maybe 16gig but
maybe smaller, simply because there was nothing larger in site when it was
released. Whether or not it can handle more is another question.

I have a 32gig and all seems fine.

One thing you might have checked was whether the player saw 64gig or just
32gig, from the start. It is possible they haven't got the extra bit.
The card works, but you never see the extra memory. That's speculation.
I have no idea why the larger cards stop working

Michael

Thanks for responding. I did check the older devices and they did
see 64G from the start, at least those that I tried.

 

[Jeroni Paul]

Could it be that you added/replaced songs when it started to fail? Maybe it cannot read beyond 32gb data area and fails when some data falls outside that area.

 

Ten years ago, Sandisk was showing such
promise as the 'iPod killer' with their
Sansa portable players. So where did they
fall flat?

With product reliability, and total
absence of anything resembling customer
service/user support. Their designs were
physically sturdy, compact, and straight-
forward to use. Video-out, actual five-
band equalizers, and even FM tuners
were giving Apple and others a run for
their money - until you put your device,
like the Sansa View, into Shuffle mode
while playing music.


On-screen art & info lagged behind the
song playing, the controls would freeze,
and sometimes the music would just stop
playing for up to a minute at a time.
Such was my experience with the 16Gb
View I had back in 2008.


If they had functioned as effortlessly and as
reliably as Apple's or Samsung's devices,
I might never have bought all these iPods!
Maybe just iPhone.

 

[Michael Black]

On Thu, 20 Jul 2017, thekmanrocks@gmail.com wrote:

Ten years ago, Sandisk was showing such
promise as the 'iPod killer' with their
Sansa portable players. So where did they
fall flat?

I've never had a problem with my Sansa Fuze, except there was some sort of
covering, plastic or something, and that's coming off.

WOrd is that MP3 players died because people decided they'd rather have
smartphones or something else that did MP3s along with a bunch of other
things. The Sansa were MP3 players only. They've disappeared, as well as
others, if I see an MP3 player in a flyer, it's a low end generic player.

The same word says that low end digital cameras have faded too, people
wanting that get it in their smartphone or tablet. You can still get
digital cameras, but they are more expensive, offering better specs. The
cheapest ones have disappeared.

Michael

 

Michael Black:

Admittedly, most of the problems I described
happened with their View, not the contemporary
Clip or later Fuze. They just didn't Q.C. the
thing sufficiently - if at all - before product
launch.