Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox (Read 63368 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #50
Indeed, this noise doesn't really scale with volume, but at lower listening levels (at home, in bed) it's really obvious using my headphones. I find the Sansa firmwares contant noise less intrusive that the Rockbox's blasts of noise, but the silence inbetween the noise on the rockbox is heavenly

I have included a download link. A zip containing 4 flac files (one is over 30 secs but a lot of it is just noise and silence, not copyright material)

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/3221...esktop-zip.html

Rockbox One -- A track playing on the RB fw, you can hear the noise that occurs every so often while playing. Then I skip a track (noise), thurn the volume off (popping), and then skip a few tracks. You can again hear the noise on track changes.

Rockbox Two -- Just skipping tracks with the volume off. Same as the end of the first file.

Sansa One -- A FLAC track playing on the Sansa fw. You can't hear the noise, it pop's as you turn it down, then you can hear the constant noise that is always there in the background. This is with a FLAC source on the player. The noise on the next clip is different and is an MP3/

Sansa Two -- An MP3 playing on the Sansa fw. Different noise to the FLAC!


Cheers,

Kristian

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #51
Which rockbox version did you test?

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #52
the latest development and stable build, and the one you provided. I haven't done a side by side to compare if they are exactly the same but the noise exists on all of them.


Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #53
Yes, but which version did you test when you recorded those files?

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #54
sorry: r30259-110806

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #55
The Clip+ I have bought some weeks ago is also affected by this issue. It is not that big of a problem for me, since I can only hear the noise at the beginning of a track when it is pretty quiet. But still, I would prefer not having these noises at all. Did I understand it correctly, that this is a hardware issue likely to be present in a newer revision of the Clip+? And the only actual fix would be getting an older revision Clip+...

Are there any ideas for workarounds in Rockbox to mitigate this issue?

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #56
Some additional findings (why can't I edit my last post anymore?):

With an SD card inserted, there is much more noise from internal memory than from the SD card. Without an SD card, noise from internal memory is much lower, about as low as from external memory. Maybe this will help.


Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #58
I'm sorry to be bumping an old thread, but I couldn't find any more recent discussions on this issue. Just now I got myself a Clip+ and installed the latest stable RB (3.12) and I'm having the same issues. Basically the original firmware has this constant helicopter-like noise while playing files, and RB is silent except for rather loud noise when accessing either internal storage or external SD card. Has any solution been found yet? I'd be prepared to do some detailed recordings together with spectrograms of all the different noises, if anyone is interested.

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #59
I'm sorry to be bumping an old thread, but I couldn't find any more recent discussions on this issue. Just now I got myself a Clip+ and installed the latest stable RB (3.12) and I'm having the same issues. Basically the original firmware has this constant helicopter-like noise while playing files, and RB is silent except for rather loud noise when accessing either internal storage or external SD card. Has any solution been found yet? I'd be prepared to do some detailed recordings together with spectrograms of all the different noises, if anyone is interested.


Its because rockbox loads several MB of audio at once into RAM and then powers down the flash while the sandisk firmware leaves the flash powered up and slowly streams data from it in smaller chunks.  So instead of a louder click you get a constant dull sound. 

I don't think a solution exactly is possible, since its just a hardware problem with a smallish number of players.  Probably the best you could try to do would be to shrink the size of the rockbox audio buffer so that it has to frequently refill like the sandisk firmware does.  That said, I have no idea how well that would work (or even if rockbox will run with a small enough audio buffer for that to make a difference).

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #60
I don't think a solution exactly is possible, since its just a hardware problem with a smallish number of players.  Probably the best you could try to do would be to shrink the size of the rockbox audio buffer so that it has to frequently refill like the sandisk firmware does.  That said, I have no idea how well that would work (or even if rockbox will run with a small enough audio buffer for that to make a difference).

How would I go about reducing the Rockbox audio buffer? Also, is anything known about the amount of Clip+'s that have this issue? Any way to avoid this "faulty" hardware in the future when buying a Clip+?

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #61
I'm not sure what the best way is.  When I've done this I messed with the linker scripts to waste memory. If you're interested in trying to hack this, setup the dev tools, make a build then go ask on the Rockbox irc channel. Someone there will likely have a better idea.

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #62
Well, after the clip broke (literally the clip), I gave the player away with a view to buying something else........however I have bought a new Clip+ in the hope it has no noise issue and was a rare hardware fault.

Also bought a 64GB card so I'll have plenty of storage  72GB

Watch this space for an update!

 

Annoying distortion: Sansa Clip+ w/ Rockbox

Reply #63
Just to update, the new player doesn't exhibit any noise issue at all!  I have only checked with RB, I haven't loaded the standard firmware.

Also, formatting the card to FAT32 allows it to work fine in the clip+. I used a genuine sandisk ultra class 10 card.

72GB of lovely music to listed too, happy chap  The gamble paid off.