What sample rates do the Fuze and Clip+ support?

[Carson Dyle]

The Mp3 library that I load on my Fuze is generated from transcoding my Flac library of CD rips to Mp3. Recently, I've added some downloaded 24/96kHz content in Flac, so I would like to figure out how to best downsample these files for playback on the Fuze.

What sample rates are supported by the Fuze and Clip+? I haven't been able to find any documentation from SanDisk listing anything beyond the supported codecs.

[McDougal]

If you've already got your music ripped to FLAC, then I would suggest converting (not transcoding, delete your transcoded MP3's and convert them from FLAC instead) your FLAC files to MP3 VBR (either V2 or V0 are best, V2 is what I use). Both will work perfectly on the Clip+ and Fuze. I recommend converting thru an awesome program called Foobar2000, and of course using the LAME 3.98r encoder, which can be downloaded from here.

If you follow these steps from your ripped FLAC files, you will come out with perfect quality MP3's for portable use

[Satellite_6]

^Not exactly. LAME automatically uses the original sample rate IIRC, it won't downsample to 44.1 automatically. I doubt the Sansa's support 96khz.

If you use a LAME GUI with plenty of options you can change this manually.

[Carson Dyle]

Right, I'd generally prefer to resample 96kHz to 48kHz (although I honestly doubt that I can tell the difference in Mp3 through earphones). Do you know if the Sansas support 48kHz?

[McDougal]

Oops....sorry for the misunderstanding. All my MP3's are 44.1 sample rate, compatible with everything, and sound perfectly fine thru all my gear (to my ears, of course, we're al different)

^I don't know about stock firmware, but I think they are with Rockbox

[Satellite_6]

Originally Posted by Carson Dyle

Right, I'd generally prefer to resample 96kHz to 48kHz (although I honestly doubt that I can tell the difference in Mp3 through earphones). Do you know if the Sansas support 48kHz?

You won't be able to tell the difference because there is no difference.

Just downsample to 44.1 to be safe.

[Carson Dyle]

Turns out that LAME automatically resamples 24/96 to 16/48.

But I use Rockbox, which apparently resamples 48kHz to 44.1kHz, and does it poorly.

Since I wrote the transcoding script, I'll use Metaflac to grab the sample rate (from the STREAMINFO metadata block) and then have LAME resample any 96kHz files to 44.1.

[saratoga]

Lame is smart enough that if you just do lame --resample 44.1 it'll automatically convert non-44.1 files to 44.1, but leave 44.1 files alone. Assuming you only have >= 44.1k files that should do what you want.