Clip Zip review (updated 9/6)

[Marvin the Martian]

OK, latest (and last) round of battery life numbers. I converted nine Judas Priest FLAC albums to Q5 Ogg Vorbis....4 albums on internal memory, 5 albums on external memory. Avg. bitrate according to foobar....157kbps. Other conditions were as before....ReplayGain engaged with no pregain, shuffle and repeat all on, volume approx. two-thirds. Runtime.....nine hours, 15 minutes.

I mentioned this was the last battery life test, after having previously mentioned AAC testing. Well, it seems there are many variants of AAC/m4a....and the Zip doesn't like them all. The Nero AAC encoder skip recommended produces the same resulting codec as the audio I had stripped from a YouTube video, that early testing proved not palatable with the Clip Zip....mp42.



So, for me to do an AAC test, I'd either need to buy a bunch of albums from iTunes (not gonna happen) or rip a few CD's with iTunes, then lose the use of the player for another whole day while I run the battery down again. So I'll leave the AAC testing to someone else......I think I've done my fair share of testing.

[CrowdAds]

[dewpod]

I signed up just for this thread. Thank you Marvin for the super informative posts!
I just got my 8GB Clip Zip today and I do want to confirm that the RDS information does indeed display the song name,

[Marvin the Martian]

Thanks dewpod.
And you just reminded me that I forgot to mention the fact that I tried out the radio in a local small city, and being closer to radio stations than when I am at home, I did see more than just call letters....there were song titles and full station names, not just the call letters.

[skip252]

Sometimes you just have to toss it onto the "I did what I could" pile, Marv. Nero encoded files work on my Sonys so I would have guessed they would work on any AAC enabled DAP. I don't think anyone could seriously expect more than what you've all ready done. The only thing for those making the transition from iTunes can do is either check the battery life themselves or wait for other results.

It doesn't seem they've done much to optimize things for .ogg files. q5 for Vorbis wouldn't seem to be a particularly high bitrate. At that bitrate in Rockbox I get more than 15 hours. Not turning it on and leaving it, but using it normally. Unless something extraordinary comes from other AAC results it seems like good old .mp3 would be the way to go.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by skip252

It doesn't seem they've done much to optimize things for .ogg files. q5 for Vorbis wouldn't seem to be a particularly high bitrate. At that bitrate in Rockbox I get more than 15 hours. Not turning it on and leaving it, but using it normally. Unless something extraordinary comes from other AAC results it seems like good old .mp3 would be the way to go.

That seemed like it would be a good compromise between filesize and sound quality. The little bit of time I spent listening with headphones during the test, they sounded just fine to me. Those albums I have converted to LAME V2 for use on my DAPs normally, but in decidedly unscientific listening the two versions didn't sound any different to me.

But I stick to LAME in general, just so that I know whatever player I get, the files will play....and in the example of the Zip, the battery life savings don't hurt either.

[The DarkSide]

I may have a defective clip zip, as I can't load music on it (lame encoded mp3's). It doesn't finish scanning my micro sd card either. I'm gonna reload the fw in the morning and see if it helps, and if it doesn't I'll RMA it and get me another one. It's becoming a real PITA - but this is one player I feel is finally worth it.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

I may have a defective clip zip, as I can't load music on it (lame encoded mp3's). It doesn't finish scanning my micro sd card either. I'm gonna reload the fw in the morning and see if it helps, and if it doesn't I'll RMA it and get me another one. It's becoming a real PITA - but this is one player I feel is finally worth it.

Don't forget to Sansa-optimize your tags.....



You've seen my refresh times, I really think it is due to tag streamlining. Here's an example of my own tags....and they work well in all of my players, not just the Sansas.

[The DarkSide]

Great, more crap I need to learn to use a new and SIMPLIFIED mp3 player,...

[Bob_K]

I'm going to add my findings to the pot, and hopefully someone will find them useful....mainly regarding AAC and the CZ.

I first converted Dada's Puzzle cd using xrecode II and the Quicktime converter to .m4a; then loaded the resulting files onto the CZ. The CZ just scanned through the files and would not play the files (they played fine using foobar and the computer).

I then took the same album (again using xrecode II) and converted the same album using the Nero AAC converter. These .m4a files played OK on the CZ.

I then wanted to see how the CZ handled gapless albums using AAC. I took the following albums with known gapless sections and just played them normally on the CZ to see how the gaps (or rather, lack of) were handled. The albums I used were:

1. Alicia Keys - "As I Am"
2. Pink Floyd - "Dark Side of the Moon"
3. Enigma - "MCMXC a.d."

All three were converted from FLAC files that I had originally transferred from CD. I noticed a fairly obvious drop-out (like someone turning down the volume - then turning it up again) during almost all of the gap-less sections of the above mentioned music files. I tried both xrecode II and DbPowerAmp's converter with the above files, just to make sure it wasn't the converter doing something strange to the files. My results were the same no matter which converter I used. All files were converted to AAC in the .m4a container.

I then took the same FLAC originals and converted them to .mp3 using DbPowerAmp's converter, using it's LAME V2 setting. I played back the files again, and the gaps were just about non-existent (to my ears anyway). So the CZ's gapless capabilities work fine with .mp3.

In an earlier post I mentioned that I was going to conduct some battery life tests of my own with the CZ, using AAC encoded files. After seeing how the CZ doesn't always want to play nice with AAC; I've decided to abandon the project. At this time, I don't think I would jump off the i-Pod bandwagon (if I were on it) and go with a CZ, until some of the issues are ironed out.

[skip252]

If Nero encoded files are working for Bob K and not Marv I'd guess it's not the encoder. Who knows. It could be the bitrate, tags or something else the Clip Zip doesn't like. Not something I'm going to worry about as I don't use AAC. Even if I did make the switch by the time I get a Clip Zip somebody should have figured out the right settings.

The comment about q5 not high bitrate for vorbis came from me using that setting for the files I use on my Rockboxed players all the time. It's actually a step higher than what I can ABX for portable use but when I use them on my home system I just about never hear any artifacts. That makes it good for me as a all around setting without having to change anything when I encode from my FLAC library.

[epithetless]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

I may have a defective clip zip...

So it's not just Zunes then? You don't have a habit of emitting EM pulses, do you?

[steinburger1109]

Originally Posted by epithetless

So it's not just Zunes then? You don't have a habit of emitting EM pulses, do you?

He just has a habit of carrying a massive magnet in his back pocket, actually.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by epithetless

So it's not just Zunes then? You don't have a habit of emitting EM pulses, do you?

Actually, the Z:HD is 100% working, so it's ONLY the clip zip,...and I have BOTH right HERE!!!

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by steinburger1109

He just has a habit of carrying a massive magnet in his back pocket, actually.

Chicks dig a big magnet, right? lol

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by Marvin the Martian

Chicks dig a big magnet, right? lol

Worked all these years, so why mess with a good thing???

PS: clip zip is DOA!!! RMA will be my next priority, as I want a replacement - this is worth another shot.

[steinburger1109]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

Worked all these years, so why mess with a good thing???

PS: clip zip is DOA!!! RMA will be my next priority, as I want a replacement - this is worth another shot.

Good luck. I hate hearing about love dying so young...

[Rapide_23]

Hmm, Grey or Black...

[BruceBanner]

Originally Posted by Rapide_23

Hmm, Grey or Black...

I know right! That's what i'm deciding to lol...

[mikee]

bright orange FTW!

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by mikee

bright orange FTW!

Not available in 8GB though.