I'd been happily using a Gen5 30gig Ipod for the last few years, and was very happy with the sound quality. Then the LCD started to die a terrible death, with big black horizontal lines appearing on the display. It got to the point, a couple of days ago, that I could barely read the screen well enough to move between albums and stuff. It was like seeing a close friend die, I loved that Ipod so much.
I had a Target gift card and an American Express gift card from my birthday, so I decided to hit Target for a new Ipod. I'd been a diehard Ipod user since the first gen Ipod Mini. I'd tried a few other MP3 players over the years, but always hated the interface and computer software too much to ever grow to love any of them.
So I went to Target to look at all of my options, and noticed a few of the Sandisk players. I remembered seeing a lot of praise for them here on Head-Fi. The price sure was cheap in comparison to an Ipod!!! I could purchase a Clip+ or Fuze, plus an additional memory card, with just the money that I had on my gift cards. It was tough decision between the two, but I decided to go for the cheaper option of the Clip+.
The only downside was the the loss of my beloved ITunes, and the fact that all of my music was in AAC format. The AAC thing wasn't too big of a deal, as I'd been wanting to re-rip my collection to a slightly higher bitrate than 192 Kbps anyways. But losing ITunes was a big deal. I really liked the simplicity of synchronizing my Ipod with ITunes. Just plug in my Ipod, and let ITunes do all of the work.
I took a giant leap and started re-ripping my entire collection to MP3 format with Media Player. I was never a big fan of Media Player, but decided to give it a shot. The whole Media Player experiment worked out quite well. The sound quality of the 256 Kbps MP3 files was plenty good enough for me. Organization was good. Synchronizing the Clip+ was a snap in MTP mode. Media Player also helped me through the worst problem, getting music to fill up the internal memory of the Clip+, and then proceed to fill up the external memory card. My solution was to make playlists for my large collections of Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd and solo efforts from members of these groups. These playlists came close to filling the 4 gig of internal memory, so I set Media Player to automatically fill the internal memory with those playlists only. Then I created another playlist called "All Else", that contained all music, except for those aforementioned music groups. I set Media Player to copy "All Else" to the external memory. Now everything syncs to both memories automatically, without any hassles. Just like magic.
The Clip+ is cool little gadget. The player integrates the contents of both the internal and external memory, so I never have to worry about whether I'm viewing the correct memory to see the proper music. And if I'm looking for music that's hard to find via the MP3 tag data, I can easily browse using the folder view. That is a positively huge feature. The interface isn't Ipod easy, but it's not too bad. I can live with it pretty easily. The FM tuner won't get used much, but it's a nice bonus. The EQ kind of sucks, but I don't use any EQ, so it doesn't matter to me. The player is certainly a lot smaller and lighter than my Gen5 Ipod, which is a relief. When it's 90 degrees out during the summer months, and you're walking for a couple miles in the beating sun, that hard drive based Ipod gets to feeling like an anvil. The pocket clip is nice touch that will get plenty of use. The charging port just happens to use the same connector as my digital camera, so I'll probably be able to give the cable double duty. My only real concern is navigating my large music collection. There's no scroll wheel to quickly get to the lower letters. We'll see how that goes once I get my entire collection re-ripped.
Best of all, the sound quality of the Clip+ is absolutely amazing. Directly comparing my Gen5 Ipod to the Clip+ shows how much I've been missing over the years. Where the bass out of my Ipod sounds sort of like this all encompassing low frequency sound, the Clip+ is actually able to distinguish what instrument is playing each sound. The same goes for the higher frequencies. You could say that the sound from the Clip+ is very open, where the sound from the Gen5 is very compressed at both ends of the spectrum, to the point of sonic confusion. Overall, the sound of the Clip+ is nice and punchy. Not overly warm, but not overly analytical either. A very true sound.
One more thing. For a great inexpensive rig, pair the Clip+ with a pair of $30.00 Philips SHE9551 earphones, also available at Target. Nice sound for very cheap!!!!
I had a Target gift card and an American Express gift card from my birthday, so I decided to hit Target for a new Ipod. I'd been a diehard Ipod user since the first gen Ipod Mini. I'd tried a few other MP3 players over the years, but always hated the interface and computer software too much to ever grow to love any of them.
So I went to Target to look at all of my options, and noticed a few of the Sandisk players. I remembered seeing a lot of praise for them here on Head-Fi. The price sure was cheap in comparison to an Ipod!!! I could purchase a Clip+ or Fuze, plus an additional memory card, with just the money that I had on my gift cards. It was tough decision between the two, but I decided to go for the cheaper option of the Clip+.
The only downside was the the loss of my beloved ITunes, and the fact that all of my music was in AAC format. The AAC thing wasn't too big of a deal, as I'd been wanting to re-rip my collection to a slightly higher bitrate than 192 Kbps anyways. But losing ITunes was a big deal. I really liked the simplicity of synchronizing my Ipod with ITunes. Just plug in my Ipod, and let ITunes do all of the work.
I took a giant leap and started re-ripping my entire collection to MP3 format with Media Player. I was never a big fan of Media Player, but decided to give it a shot. The whole Media Player experiment worked out quite well. The sound quality of the 256 Kbps MP3 files was plenty good enough for me. Organization was good. Synchronizing the Clip+ was a snap in MTP mode. Media Player also helped me through the worst problem, getting music to fill up the internal memory of the Clip+, and then proceed to fill up the external memory card. My solution was to make playlists for my large collections of Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd and solo efforts from members of these groups. These playlists came close to filling the 4 gig of internal memory, so I set Media Player to automatically fill the internal memory with those playlists only. Then I created another playlist called "All Else", that contained all music, except for those aforementioned music groups. I set Media Player to copy "All Else" to the external memory. Now everything syncs to both memories automatically, without any hassles. Just like magic.
The Clip+ is cool little gadget. The player integrates the contents of both the internal and external memory, so I never have to worry about whether I'm viewing the correct memory to see the proper music. And if I'm looking for music that's hard to find via the MP3 tag data, I can easily browse using the folder view. That is a positively huge feature. The interface isn't Ipod easy, but it's not too bad. I can live with it pretty easily. The FM tuner won't get used much, but it's a nice bonus. The EQ kind of sucks, but I don't use any EQ, so it doesn't matter to me. The player is certainly a lot smaller and lighter than my Gen5 Ipod, which is a relief. When it's 90 degrees out during the summer months, and you're walking for a couple miles in the beating sun, that hard drive based Ipod gets to feeling like an anvil. The pocket clip is nice touch that will get plenty of use. The charging port just happens to use the same connector as my digital camera, so I'll probably be able to give the cable double duty. My only real concern is navigating my large music collection. There's no scroll wheel to quickly get to the lower letters. We'll see how that goes once I get my entire collection re-ripped.
Best of all, the sound quality of the Clip+ is absolutely amazing. Directly comparing my Gen5 Ipod to the Clip+ shows how much I've been missing over the years. Where the bass out of my Ipod sounds sort of like this all encompassing low frequency sound, the Clip+ is actually able to distinguish what instrument is playing each sound. The same goes for the higher frequencies. You could say that the sound from the Clip+ is very open, where the sound from the Gen5 is very compressed at both ends of the spectrum, to the point of sonic confusion. Overall, the sound of the Clip+ is nice and punchy. Not overly warm, but not overly analytical either. A very true sound.
One more thing. For a great inexpensive rig, pair the Clip+ with a pair of $30.00 Philips SHE9551 earphones, also available at Target. Nice sound for very cheap!!!!
