Best mobile player

Got my Sansa Clip 8 gig a couple of weeks back and I’m still getting used to it but I thought I’d just give some initial reactions.

Sound is pretty good once you’ve played with the equalizer. I’m surprised at how good the stock headphones are compared to the usual garbage that comes with such things. I have to say the sound isn’t as good as my last cd player, an Aiwa which, plugged into my home system gave almost as good reproduction as my regular cd player costing about 20 times as much. But it’s still very acceptable with no annoying quirks.

Man, is that thing tiny! Feels like if you drop it you’ll never find it again.

Volume, even at the high setting, is only just acceptable playing classical music through Sennheiser PX 100s or Koss KSC 75s, which are slightly less efficient than the stock phones. Playing through Etymotic ER4S phones, which are notoriously inefficient, most people would want an amp. My portable amp, the size of a cigarette packet, dwarfs the Sansa. Playing rock or jazz is a different game, recording levels being so high these days. The way the Sansa is equalized coming out of the box gives you more volume, but it’s too bright for my taste.

Instructions that come with it are less than bare bones. More space given to legal disclaimers than how to use the thing. I don’t like the Rhapsody software. It seems to be aimed mainly at getting you to connect to the internet and buy more stuff. Fortunately there’s enough freeware available to bypass Rhapsody. Transferring files in any format is a snap but I’ve yet to learn how to organize them. Having John Mclaughlin come up right in the middle of a Frankel symphony doesn’t work for me.

With 8 gig offered by the player itself and up to 32 gig additional available through micro SDHC cards there’s more than enough capacity for my needs, even playing FLAC or WAV files.

All in all, I think it’s going to prove a very good buy. Thanks Hitch, Spider and others for the recommendation.