Updated 08-Oct-2024
Silly name, a bit bulky, but overall a functional mp3 music player. The venerable ipod shuffle is sorely missed.
Note 2024-10-08 This item appears to be no longer manufactured (prices on Amazon are crazy). What appears to be the best successor (for better or worse) is the Ruizu x52.
SanDisk Clip Jam features
- MP3 player
- Radio
- 8gb or 32gb storage
- sdcard support
- a bit bulky
- crap menu system
- unintuitive buttons
Sandisk Clip Jam Playlist Lament
My review of the Sandisk Clip Jam is a lament to SCJ Playlists:
Since playlists are important for portable media players, they should have a well-thought-out approach. Unfortunately this is not the case. One has to monkey about with .m3u files and actually edit them by hand. Sad and a bit nuts as well.
Several issues:
The namespace is effectively 7 characters, so don't have directories with playlists that might conflict on those first 7 characters.
There are three "quick" playlists but no way to get them out of the way, so there is always "click, click, click" to get past them since they are the first three. I don't care to make playlists on the go, so please let me make these go away.
.m3u file needs to have the full path of the location, e.g., Music/Joy Division/Peel Sessions/01 Exercise One.mp3
Unlike as stated in the documentation and forums, the music files do not need to be in the same directory as the playlist file, and they can be stacked all in Music with referenced directories and subdirectories underneath.
CRLF for returns
Obviously this is a nasty and brutish way of handling playlists, and so various scripting is needed to get things working without a huge amount of ongoing time being wasted.
Also, the cheap and huge earbuds (unwearable in my medium-sized ears) are really a waste. No one really expects anything good to be bundled, so save the earth a little.
Overall the device itself is pretty decent, except for the glaring problem noted above.
How to Create and Edit SanDisk Clip Jam *.m3u Playlists
The key is to use a media player/manager to generate the *.m3u playlist, and then search/replace to change the paths in the files to match that of the Sandisk Clip Jam, which is generally Music/Artist/Album. Since my audio library has the very same structure, it is not difficult to copy entire albums and artists (with their albums) to the Sandik Clip Jam.
As noted above, the playlists need to have the same Music/Artist/Album/Track structure. However, the playlists themselves can repose in the same Music directory (both in the music library as well as on the Clip directory structure.
Note: VLC can also perform the function of generating playlists, though my choice is Quod Libet, using the Export as Playlist plugin which generates an *.m3u file.
After creating the playlists and editing them, copying wholesale the directory structure into Music root directory with relative paths, completes the operation. Updates begin in Quod Libet and then a delete/recopy is necessary (akin to Ipod/Itunes operations)
- Note: Remember to set the line endings to CLRF (toggle button at bottom of VSCodium).
- Additional Note: There may be a need to add an additional
/before the directory structure in the created playlists.
Using a Script to Create a Playlist
It is possible to create a script that will include all audio files for a given directory and subdirectories.