[access-uk] Early Review on Talking Mp3 Player

  • From: David Griffith <daj.griffith@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 21:24:37 +0100

I recently purchased a Sandisk Plus Clip talking Mp3 Player and thought I would post a quick review.

There are three main reasons for bringing this Review to your attention.

1. The unit is accessible and not horrendously expensive.

2. Just as importantly for those of us with hearing impairments the unit produces excellent sound and is loud- loud- loud-

3. It falls then, to my mind, as a high priority device for those of us who are deaf blind.


The unit is small and plays through earphones only. If you research this unit on google there are a multitude of complaints that the unit is too quiet. It turns out that this nothing to do with the unit hardware but artificial volume restriction in the firmware. Happlily for those of us whose ears are restricted this artificial sound volume block is erased by the RockVox firmware installed.


I bought the unit because I wanted to step up my exercise routines and did not fancy having one of my expensive Daisy type player or iPhone bouncing around as I did sit ups etc. The unit cost £75 but has accessible training materials and RockVox firmware already pre-installed.


The unit I purchased was from Computer Room Services and the delivery was fast and prompt. My sister ordered a unit for herself and received the unit 18 hours after placing the order. Mine took a little longer, arriving just over 10 hours later. There is an audio CD withh a Quick Start familiarisation guide which takes you through the tactile buttons and the Unit operation. This audio recording is a brief introduction. This introduction is clear and concise and it definatly does get you started and covers all the important first steps in using the player.


However I thought this introductory material could nevertheless be usefully xpanded. For example my unit needed to be soft reset before my computer recognised it. This is a simple step and I think Computer Room will be adding anote on that. Also some of the unit's operations need a little getting used to. For example you press the up button to pause a track, but in other circumstances pressing up will announce the previous track name in a playlist. None of this is a show stopper but could be made easier to grasp. The RockVox manual is provided in both PDF and HTML format on both the audio disk and the device itself and you can dive into that but it is very much a tec manual. As RockVox is open source this is not the responsibility of Computer Room but I think a slightly expanded set of beginner instructions could be usefully extracted from all the tech content of the RockVox documentation.


The unit comes with 4 GB of internal storage but a micro SD slot easily provides for upto 64GB of SD card storage. This is very cheap on Amazon at the moment. I bought my sister a 32GB Card for £7.


In operation the unit appears to recognise and open the SD cards without any reading delay. As I am used to Daisy Players taking time to read SD cards this was impressive.


Although the unit talks this is not by TTS

. Basically the RockVox firmware relies on creating audio clips to identify whole names of albums and tracks. Without this step the unit will only spell the name of tracks and albums.


A small program is provided to create the necessary audio files on both the device and the SD Card storage. So this device will need access to a PC or support from someone with a PC for full Talking Functionality. For example I will be putting the audio filename clips on my sister's SD Card for her.


The PC Software seems to rely on self voicing with no screen reading elements I can find. It works quickly but what I personally found was that if you left it working in the backgound and did something else your screenreader output would not be interrupted to tell you that the process has finished. This was not really a problem as I found I could simply just relaunch the program and eventually it would tell me almost immediatley it had finished with a note of number of folders and files provided with identifying audio clips. The software uses the default Windows TTS

on your PC to create the audio track lables. In my case Ivona Brian which fits nicely with the Player as Brian is also the default system voice there.


Once the audio lables are added, a farily speedy process, using the player for music is generally very smooth.


The unit has bookmarking facilities, can increase both speed of playback and alter pitch so could be also feasibly used for Audio Books.


In practice because I am used to my Daisy players I missed some of the navigation elements for book reading, also there seemed to be something like a 10-15 minute limit on the extent to which you could fast forward on a file.


Having said that it is perfectly possible to use it for Audio Books and I would personally with its tactile buttons with instant feedback find it more convenient to use than say VoiceDream on an iPhone. I have put an audio book on it for emergencies. I guess it is also reassuring if all my Daisy Players packed up.


However to my mind it is with Music that it excels with a very high quality output, as well as a loud output. This sound belies the small size of the player.


The player is less than the lentgh of my finger and I would normally be scared to lose something so small. As it name indicates though it has a strong clip which can attach securely to either an item of clothing or conceivably a lanyard.


The unit also has voice recording and FM Radio capabilities but I have used them little, I would say that the radio also plays at good volume and there is an auto scan when you start the radio for the first time.

Anyway my early first impressions.


David Griffith

** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe]
** If this link doesn't work then send a message to:
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
** and in the Subject line type
** unsubscribe
** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the
** immediately-following link:-
** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq]
** or send a message, to
** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq

Other related posts: