Transferring Recordings to PC from Sansa Clip

Most of my guitar videos have awful sound quality. This is because, while recording, the camera sits a bit far off and its mic isn't too great. So for my next cover (which is not ready yet) I decided to do the audio part of the recording on my Sansa Clip MP3 player, instead of my camera.

Although the recording came out good, I couldn't find a way to transfer the recording to my PC. I wanted this so that I could do an audio overlay for the video. Googling didn't yield any results.

I discovered a solution by myself and it's documented here.

Transferring your recording consists of 3 steps.

Step 1: Change the USB Mode Setting to MSC

By default the Sansa Clip USB Mode is set to "Auto" and that always defaults to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). When you are in the MTP mode you can transfer music files from the PC to your Clip. But while in this mode you won't be able to see any of your recordings.

By changing the mode to MSC (Mass Storage Class) your Sansa Clip will mount as a USB mass storage device. In other words, just like any other flash drive.

To change the USB mode to MSC do the following:

1. Go to the "Settings" page in the menu.
2. Scroll down to "USB Mode".
3. Select the "MSC" mode.

Step 2: Connect to PC

Pretty obvious. When you connect it, the device should mount as a disk drive and not a MTP device.

Step3: Transfer Recordings

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the drive which says "SANSA CLIP". Inside that drive you will have a folder called "RECORD". Anything which you recorded will be a WAV file within a sub-folder called "VOICE". You can copy this recording to your machine.

Note: I didn't see the songs on my Sansa Clip when opened in the explorer. My guess is that you will have to change the mode back to "Auto" to transfer music files.