Cannot sync my music to fuze properly, please help

[mp3hunter]

Sorry, how do I know what bitrate they are at? and the whole second paragraph was gibberish to me, although I do get the part about never ripping again and that sounds like a great idea. Can you explain in lamens terms please? Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[skip252]

You can use MediaInfo to find what bitrate your files are at now. Choose a LAME mp3 -V equivalent and listen to a few files after you transcode them. If they sound OK go for it.

It is possible to create a file that contains the same information as what's on the disc. These are considered lossless. The most commonly used is FLAC. Those lossless files can be used to create lossy copies that don't suffer the additional loss in quality that occurs in a lossy to lossy transcode. It's the same as if you're creating the lossy file from the disc only much easier. With a lossless copy there is no need to rip the disc again. Ever.

Exact Audio Copy(EAC) and a few others, dBpoweramp, foobar2000 and CueTools come to mind, can rip lossless copies that match exactly what's on the disc. Other rippers can create lossless files but the audio information doesn't match what's on the disc exactly. Personally I decide that if I was going to re-rip my CD collection I'd get it right that one time and used EAC. There's guides on how to do that here.

If that seems to be too much work you can try the Configuration Wizard in EAC. The last time I needed to set up EAC I used that and accepted the defaults to rip to FLAC. It produces bit accurate results in all the tests I've done. The important part IMO is to do it right once so you never have to do it again.

There's a link in my sig to the Glossary for Newbies. I tried to make sure any terms I used are in there. Take a little time to follow some of the links in there and you'll soon come to the time when you never have to rip your CDs again.

[chung]

Hello,

I too have been having problems loading music onto my Fuze (I can't bring myself to use the verb "to sync" when the verbs "to load" or "to transfer" have been doing the job. But I digress...)

I initially tried to load my music (97% .mp3, 3% .wma) using my favoured method with MSC. Unfortunately in doing so, I found that I was running up against Sansa's "unknown album/artist" bug where for every 100 files loaded onto the player, 1 would be reorganized into the "Unknown" folder, even after all files had proper and unaccented tags entered with Tagscanner, mp3tag or Windows Explorer (i.e. *right-click*, "Properties" and so forth).

I then restarted by formatting the player and microSD card and then loading the files using WMP via MTP. This achieved better results with all of my music showing up properly when loaded onto the internal flash drive, as well as on the 8GB microSD card.

However recently I added about 60 more files with MTP using WMP, and noticed that about 25 files got placed in the "Unknown folder" even though I had tagged all of these new files, and ensured that the meta-data of the files in the "Unknown" folder lacked accented characters. I deleted these 60 new files, and tried again. No luck. I then tried to load these files using Winamp, and again found the same 25 files getting stuck in the "Unknown" folder. I don't see a problem with other specifications of these files and they were ripped as .mp3 at 128 kb/s like the vast majority of my music.

If MSC didn't work smoothly and now MTP isn't working, what's next?

I appreciate any comments or tips. Apart from this recent problem I've been doing fine with the Fuze and really like the ease by which I can expand memory and load music.

chung

[FreeZ5]

chung:

I do not believe that I have heard of this "unknown folder" bug affecting 1 in 100 songs. But I only have 550 files on my Fuze.

If I was going to use MTP, I would not have chosen to use WMP with it. Windows explorer drag & drop will work, but I have only used MTP a little bit. I understand that Winamp, and Media Monkey will work with MTP.

Steve

[skip252]

However recently I added about 60 more files with MTP using WMP

There's the heart of you problem. Drop WMP. Quite simply WMP sucks so badly as a tagger and means of transfer that any files it accesses I simply delete. I have no idea what's been tampered with and I'd rather not have the headache of trying to fix what might have been done.

AFAIK there's no "unknown album/artist" bug in Sansa players. I just bumped my Fuze to the OF to check the stats. Between the player and the card there's 3256 files all fully recognized in the database. There's not a single item in any category that's "unknown". All transferred by drag and drop in MSC mode. I use MSC mode exclusively on all my Sansa and haven't seen an unknown in a couple of years. It's simple and it works.

I've shown a couple of people how to drag and drop in MTP and that works well on their Sansas. With simple drag and drop and well tagged files all their items display properly. Trying to sync or use a media management program is when it breaks down for them.

It's been my experience that if the files are properly tagged they show up according to their tagged values. What may also be contributing to your problems is using multiple taggers. I use foobar2000 to write my tags and Mp3tag to cross check them, that's all. Using fooby2k and Mp3tag all the "unknowns" have gone away.

[chung]

FreeZ5 and skip252, I also had this problem with the "unknown" albums on my Sansa M260. On my Sansa e260 (which is still working), I didn't have this problem. For both of these players I always used MSC (didn't bother with MTP at all) and tagged everything in a format that avoided accented characters.

To my surprise, I got this "unknown" album problem again (even after properly tagging every file on Windows Explorer) after doing the initial loading of music onto the Fuze using MSC. And so I figured that I had nothing to lose by trying out WMP and MTP. It worked great and loaded everything fine (this was a couple of months ago). It's only very recently that I've had this annoyance with loading with MTP.

skip252, believe me, I had heard enough horror stories about MTP, hence why I initially plowed into loading music using MSC as I always had done. I'm not so sure if it's solely a WMP thing. As mentioned originally, I also tried to load the files in MTP using Winamp, and ended up with the same group of 25 files out of 60 being reorganized as "unknown album" with gibberish Chinese characters replacing the tags that I had created in Windows Explorer.

How do you do drag-and-drop using MTP? (I presume that you're in Windows Explorer doing this).

Thanks,
chung

[chung]

I just tried using drag-and-drop (still in MTP mode though) in Windows explorer after having formatted the microSD card... and got the same result. The same 25 files get reorganized into the "unknown" folder despite having the tags done in the same way as the remaining 2000+ files. What makes this maddening is that each of these 25 files comes from albums whose other files are organized properly. Again, the tags are all there and I used Foobar2000 to re-do the files' tags in the albums which have been affected by this problem.

This bug is starting to tick me off. I would have thought that Sandisk for all of its prowess in flash memory would make players which wouldn't be spoiled by problems in the memory (although I hear that the Fuze+ brings problems that go beyond the memory). Perhaps I just got lucky with my e260 as the other two Sansa players that I've had are merely going par for the course with a "genetic" problem. Just for a laugh, are there any worthy non-Sandisk, non-Apple replacements for a 8GB Fuze?

[coachop94]

Have you tried using MP3 Tag to tag the files? I have never had what you described happen.

[skip252]

foobar2000 writes ID3v2.4 tags by default. Your Fuze can't read those. If go in the preferences and

Advanced>Tagging>MP3>Preferred Tagging Scheme>ID3v2. Also check ID3v2>Writer Compatibility Mode.

That will cause ti to write ID3v2.3 tags the Fuze can read. Then have it re-write your tags. Not update, re-write. BTW Windows Explorer also writes non-compliant tags a Sansa may or may not read.

You can check that the job was done right by dropping the files into Mp3tag and seeing which version was written. You could also have Mp3tag write the tags. Mp3tag writes tags that will eliminate the "unknown" problem. Just set it so that it writes ID3v2.3 tags only and they should display properly. They do on all my players Sansa or not.

If you wonder why I'm so confident that there's no bug I either have or had the Sansa E250, E280, E270, and E280. The same goes for all models and capacities of the Clip and Clip+. Ditto for the Fuze line. All of them display the proper information when it's present. They all fail to do so when it isn't.

If you really are convinced that there's a bug in the Sansas (there isn't) take a look at the Sony line of players. They make nice players and you can usually find a 8GB NWZ E344 or something in that line for under $80 in the US.

[Marvin the Martian]

To piggyback Skip's post....here are the commonly recommended (from the SanDisk forum) MP3Tag settings....with the key point circled by me.

[chung]

Thanks. I'll keep these latest suggestions for reference. I stumbled upon another solution before seeing coachop94's post. I re-burned the tracks that were messed up and tagged them again in Windows Explorer. Now they show up properly in the Fuze.

[FreeZ5]

Originally Posted by chung

The same 25 files get reorganized into the "unknown" folder despite having the tags done in the same way as the remaining 2000+ files.

I was just going to suggest that the problem was with those 25 files, not the player. Glad to hear that re-burning, re-tagging fixed the problem.

Steve

[skip252]

That may have worked but I'd have work REAL hard to find a more labor/ time intensive way to fix a tagging issue. A 5 minute setup in either Mp3tag or fooby2k would fix this and any future tagging issues. As long as you insist on using the inferior tagging abilities of Windows Explorer there's a fair chance this will happen again.

[mp3hunter]

Thanks skip, for the help

[mp3hunter]

Hi skip, sorry I'm being thick, downloaded fre:ac but it isn't letting me drag and drop my files. I even copied music into another folder and tried to import that, nothing! It will let medo it one by one but that's worse than putting the cds in. As you suggested if I have the cds that would be good but I only have about half.

I know I'm being a pain in the butt but please put me out of my misery.

[Carson Dyle]

I find that I'd much rather use some kind of sync than drag and drop. Drag and drop is a pain in the butt when it comes to managing music on a DAP. In concept it's much simpler, but in practice it's a lot more work.

Just some of the reasons:

1. My master library is several times larger than can fit on most DAPs, so I have to pick and choose what is loaded and what is not. Dragging and dropping is a very time consuming way of doing that on any DAP with a large amount of storage.
   
   And if you want to significantly change the library stored on the DAP, then it's even more work as you selectively delete the old and drag the new onto the device.
   
   
2. My folder structure is the same as that used by many people:
   
   /artist/album/track
   
   I tend to work only with albums, and seldom copy single files onto my players. So let's say you have an artist with several albums in the master library, but you want only some of them on the DAP? How do you drag a single album and maintain the directory structure? You can't unless you already have a directory for the artist on the DAP. So you have two choices when dragging and dropping:
   
   
   1. Copy the artist's folder and all albums for the artist, then go back and delete the ones you don't want from the DAP. Needless to say this is time consuming (and just plain lazy ).
      
      
   2. First manually create the artist directory on the DAP and then drag the desired albums into that new directory. This can entail a lot of typing, especially when first loading the DAP.
   
   
3. I often make changes to the master library. I fix typos in tags and filenames, I add ALBUMARTIST tags. Occasionally I replace a whole album with a new rip. Again, using drag and drop, it's rather a lot of work replacing old files with updated ones. You essentially have to do it as you make changes within the master library or else you'd forget about them.
   
   If a file or directory name changes then it's not a simple matter of dragging the new one into place to overwrite the old. You also have to delete the old one or end up with duplicate files or directories.

I ended up writing a small VB script that syncs my Fuze in MSC mode based on two lists of albums to be synced to the internal memory and to the microSDHC card. It's easy to change the contents of the lists and then just run the syncing script to update the Fuze. It automatically removes content that was deleted from the list, and updates any files where the size or mtime has changed. I've been thinking of looking to see if any of the popular music library management programs could do something similar, as it would be a little easier to work within a GUI.

[skip252]

Originally Posted by mp3hunter

Hi skip, sorry I'm being thick, downloaded fre:ac but it isn't letting me drag and drop my files. I even copied music into another folder and tried to import that, nothing! It will let medo it one by one but that's worse than putting the cds in. As you suggested if I have the cds that would be good but I only have about half.

I know I'm being a pain in the butt but please put me out of my misery.

I'd like to help but I've never had that problem and can't duplicate that now. TBH I suggested Fre:ac in part because it's about has the simplest interface I know on a decent encoder. I can't find any setting that would prevent drag and drop of entire folders. I download the zip file, unzip it then start freac.exe. Once it's open I set the output format and folders and drop in the folders with the files. I just used that to add a couple thousand fies from a single folder. It took a few minutes with no outward signs of activity but they all loaded.

Have you tried the File...Add context menu? That has an option to add folders all at once. Drag and drop works fine for me but that might help? One other thought, none of these files are DRM protected are they? Fre:ac doesn't work on DRMed files.