Fuze+ Feedback and Feature Request Thread

Firstly, though I’m more than a little late to be replying, folder navigation is why I’m posting myself, and the reason for that is organization.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I listen primarily to Audio Books, and most of these are of long, epic novels broken into their 50+ chapters.  Navigating down all the chapters of twelve other books just to get to the book I want is too much, especially when compared to the twelve folders I would have to navigate otherwise where I still using the Rockbox firmware on my now deceased E200. If all you do is listen to music that is always on shuffle anyways, then no you don’t need folder navigation, but when it is essential for you to have the right track selected, it becomes vital. 

I’m actually a fan of the original Sansa firmware’s looks and features, but usually end up switching to rockbox for the folder navigation and manual bookmarking (another thing I’m here to beg for), and given those two features I’d be more than happy with the current firmware build. 

One of my folders is full of 45rpm singles and LP. tracks. Without folder navigation I can only play one or two by artist (theres no Album on singles) I made them all the same genre but that would only let me play them shuffled and the next time I switch on it sometimes plays the songs I heard before in reverse order. Theres no way to to start at the song I want to here and play from there. And Im not going to start making playlists, never had to do it before. 

My feedback:

  • awful experience

Feature request:

  • hire a real team and rewrite the firmware from scratch

The Fuze+ has one show stopper problem.  It is nearly completely unusable with collections over 20 GB or so.  Load up 90% of a 16 gig internal and 32 gig SD and you will see this.  Artist scrolling is tedious and prone to jumping or not responding.  Album list is worse.  No man can actually get past the song list to the genres (try it, you’ll see). 

It’s not enough to watch an iPod scroll through a hundred album covers and imitate the gesture.  No, a user interface is the last thing you write.  You have to have a reasonable system of indexing the collection in memory so that you can create the scrolling illusion in the user interface.  Clearly there are some core design issues with the file system index cache that preven the device from functioning adequately at anywhere near it’s rated capacity.   I understand that this is a difficult rewrite…

… but I have a solution for you! … a quick way out of the issue, a way to happy customers and a way to save face…

FOLDER BASED PLAY!!!  It’s not sexy.  It’s not cool.  But it is easy to implement and people who bought the high capacity Fuze+ for their large collections will be more than happy.  When the user selects a folder, let him drill down as far as he wants.  When he picks a node to play, that imples playing all of the nodes beneath.  You could add a shuffle option to it or even just give it to us straight.  The key is that it makes the device usable for these customers, and it is not usable today.

“Can someone please explain why folder navigation is so important to them?  I’m trying to think of an occasion it would have helped me and cannot think of one.  I don’t want to tell people it shouldn’t be important to them just because it isn’t important to me, but would still love to know why it’s so important to others.”

Absolutely!   Personally, I prefer tag based play and the iPod and Rio Karma were just fantastic at it.  The Fuze+ is ok at it, but only for the tiny capacity models.  We users here who are crying out for folder based play made the mistake of believing Sansa’s published specifications and we purchased 16 Gig Fuze+ players and added 32 Gig SD cards.  The current tag based play becomes compeletly unusable uand unresponsive from 1/2 to 2/3 of that capacity. 

Hey, we trusted Sansa and forked over our money… and why not?  after all Sansa always delivered flawlessly with the original Fuze.  Folder based play is easy to develop and fast and efficient to use.  It’s not sexy, it’s not cool… but it would allow so many of us to use the the device that we paid $175 for over half a year ago.

That’s why we want it!

@fuzionnow wrote:

"Can someone please explain why folder navigation is so important to them?

 

Absolutely!   We users here who are crying out for folder based play made the mistake of believing Sansa’s published specifications and we purchased 16 Gig Fuze+ players and added 32 Gig SD cards.  The current tag based play becomes compeletly unusable uand unresponsive from 1/2 to 2/3 of that capacity. 

 

Actually, having been here for a few years and reading through countless requests for Folder navigation from hundreds of people on the various SanDisk players, the main reasons seems to be

A.) People are too lazy to properly tag (or edit same) their files.

B.) People who have a large collection of mixed, or “complilation” albums with many individual artists.

C.) People who use their players primarily for podcasts and/or audio books.

_ You _ have an axe to grind about the functionality of a large capacity Fuze+ with a large capacity card when trying to utilize this greater memory space for a massive music collection. Not that you don’t have a valid concern or complaint, but you are definitely in the minority as far as your reasoning and justification for wanting folder-based navigation.

Instead of saying, " We users" it would be more accurate for you to say " Me user".

come on are you serious? have you even TRIED yourself to navigate through albums or songs with a large collection (if you want to put hundreds of songs as “large”), Tell me how long it takes you to go from A to Z.

Re-read my post. You missed my point entirely.

I do agree that folder play would be easier for me to view my one book of 929 files divided into 40 folders.  Tags would also make it easier to enjoy.   When I have to play this monster book I break out my CD player that  has folder skip.

I have come to the conclusion that may not be correct, but is this.  SanDisk is not going to make any of the changes we want any time soon.  So poking each other in the eye is not going to help.  The best we can do is help each other find way around the problems before us.

Other than my one book, I have found play list and creative use of genres to overcome most of my problems.  When my CD player brakes I will have to increase my use of play list.  Maybe by then we will have book marks, but I am not too hopeful.

If you are happy enough with your player do not take it personal when someone else is not.  One day we may all get what they want.     

Just wanted to add another vote to fix the M3U path issue, although I have a feeling its related to folders. Took me a while to get use to the slide bars, but now that I am I would be happy if I could text edit my own M3U playlists and not have to have all the music in the same folder.

Tapeworm, you are so very, very, very wrong.  I have a well tagged collection.  It is also organized logically in folders by artist and album.  There’s a strategry for mixed artist compilations as well.  I am happy with tagged based play by artist, genre and album.  I am happy with folder based play based on my hierarchy, and I’m quite amenable to flattening it if needed.

But the Sansa Fuze+ cannot do folder based play at all and it cannot do any tag based play beyond artist for a collectoin over 20 gibabytes.  If you’re saying that I have an axe to grind because the Sansa won’t play a 48 Gig collection, which it clearly is supposed to do by the specificatoins… then you are right.   But it needs to be said so that other unwary people don’t lose $200+ on a worthless purchase.  The sharing of information is the power of message boards.   Sansa also has the opportunity to read these requests and there is always the chance that someone at Sansa will do so. 

But I have owned this player in 48 Gig capacity since Sept of 2010 and it is still nonfunctional.  I’m lobbying for folder based play becuase it is simple, efficient, it works and most of all because it is easy for Sansa to implement correctly.   In other words, I’m offering these folks a way out of their issues until they can hire a team with enough talent to emulate an iPod at a level beyond  a screen shot.  All they have to gain from it is huge sales volume, happy customers and ultimately a restoration of their reputation.

p.s. tapeworm…

… if it’s just me with an “axe to grind”, then why would you say that this compellingly beautiful little solid state device with a great DAP, lighweight small form factor, and long battery life and great capacity has totally failed in the market place while hte Fuze, Clip and others do well? 

You really don’t think that its complete nonfunctionality well below its rated capacity  has an impact on sales?  In my opinion Sansa should toss $100,000 to split between a few key Rockbox developers and get their firmware ported by the end of this month.  $100,000 to get an extra $100 million in sales next quarter?  Good business I’d say as long as we’re talking about feedback and feature requests…

FuzionNow wrote:

Tapeworm, you are so very, very, very wrong.

 

I love it when people read only what they want to see, not what is written. The 3 primary reasons given above for folder navigation requests (on various players) were based on reading hundreds of previous similar requests long before you arrived. It was not an accusation or ‘dissing’ of you in any way, shape or form. Quite the contrary.

The fact that you say you have a very well tagged collection and folder/file hierarchy and that the Fuze+ works as it should with fewer files or less memory space used, but chokes when filled up (or nearly so) supports my claim that your reasons for wanting/needing folder navigation is different than those listed.

You (and Sandro) have a valid claim and right to have this player work as designed at full capacity or any portion thereof. This is definitely something that SanDisk needs to look into and address (at their earliest convenience). I was only saying that your ‘work-around’ suggestion (and the reasoning behind the request) was different, and that most people (and players) can indeed function normally on tag-based systems.

I have a Clip+ 8GB and a 32GB memory card, both filled to the max. It works perfectly and while it came with folder navigation, I have never felt the need (or desire) to use it. You have a different situation; you are asking for it (folder nav.) in order to make up for what appears to be a flaw in the machine itself. This is not a fix; it is a way to get around the problem.

But having said that, it is not going to help your cause by focusing every post (in multiple threads) on the issue and beating the proverbial dead horse. Frankly, it’s getting a bit old. Trust me when I say the appropriate people at SanDisk have seen and heard about the issue, and I’m confident they are working on the issue as we speak. Don’t take the lack of ‘official’ response or comment as ignoring the problem in hopes it will go away, or burying their corporate heads in the sand. The fix may not come as soon as you’d like it, but it will come. Having worked for very large companies in the past, I can tell you the biggest wheels turn the slowest.

Can we move on now?

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if it helps anything there has been an official response stating that folder browsing is coming in a firmware update. also they have stated they are working on the sluggish performance although no spicific statement was made if it would be resolved. 

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I’m sorry about that. I understand what you’re saying but it seemed like you were referring to him too, which was not the case.
And I agree even if it was available I’ll never use but in this case do we have a choice? It’s the only choice If they are not going to fix that. It just bothers me how the hell could they put this -thing- (to be polite) in the market. Wasn’t it better to work better on the firmware instead of promising and advertising they “constantly updated the firmware”. Maybe there’s some kind of hidden marketing strategy I can’t get.

I come from a Creative similar experience , in 2008 I bought a Zen and they used to have community forums like those ones where people were complaining about the non-SD integration with the library. The difference is that there were official answers on the forums but did they ever do that? No, they continued to release more models with the same WANTED issue. Bottom line if they fixed that all the bigger capacity models would not sell.

So maybe Sandisk is different…well I hope

“Trust me when I say the appropriate people at SanDisk have seen and heard about the issue, and I’m confident they are working on the issue as we speak. Don’t take the lack of ‘official’ response or comment as ignoring the problem in hopes it will go away, or burying their corporate heads in the sand. The fix may not come as soon as you’d like it, but it will come. Having worked for very large companies in the past, I can tell you the biggest wheels turn the slowest.”

This issue has out been out there since the week October 10th, 2010 when I received mine.  8 months.  There is not the slightest indication that any product manager at Sansa has a grasp on this or are addressing it seriously.  In the meantime we have an endless string of minor fixes to trivial problems, often getting switched around with every release.  The player is a fantastically designed piece of hardware with horrible software and sales are dismal as a result.  The combination of this reality with the poor sales would surely light a fire if there was concern about this issue.  The more likely scenario is that this product will be retired ifor the Clip and the View. 

“Can we move on now?”

Certainly, be glad to move on if I get firmware that works or a $213.03 refund (yep, I misremembered the date 10/7/10 and co$t) from Sansa.  I’d move on too when Rockbox gets ported, which is the likely resolution to this fiasco for me and many others. 

The Fuze+ is running on an entirely new platform and processor than previous Sansas.  This has made a complete rework of the player part and parcel for the product.  The Fuze+ has some cool new functionalities, like handling video and photos more directly, and a new interface.

In keeping with the familiar, what should I call it, sansa experience, some things are similar, and others are completely new.  The Freescale processor does many things well, and has a pleasant sound.  Over time, the Fuze, Clip, and then Clip+ have the advantage of being successive generations of player based upon a common processor.  Features that were added to one device, if possible, have been added to the sibling devices.

This is harder to do with the Fuze+, of course.  Add to this equation the new touch-sensitive control, and the possibilities multiply.

The Fuze+ suffers a bit from SanDisk’s own success, namely, the introduction of memory devices that have a super capacity, like the 32GB microSDHC card.  Suddenly, we have a possibly huge music collection on a machine that was envisioned when much smaller capacity devices were the norm.  Personally, I’d approach the database issue from a completely different direction, in hope of truncating and simplifying the music file database building and lookup process.

There are several ways to do this, effectively making the device “smarter”.  There’s plenty of memory available for the task; coding an efficient routine to perform it is where the magic will happen.

Folder browsing is a shortcut, allowing the user to pick from the actual folder and file names, separate from the embedded metadata, the ID3 tags (album / artist / track / genre / track number) in the music files are ignored in favor of the actual file tree as you see from the computer operating system.

Bob  :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway I wanted to add that the battery life of 24h is completely fake. I just listened to music without turning the display so much. I never get passed 10h :S

what brightness and what Kbps? Those + volume (I think vol not sure though) both effect batt life.

what do you mean by?

@_sandro wrote:

without turning the display so much.

sorry “turning ON”.  Brightness is less than half. I mainly use AAC 200Kbit VBR. Could this really consume 50%+ more battery than what is written in the specs?