Problems with MP3 ID3 tags

I recently purchased a Sansa Fuze to replace my old Rio Carbon. On the whole I’m happy with it, but there are some problems with its handling of MP3 tags that are really annoying.

Initially I just copied over the MP3s I’d been using with my old player. They played fine, but I found that the tags were cut short.

This is a big problem with multi CD box sets. For example, ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Disc 1)’ is cut down to ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Di’ and the tracks from all six discs are mixed together.

I tried loading on my original FLAC rip and that displayed the correct tags. I assumed that the MP3 ID3v1 tags were the problem, that for some reason the Sansa was defaulting to only reading them when handling MP3s. 

I tried stripping the ID3v1 tags from my MP3s, leaving just the ID3v2 tags, and reloaded them onto the Sansa player. Unfortunately now it is displaying no tags at all, all the albums are listed under ‘unknown’. Surely the Sansa Fuze can deal with ID3v2 tags? It would seem extremely primitive to be stuck with cut off track/album titles.

Any idea how to get the player displaying tags correctly?

@dave_k wrote:

I recently purchased a Sansa Fuze to replace my old Rio Carbon. On the whole I’m happy with it, but there are some problems with its handling of MP3 tags that are really annoying.

Initially I just copied over the MP3s I’d been using with my old player. They played fine, but I found that the tags were cut short.

This is a big problem with multi CD box sets. For example, ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Disc 1)’ is cut down to ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Di’ and the tracks from all six discs are mixed together.

I tried loading on my original FLAC rip and that displayed the correct tags. I assumed that the MP3 ID3v1 tags were the problem, that for some reason the Sansa was defaulting to only reading them when handling MP3s. 

I tried stripping the ID3v1 tags from my MP3s, leaving just the ID3v2 tags, and reloaded them onto the Sansa player. Unfortunately now it is displaying no tags at all, all the albums are listed under ‘unknown’. Surely the Sansa Fuze can deal with ID3v2 tags? It would seem extremely primitive to be stuck with cut off track/album titles.

Any idea how to get the player displaying tags correctly?

It does deal with ID3v,and actually better in some cases. Something to consider is what you are using to tag. Mp3tag (I dont think it works with flac but I am not sure) is pretty widely recomended. Long manes scroll on the display, so they wont be shown in full but you can see them. I am thinking you should try to retag the songs again and then resync. Then see what happens. If you still have problems then I would try different tag software.

@conversionbox wrote:


@dave_k wrote:

I recently purchased a Sansa Fuze to replace my old Rio Carbon. On the whole I’m happy with it, but there are some problems with its handling of MP3 tags that are really annoying.

Initially I just copied over the MP3s I’d been using with my old player. They played fine, but I found that the tags were cut short.

This is a big problem with multi CD box sets. For example, ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Disc 1)’ is cut down to ‘Complete Peel Sessions (Di’ and the tracks from all six discs are mixed together.

I tried loading on my original FLAC rip and that displayed the correct tags. I assumed that the MP3 ID3v1 tags were the problem, that for some reason the Sansa was defaulting to only reading them when handling MP3s. 

I tried stripping the ID3v1 tags from my MP3s, leaving just the ID3v2 tags, and reloaded them onto the Sansa player. Unfortunately now it is displaying no tags at all, all the albums are listed under ‘unknown’. Surely the Sansa Fuze can deal with ID3v2 tags? It would seem extremely primitive to be stuck with cut off track/album titles.

Any idea how to get the player displaying tags correctly?


It does deal with ID3v,and actually better in some cases. Something to consider is what you are using to tag. Mp3tag (I dont think it works with flac but I am not sure) is pretty widely recomended. Long manes scroll on the display, so they wont be shown in full but you can see them. I am thinking you should try to retag the songs again and then resync. Then see what happens. If you still have problems then I would try different tag software.

Slightly off topic, but MP3Tag has complete FLAC support.  In fact, I tag and edit all of my FLAC’s almost exclusively with MP3Tag.

The Fuze is pretty picky about ID3v2 - it only supports ID3v2.3. You might have a different version. You may need to convert them to the version supported by the Fuze.

@bdb wrote:
The Fuze is pretty picky about ID3v2 - it only supports ID3v2.3. You might have a different version. You may need to convert them to the version supported by the Fuze.

Specifically, ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1 for optimum tag compatibility.

Thanks. I’m using Foobar 2000 and it works fine now that I’ve changed the ID3v2 writer compatibility mode in its advanced preferences.