Sansa Fuze Runs thru files & won't stop

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

I have a Sansa Fuze 8G (about 3-4 yrs old).  The books I have installed start running through chapters quickly over & over.  I can’t even get the pause button to work.  When I plug into computer & use Windows Media Player the file plays fine.  I have reset through the Setting on the player and by holding the slide on the side to the off position for at least 10 seconds and neither has remedied the problem. 

Any suggestions?  Much Thanks

2

Tell us about the files. What format are they (.mp3, .wma)? Where did you get them? From a subscription service (Audible, etc.)? From the library? Ripped from CD’s?

The more you can tell us about the files and when, where & how of the problem, the easier it will be to help you.

3

The files are audio books from the library ripped from CDs.  I have a couple books that are newer (published later) that are playing fine but they were put on MP3 before the problem developed.

4

OK, what program did you use to rip the CD’s? And to what format & bit-rate?

5

I am not very knowledgeable about “how” it all happens but I use Windows Media Player and let it do it’s “thing”.  When I went under the Options tab & burn - it shows:  “Add a list of all burned files to the disc in this format: WPL” 

And when asked about changing the bit rate the “Do not convert” is checked, as recommended.  I can’t tell what the bit rate is.  If there is somewhere to look, let me know,

6

The “Burn” tab has nothing to do with anything. Try opening the “rip” tab. It should tell you everything that we are trying to find out.

7

@gilbert49 wrote:

I am not very knowledgeable about “how” it all happens but I use Windows Media Player and let it do it’s “thing”.  When I went under the Options tab & burn - it shows:  “Add a list of all burned files to the disc in this format: WPL” 

 

And when asked about changing the bit rate the “Do not convert” is checked, as recommended.  I can’t tell what the bit rate is.  If there is somewhere to look, let me know,

The default settings for WMP create “protected” WMA files when ripping from CDs. This can cause just the problem you describe (the player skips from one file to the next without playing any of them) if something goes awry with the player’s secure clock. If you are set on using WMP, the best solution is to change the setting so that WMP creates MP3s instead, then re-rip the CDs and transfer the new files to the player (after removing the old ones, of course).

8

Thanks very much!  Will give that a try. 

(I just noticed that I can either choose WPL or M3U - is M3U the same as MP3?)

9

I was in the Rip Options Tab and chose Burn there because that’s where the information was.

10

WPL and m3u are Playlist files–basically text lists that tell WMP what files to play. They are not music files. They won’t play. You’re finding them in the the Burn tab because Burn is for burning CDs, going by the songs listed in a playlist. It’s not where you want to be.

What you want to do with WMP is to insert a CD and Rip it–turn its songs into mp3 files that you can then transfer to the Fuze. The settings are in Rip. Under file format, change it from .wma to .mp3.

11

Thanks but I’m not sure I understand - I take a an audiobook CD & change the Rip Format to MP3, then sync to my player, correct?  Do I need any other steps in the sync process? 

It has worked the other way until just now so I am a bit confused & really appreciate the help!

12

What happened, apparently, was that Windows Media Player ripped your old CDs to its own format, .wma (Windows Media Audio) and put in its nasty digital-rights management codes. Then those codes started telling the player not to play the files.

When you change the Rip format to .mp3, you don’t get any of those evil codes. Just the audio file.

Once you have the mp3 files in your computer, you can send them over through Windows Media Player as you have been doing. 

On the Fuze, if you go to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode, you’ll see Auto Detect, MTP or MSC. MTP lets Windows Media Player control it, and Auto Detect sends it to MTP when it detects that you have WMP on your computer. If you’re going to keep using WMP, you might as well switch it to MTP, because Auto Detect is just one extra step.

You could also do a more direct, hands-on transfer using MSC mode.

MSC just makes the Fuze look like a thumb drive to your computer. So if you have the ripped .mp3 files in a folder in your computer, you could put the Fuze in MSC and just drag and drop the folder onto the Fuze or its memory card. The Fuze memory and the card slot show up as two separate drives, Sansa Fuze and Removable Disc, in Windows Explorer (Computer or My Computer).

I always use MSC because I dislike Windows Media Player. So if you continue to have trouble with WMP, try switching to MSC and just drag-and-drop the audiobook folders.

14

I’ve found a lot of CD audiobooks have messed up tracks/filenames.  I think they might do this on purpose so that it’s not just a very seasy process to rip the CD’s and get coherent files.  They’ll name the tracks and filenames different ways on different discs- or have the album name be different on different discs…

Almost always, I ahve to spend some time manipulating and renaming/ renumbering tracks in Mp3Tag.

But that’s another issue.  WMP also forces you to rip at a rather high mp3 bitrate for audiobooks.  126 or 196? At least that’s what I’ve found.