Sansa dispalys "Unknown Artist/Album"

Hi,

I just got my new (actually refurbished) Sansa Fuze 2G. I tried to upload some mp3 music on it. I followed the instruction from the manual for drag and drop from windows explorer. I can see the device in the explorer, then I created a new subdirectory in the Musicdirectory with the name I wanted to give and I uploaded the songs in this directory. When I disconnected the device from the computer and after waiting for it to refresh I went to the Albums but instead of the name I chose, Sansa now displays Unknown Album. In the artist section it says Uknown artist. How can I make it display the names that I want?

One more thing. I couldn’t figure out how to stop a song that is playing. I can pause, I can play, but cant understand how to stop.

Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks

Unless you have the latest Fuze firmware update, Sansa players only use ID3 tags to organize your files, not file/folder names. You can use a program like MP3Tag to fill in the missing information to make the player display correctly.

And there is no “Stop”. It’s not really needed, as there are no motors, gears, etc. to wear out.

I believe I should have the last firmware version. I updated yesterday. It still doesn’t show the names I want. Is there anything I should change in the settings?

I don’t think it’s the settings of the Fuze (there are no settings that influence ID3 tags) but rather the version of the ID3 tags you used.

With the latest firmware, the Fuze supports the ID3v2.4 specification so I suggest trying that. Unfortunately you don’t mention what types of tagging you tried so it is hard to guess if it is anything unsupported.

@sutapanaki wrote:
I believe I should have the last firmware version. I updated yesterday. It still doesn’t show the names I want. Is there anything I should change in the settings?

Yes. Even with the latest firmware, tag navigation is the default. To use folder navigation, go to Music and scroll down to Folders.

To get the Fuze to display the correct information without using folder nav, you still need to edit the tags as I stated before, or use a program to rip your CDs that automatically fills in the tags for you. (files from shady sources like P2P are often poorly tagged or even incorrectly tagged, btw)

And though what 7o9 said about added support for ID3v2.4 is correct, ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1 is still the better -supported tag format as far as I know. There have been a number of complaints about problems with v2.4 tags.

Thanks for your replies. I went to Music > Folders. What it displays is “New Folder” and inside are the mp3s I aded. It still doesn’t display the name I gave to the folder. I have quite a few recordings I did to lectures at school. Those were not done with Sansa. Obviously, they are not tagged. I’d like to add them to the Sanasa, so I can listen to them, but with this naming issue it’ll become one big mess.

Without any kind of tags you are out of luck.

The Fuze does not display things based on the folder/file name.

Is there a reason you can’t tag these mp3’s?

MP3 music I can tag, don’t see problem there. But what about the lecture recording I mentioned? How can I tag those?

@7o9 wrote:

Without any kind of tags you are out of luck.

 

The Fuze does not display things based on the folder/file name.

 

Is there a reason you can’t tag these mp3’s?

The newest firmware does have folder/file name navigation. 

To the OP - mp3tag will allow you to tag a variety of file types.  What type of files are they?

@summerlove wrote:

The newest firmware does have folder/file name navigation. 

 

That doesn’t help you showing artist/album once you have navigated and are playing the track though.

The recordings I have are wma format. I really don’t care much if it shows the artist/album name while it’s playing the track. What I care more is to have it display the name of the directory, because if all directories have a name “Unknown” then it is not very helpfull.

What is the latest firmware version you’re talking about? Just to be on the same page. As I mentioned before, I just recently updated, but still it shows the directories I created under Windows as “Uknown” or “new folder”.

My opinion is that this issue is a weak point for Sansa compared to iPod. I have had no problem creating and displaying folder names on iPod.

Message Edited by sutapanaki on 07-22-2009 10:19 AM

The lastest firmware is 01.02.26 or 02.02.26 depending on your fuze’s version.   The folder names show up on my sansa, but I have them placed in MSC mode.  I’m guessing that you’re in MTP but that should still work.

Get mp3tag and install it.

Go to your folder of lecture recordings on your computer, right-click and in the menu under Search you’ll see an mp3tag option. Click on that and it will open the folder.

Highlight all the files. Then you can give them all the same album (Lecture x) and artist (professor y) name. With more than 10 tracks, also click Tools and use the Auto-Numbering Wizard with Leading Zeroes.  You could also give all the tracks the same “Song Title”  (July 3 Lecture Part) and then individually change them to Part 1, Part 2, etc.  

All this should take under two minutes per album/lecture. 

iPods are set up for navigation by tag information, just like the Sansa.  Perhaps they have now added folder navigation–I couldn’t say. And they don’t play .wma files. 

Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 07-23-2009 11:10 PM

Thank you, all for your help.

I can confirm that the following method works for me (finally):

  1. Download and install Mp3tag (I’m using v. 2.48)

  2. “Change” or “Add” the directory in which the mp3s reside

  3. Make certain you have data for “Artist”, “Album Artist”, and “Album” (fill in if needed)

  4. Select all mp3s and click the “Save” icon (or right-click them and choose “Save tag”)

  5. Transfer back to your Sansa device

During the install of mp3tag it asks to add itself to context menus. If you allow that, you can just right-click on the folder of mp3s and mp3tag will open with the files listed.