16 GB micro SDHC cards

Thanks. That’s good news. I have high hopes for my Sansa which should arrive tomorrow with a bit of luck. The 16GB card is here already. I don’t suppose there’s anything to stop me loading it with tracks now?

I would recommend using “High Quality”  files for your larger card.  The 4000 songs limit may take longer than one month to resolve,  because it involves rearchitecting the database manager.  Theres a fundamental RAM memory limitation currently which restricts the total number of songs.

If you rip your CDs to FLAC  (lossless)  quality format you can experience the ultimate audio quality from your Fuze.  A 16 GB card can hold about 40 CDs worth,  and will work perfectly even with the songs limit.

I you want to have a huge number of songs,  your best bet is to "break up "  your collection into several 4 or 8 GB card collections.

When you swap in a new card,  the data base will rebuild for that card,  essentially you can multiply up your library.  

The downside is you need to keep track of what part of your collection is on which card.

We are working on extending the capability thru rearchitecture, but it may not be a short - term solution.  Be patient,  and try some of the ideas I have suggested in the meantime.

Best Regards,

SansaFix

Thanks for the suggestions, but unfortunately, they don’t really work for me. I want to have my 20+GB of 192kbps Ogg Vorbis music in a portable form so I can grab the device and listen to what I want, when I want. I use FLAC at home, but find 192kbps perfectly adequate for the noisy environments in which one listens to a portable player. Having my music split between cards is a compromise, and I’m bound to lose a card, or not have it with me when I want to listen to something.

No disrespect intended, but it’s my belief that many more people want high capacity for more music than want it for better music (beyond a level, which for portable listening is 192kbps for me). I’m an audiophile at home where I can control the listening environment, but I want quantity (with reasonable quality, of course) on the road.

A 4000 file limit seems a significant drawback, if not a fundamental flaw in a high capacity player, particularly one like the Fuze which seems to have gotten everything else so right. I’ll wait for the limit to be increased and keep my fingers crossed that I didn’t buy the wrong player for my needs.

This topic makes me wonder how others think of their Fuze and portable digital music in general.

My thought on the matter is pretty much that the “portability” is the key since I exclusively purchase cds and rip them. I have only purchased a download once or twice when it was the only format available.

I view the enjoyment of music on the home system via CD through a good amp and decent speakers as my preferred way to listen to music. Moving those little air molecules around the room is where it is at! Your body should feel it as well as your ears hear it.

Squeezin’ and compressin’ them files into my little Fuze to get 400 or so albums on the internal and a couple of external cards…(soon all on one 16g hopefully)

gives a fair approximation of the music intended by the artist. It ain’t CD quality…but that’s why I HAVE the cd.

But the Fuze lets me have ALL of it…whenever and wherever I am.

Just my two cents worth…

Good news.  at 192KBps you will fit about 1000 songs in 8 GB .  Therefore with 20 GB  (8+ 16GB) you can fit 3000 songs which is comfortably handled by the current firmware.

They guys having  issues are using 128KBPS or less bit rates.

@sansafix wrote:

Good news.  at 192KBps you will fit about 1000 songs in 8 GB .  Therefore with 20 GB  (8+ 16GB) you can fit 3000 songs which is comfortably handled by the current firmware.

 

They guys having  issues are using 128KBPS or less bit rates.

My Ogg tracks are all ripped at VBR 192kbps. I just checked my 20GB Karma which is showing 18.6GB disk, 32.7MB free and 3760 tracks loaded. I was therefore assuming that with 24GB to play with (8GB Fuze and 16GB card), I could get between 4500 and 5000 tracks stored there. 

“” No disrespect intended, but it’s my belief that many more people want high capacity for more music than want it for better music (beyond a level, which for portable listening is 192kbps for me). I’m an audiophile at home where I can control the listening environment, but I want quantity (with reasonable quality, of course) on the road.

A 4000 file limit seems a significant drawback, if not a fundamental flaw in a high capacity player, particularly one like the Fuze which seems to have gotten everything else so right. I’ll wait for the limit to be increased and keep my fingers crossed that I didn’t buy the wrong player for my needs."

Well said. Didn’t the mp3 player division realize that 16 GB micro SDHC cards would soon be released? I don’t understand why adding FLAC and OGG support were given priority over enlarging the roughly 4,000 song limit for the player.  A bit of math. At 128 kbps, a gig holds roughly 18 hours of music. At an average of 3 minutes a song that would mean 360 songs. Multiply by 24 gigs in an 8 gig Fuze plus a 16 gig card, and you get 8640. So I think it would have been reasonable to make sure the Fuze would hold at least 9,000 songs in anticipation of the release of 16 gig micro SD cards. While the roughly 4,000 song limit isn’t a factor for most people using up to an 8 gig card(except those who use under 128 kbps), It is a factor for many using a 16 gig card and an mp3 bitrate under 256 kbps. I use 256 kbps mp3, so even using a 16 gig card with my player the roughly 4,000 song limit wouldn’t be much of an issue.

20 gigs of songs at 192 kbps averaging 4 minutes each would get you to roughly 4,000 songs. If your average song length is much under 4 minutes, then the current limit might be a factor. I have noticed that some people listen to songs averaging under 3 minutes each, while others(particularly if they listen to plenty of classical or jazz) might have an average song length of over 6 minutes.

Sansafix, I appologize for people getting on your case. It is not your fault that the roughly 4,000 song limit wasn’t dealt with much earlier, or that such a player with a card slot wasn’t designed initially to hold 18,000 songs to be ready for 32 gig cards(or at least to be designed to hold 9,000 songs in anticipation of 16 gig cards). Since the player was first released well under a year ago though, the design team should have anticipated 16 gig micro SD cards, and made sure that the player would support them fully before the 16 gig cards were released. 128 kbps mp3 is still a standard, even though those who want better sound quality use a higher bitrate. So assuming that many would want to fill their player plus a 16 gig card with 128 kbps mp3 would be reasonable.

Message Edited by JK98 on 10-17-2008 04:00 PM

 Let’s just let that one sink in for a moment shall we? 9,000 to 18,000 songs is an enormous amount of music for a home stereo system let alone for a portable system like the Fuze.We demand so very much from these little guys and it wasn’t so long ago that the concept of carrying ones entire music collection portably would have been undreamed of.I sometimes wonder whether i actually just like the idea of having that much music at my disposal more than even actually listening to all of it.I tend to doubt that there are many of us who have the luxury of being able to listen to 18,000 songs in any reasonable amount of time.For a person like myself who has been collecting music in one form or another since the dawn of time,i wonder if maybe i’ve become a tad unrealistic in the actual amount of music i can physically listen to.I’m starting to wonder if it’s really necessary for me to have every song i’ve ever heard on my little Fuze in the first place…

shmince wrote: 
I tend to doubt that there are many of us who have the luxury of being able to listen to 18,000 songs in any reasonable amount of time.For a person like myself who has been collecting music in one form or another since the dawn of time,i wonder if maybe i’ve become a tad unrealistic in the actual amount of music i can physically listen to.

Good point . . . do we really have the ‘time’ to listen to all this music we are collecting or are we just being ‘driven’ to load as much on our players as what the technology will allow?

Personally, I rip my own CD’s at 256kbps and have some downloaded tracks ranging from 128 - 420kbps. So I am not going for quantity alone. I have an e280 (8GB) player and an 8GB card. The player is ‘stuffed to the gills’ and the card is almost full too, so I’ll be looking at getting one of those new 16 gig cards in the forseeable future.

But, having said that, when I look reallistically at the time required to actually listen to all this music, it’s pretty amazing!

2115 songs = 5 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes & 51 seconds. That’s pretty close to 138 total hours it will take to hear every song on my player/card combo and never even hear the same song twice! If you look at this as a job that you spend 8 hours a day at, 40 hours a week; you couldn’t even hear everything on your 2 week vacation (listening for 8 hours a day). If you’re lucky enough to have a job where you can listen to your player at work and assuming you listen for the entire 8 hours that you’re there (giving your ears a rest at luch time), it would take you 17.25 days to hear it all! That’s over 3 weeks work!

Also, reallistically most of us don’t have anywhere near that amount of time we can listen to our music. Yes, we like to fit it in when we can, but think about it . . . how many hours a day do we usually listen to music? The answer, of course will be different for everyone, but the point is some of us get obsessed with the quantity and the braggin’ rights of having ‘a cast of thousands’ in the palm of our hand.

I realize that my example above is is nowhere near what some claim to have on their machine (4 - 5000). It’s only half that. But stop & think about it . . . go ahead, I’ll wait . . . :wink:

I can just see the look on your boss’s face when you go into his office and say, “Boss, I’ve been collecting a lot of music on this nifty little mp3 player and I’d like to take a month or two Sabatical so I can really concentrate on listening to it all!” :dizzy_face:

Life is just too short. I’ve got a lot more to do in this world than just listen to music. At this point, I’m wondering if I’ll be able to hear it all before I kick the bucket! :smileyvery-happy:

Does this mean I’ll never rip another CD or download another song from the internet? . . .

HELL NO! I STILL WANT THAT 16 GIG CARD! :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah,i failed to mention i’m running with the 8gb fuze with a  8gb microSD card!   

Message Edited by shmince on 10-17-2008 06:39 PM

I don’t really care if I listen to ALL of my music on the Fuze ever. That isn’t my point. I’m not trying to impress anyone o do a marathon. I just think having EVERYTHING is great because I could hear whatever I own whenever. I don’t have to remember to load it…it IS loaded… 

BTW…Sansafix, went are the 16g cards expected to be shipped out and availalbe to on-line sites? Will these be availalbe as class 4?

Message Edited by bobletteross on 10-17-2008 07:22 PM

I see what you mean but,isn’t listening to the music pretty much the whole point?

@bobletteross wrote:

I don’t really care if I listen to ALL of my music on the Fuze ever. That isn’t my point. I’m not trying to impress anyone o do a marathon. I just think having EVERYTHING is great because I could hear whatever I own whenever. I don’t have to remember to load it…it IS loaded… 

 

BTW…Sansafix, went are the 16g cards expected to be shipped out and availalbe to on-line sites? Will these be availalbe as class 4?

Message Edited by bobletteross on 10-17-2008 07:22 PM

OOPS…Make that WHEN…

I bought my Fuze to use primarily at work where radio signals just don’t make it into the building. I want to listen to music 10 hours a day 5 days a week. To keep from hearing the same songs over and over and getting burned out on them requires LOTS of songs. Something I thought the Fuze was capable of.

@shmince wrote:
 Let’s just let that one sink in for a moment shall we? 9,000 to 18,000 songs is an enormous amount of music for a home stereo system let alone for a portable system like the Fuze.We demand so very much from these little guys and it wasn’t so long ago that the concept of carrying ones entire music collection portably would have been undreamed of.I sometimes wonder whether i actually just like the idea of having that much music at my disposal more than even actually listening to all of it.I tend to doubt that there are many of us who have the luxury of being able to listen to 18,000 songs in any reasonable amount of time.For a person like myself who has been collecting music in one form or another since the dawn of time,i wonder if maybe i’ve become a tad unrealistic in the actual amount of music i can physically listen to.I’m starting to wonder if it’s really necessary for me to have every song i’ve ever heard on my little Fuze in the first place…

My Rio Karma is over five years old and isn’t limited to anything close to 5000 tracks. I don’t think the claim that we are stretching the state of the art really applies. The point is not to have all the music to listen to all the music, but to have the choice of listening to what we want, when we want and to be able to choose from our entire collection.

The Fuze has a microSD slot and is sold as being capable of supporting 32GB cards, giving a total usable capacity of 40GB. It’s not unreasonable to expect to be able to use that capacity with the most popular ripped bit rates.

Coincidentally, mine arrive in the post 10 minutes ago so I’ve just opened the package. It’s a sweet looking little machine.

Message Edited by Fifer on 10-18-2008 01:57 AM

Thats what I’m saying Fifer. I’m not an obsessive  person. I don’t really own that much, 450-475 albums. But at the same tme I am very selective about my music. I don’t listen to pop, in fact I dare say most of you on the forum wouldn’t know at least 80% of the artists in my Fuze. It’s unlikley that I would hear this music away from home unless I carried it with me. 

I think that they will get around this 4120 limit soon. But I am interested in a couple of things. Is the problem just in seeing anything over 4120 in the song list? Will they be seen under the artist/album index? I really don’t use the song list much. But I would like to make a golist on the fly if and when they fix the scrolling issues. I woud klike to compare versions/variations of the same song. But I’m over the “tape mix”/playlist thing…that was so college. (lol)

 Well,i see what you mean Fifer and thats fine.For myself,i load songs on to my Fuze with the intention of actually listening to them at some point.I have 16gb on my Fuze at present and it is a massive amount of music,most of which i never get to.  I don’t   believe it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to use the full 40gb these little guys are conceivably capable of and i’m sure i would no doubt fill it to the absolute maximum.Whether i’ll really ever get to that much music is another matter entirely.Maybe i’ve been looking at my Fuze in the wrong way.Maybe instead of thinking in terms of a music player,the Fuze is more of a simple mass storage unit.It is oddly comforting to have all this music at your disposal though,isn’t it? Even if you never use it,you know it’s there.In any event,even if these wonderful machines never reach their full potential(!), i highly doubt i’ll be too disappointed. 

Message Edited by shmince on 10-18-2008 07:12 AM

@bobletteross wrote:


@bobletteross wrote:

I don’t really care if I listen to ALL of my music on the Fuze ever. That isn’t my point. I’m not trying to impress anyone o do a marathon. I just think having EVERYTHING is great because I could hear whatever I own whenever. I don’t have to remember to load it…it IS loaded… 

 

BTW…Sansafix, went are the 16g cards expected to be shipped out and availalbe to on-line sites? Will these be availalbe as class 4?

Message Edited by bobletteross on 10-17-2008 07:22 PM


OOPS…Make that WHEN…

 

They’re already available here. It’s in the UK, but they take PayPal and ship to the US. I don’t know if the free shipping applies to here though. They’re around $81 US.

I have one. It cost £46 including tax and shipping and they threw in a free All-in-One multisolt card reader.

I like the idea of being able to swap out sections of my collection via multiple µSD cards, rather than holding the whole world on one card.  I am thinking of customizing my cards with a splash of color, probably IEEE type color dots, so I can tell who’s who.

The new Slot Music player has a card wallet, albeit a design for larger cases, but that’s a nice idea.

Call me simple, but over 4000 songs is a lot of navigation.  I come from threading the open reel decks, so loading cards is a non-issue currently, at least with my own Fuze.

16GB gives plenty of breathing room for multiple movies on the go, especially during travel, and FLAC.  Being able to store the large lossless files has made those mega-capacity SanDisk cards even more attractive.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: