I have a SansDisk Plus and have transferred some MP3 files from Itunes–they copy onto the MP3 player but will not play. Anyone have any tips? thanks
Are you sure the files are mp3 files? The Clip+ does not support AAC format, unless you install the free alternative firmware Rockbox. Rockbox offers many additional features and settings, however it is more complex than the firmware the player comes with. Rather than installing Rockbox, you could use itunes to convert the files to mp3 files, then copy the mp3 files to your player. Doing this though reduces the sound quality, so I suggest doing this with copies of your files, and keep copies of the original files elsewhere.
If your files are indeed mp3 files, then make sure the format for the tags is ID3V2.3 ISO8859-1. Itunes uses a different tag format as its default.
You need to look at the file extensions. The files will have names like 01-Songname.mp3 or 01-Songname.m4a.
The Clip and Clip+ do not play m4a files. It’s Apple’s own format.
If your computer just shows 01-Songname then you have to have the computer show the file extensions. Go to Help, type Folder Options, click Change Folder Options, go to View, uncheck Hide Extensions for known filetypes.
If they are m4a, go to the album in iTunes, highlight the songs, rightclick, Create mp3 version.
Then send the mp3 versions to the Sansa.
When buying music from iTunes or importing music from CDs, you should be able to get mp3 files (look under Importing settings in iTunes). They play on everything; Apple’s own m4a files do not.
That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve made sure the settings for cd imports are mp3 when I put a cd into my computer and import the files. They definitely have .mp3 after the filename. I can’ t figure out why they aren’t recognized.
@musikgirl71 wrote:
That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve made sure the settings for cd imports are mp3 when I put a cd into my computer and import the files. They definitely have .mp3 after the filename. I can’ t figure out why they aren’t recognized.
Because the ID3 tags are in a format that can’t be read by the player. See JK98's reply above.
I have not had a problem with iTunes tags from a Windows version of iTunes–but I won’t update past iTunes 10 because the next versions are so ugly.
My iTunes gives me ID3v2.2 tags, and the Sansa can handle those. But it’s possible newer iTunes make ID3v2.4 tags, which Sansa doesn’t like.
There are also other possibilities. If you are on an Apple computer, iTunes doesn’t just make mp3 files. It makes Finder files that look like ._01-Track 1.mp3 and are 0kb in size. Note that they start with period underscore.They’re usually in folders called MACOSX. They are not songs, but since they have the mp3 file extension–nice work, Apple–they confuse the Sansa. Make sure you haven’t transferred the finder files rather than the songs.
You might also change the bitrate in your iTunes importing settings to 320.
Or, as suggested above, get mp3tag.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html
Download the file called mp3tagsetup(version number).exe, not anything you might see on a big DOWNLOAD button.
If you are on Mac get KID3, a different free tagging program.
I use mp3tag, so here’s how to use that. When you install it, let it add itself to context menus. Open in, go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and make the Write option ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Save that.
Right-click an album folder and use mp3tag from the context menu to open it. Make sure the tracks are lined up top to bottom in playing order (you can click the Track header if you need to). Highlight them all and go to Tools/Autonumbering Wizard and choose the Leading Zeroes option. This will number your tracks 01,02, etc. (not 1/11, 2/11 in iTunes style) and will change them to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 since that’s how you set it. Takes seconds per album, makes it Sansa-friendly.
KID3 has similar options that you can find in its help file. The important thing is to save tags as ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 (the ISO is Windows alphabet encoding).
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I’ve just realized it may be an Itunes (11.4) issue as the files I’ve downloaded from the cd (into my song library) won’t even play on my computer…So that’s a very strange problem…not sure what to do about that!
I’m not a big iTunes fan but it does rip albums and collect tag data.
I would suggest you change your Import settings. The default is m4a to keep you in the Apple universe, but you can change it to mp3 and your imported albums will then play everywhere.
In my iTunes 10 on Windows, I go to Edit/Preferences/Advanced (different from the Advanced tab shown on the opening screen) and General and look for Import Settings about halfway down, where it says When you insert a CD.
Change Import Using to : MP3 Encoder and the bitrate to Custom to the highest, 320 (160 per channel). That will give you high-quality mp3s that will play everywhere. The lower bitrates were for the days when there was much less storage available.
iTunes 11 may have moved stuff around, so if that path doesn’t work, go into Help and see where Apple hid Import Settings in the newer version. They make it devious so you’ll stay with the Apple defaults.
Delete one of your imported CDs and try those settings and see if the imported files play on your computer.
When you send them to the Sansa, see if the tags (Album, Artist, etc) are displayed correctly. If not, get mp3tag (for WIndows) or KID3 (for Mac), links in my previous post, and run the mp3 files through those to fix the tags.
Here’s a better KID3 link–other one seems down.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kid3/
Mac installers are here if you need them. I think they are the tar.gz or .dmg files.
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