Whenever I play a song, my Fuze starts to heavily lag/freeze after about 7 seconds of playback. It didn’t do this for the songs that came with the mp3 out of the box. I’ve tried formatting the mp3 and I’ve used Mp3Tag to edit my files and take off everything on it. Even with just the title on the file, it still freezes. Can someone help? The firmware on the Fuze is V02.03.33A.
What format and bit-rate are the song files?
They may have giant album art embedded in the file.
Under View in mp3tag look at Extended Tags. Highlight a file, and if you see art then it’s imbedded. You can extract it by clicking the floppy disc icon on the right–it should turn the image into a file called folder.jpg–and then click the X to get it out of the music file. Try one and see if it helps.
The song is .mp3
From the Mp3Tag:
File
Size: 7910 KB
TAG
Version: ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3 APEv2)
MPEG 1 Layer III
Version: MPEG 1 Layer III
Bitrate: 251
Frequency: 44100
Mode: Joint Stereo
Length: 04:17 (257)
I already deleted every tag on the file (except title) and deleted the album art on it. The problem still persisted.
Get rid of the APEv2 tag. You can set MP3Tag to remove it. I suggest that you test it with a few albums and just load that on the player with nothing else except for the sample songs and see if the issues disappear.
I doubt the APEv2 tag is going to cause any issues. When using MP3Gain (kinda like ReplayGain), that’s where the gain volume settings are stored.
Every one of my thousands of song files have this and I don’t have any problems whatsoever.
I’ve never heard of a 251kbps bit-rate though; it’s normally 256. This might be something. Are these files you’ve created, like from ripping your own CD’s, or did you download them from somewhere.
I tried it with two songs. One was from the CD, another was downloaded.
I know it sounds cliché, but you might try formatting the player and re-loading. Sometimes a good ‘high colonic’ is just what’s needed to make things right. 
I have already reformatted multiple times from both the Fuze menu and from my computer. The problem still persists.
Sorry, I missed that you already said you had formatted it. The fact that it refreshes whenever you turn it on, instead of only after adding or deleting content (as it should do), plus the lagging issue doesn’t sound good. It may be
The Fuze refreshes media as normal now, so that isn’t a problem anymore. And your post got cut off; could you post that again?
The 251 kbps is probably just a variable bitrate result. I use VBR files all the time with no problem. Take a look at the bitrates on some of the other files–they’re probably all different.
However, just from the math there’s something weird in the file. 257 seconds x 251 kilobits per second = 6.4507 MB. You have another 1.5 MB in there. What could it be? I don’t use Replay Gain, so I don’t know what that adds, but that would seem to be an awful lot of extra stuff. Sure the art is gone? Lyrics, Comments, video? Look through some of the other Extended Tags info. Wish I knew exactly what to look for.
That song is just one example. I tried several others files and they all do the same thing. Some from the CD, others downloaded. The only songs that successfully played were the default ones that were already on the Fuze. I could understand if it was just that one song that did it, but if every song is doing it, then I’m thinking there’s something wrong with the player.
@tapeworm wrote:
I doubt the APEv2 tag is going to cause any issues. When using MP3Gain (kinda like ReplayGain), that’s where the gain volume settings are stored.
Every one of my thousands of song files have this and I don’t have any problems whatsoever.
Ah, I see. I stand corrected. I thought I had read somewhere a long time ago that Sansa players had trouble decoding APE tags.
This is a puzzler. Contrary to your reasoning, though, I would think that since the Fuze will play the demo songs, the hardware is working. So it’s a software question. There is something about your files that is bothering the Fuze. But…what?
It wouldn’t hurt to reload the firmware, even though you are up to date. Get the firmware from here:
http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Fuze/Sansa-Fuze-Firmware-Update-01-02-31-amp-02-03-33/td-p/139175
Don’t install the updater. Just get the All Regions link for 2.x. Unzip it and drag FuzeA.bin onto the Sansa Fuze driveletter.
And more questions:
What program are you using to rip the songs?
How are you transferring the songs–which USB Mode (Settings/System Settings/USB Mode), MSC or MTP? The demo songs are sent by MTP, but MTP is usually more problematical.
@mwarriorhiei wrote:
That song is just one example. I tried several others files and they all do the same thing. Some from the CD, others downloaded. The only songs that successfully played were the default ones that were already on the Fuze. I could understand if it was just that one song that did it, but if every song is doing it, then I’m thinking there’s something wrong with the player.
I find this curious. You say that you have formatted the device several times. Formatting (if done correctly) would erase all content in the memory, even the default sample tunes loaded on at the factory. If they are still there and are playing correctly, that means that either the format didn’t take, or you have re-loaded them onto the player after the format.
Did you re-load those sample tunes? If not, the formatting (however you’re doing it) is not working and could still be causing the problems you’re experiencing.
The default songs are already gone. I didn’t expect the problem to persist, so unfortunately I didn’t save the songs. As for how I got the songs, I used various methods to test the Fuze. One was taken from the CD using Windows Media Player to get the song. Another was from a link on the internet. Another was ripped from YouTube using video2mp3. All three songs caused the Fuze to hang.
As for the USB mode, I tried finding out how to set that, but I’m unsure as to how (Windows 7 is still new to me). I’ll try out the firmware and if I can, I’ll test the songs with another Fuze and see if I get the same results.
edit: The USB mode was set as “Auto Detect.” I’ll try setting it to MTP and then MSC and see how that goes.
edit: I think that solved the problem. Tried about 10 songs now and all have finished to completion. Thanks guys!! However, when I try to sync a playlist, it doesn’t show up in the playlist section. It’s alot better than not being able to play songs though 
I don’t really understand how that solved the problem, but glad it did.
USB Mode is how your computer connects to the Fuze and sends files over.
MTP mode is controlled by Windows Media Player. On Auto Detect, the Fuze will look for Windows Media Player 10 or above on your computer and connect in MTP if it finds it. WMP adds its own codes and sometimes changes folder names to help it catalog faster. It also sends over hidden digital-rights codes if there are any. And you can sync playlists, etc., from WMP. The idea was to have an equivalent to iTunes-iPod compatibility, although Windows Media Player is not quite as seamless.
MSC mode is a generic USB connection. Your computer sees the Fuze like any other disc drive. You can move things around manually, or use a program like Media Monkey in MSC mode for playlists, synching, etc.
Here’s the fun part. Your computer can only see files sent to the Fuze in one mode at a time. Your files sent via MSC are invisible to MTP, and vice versa.
Meanwhile, the Fuze itself doesn’t care how they got there. So I don’t know if you sent all your files over in a different mode, but anyway, glad it works.
